Hope and Comfort Inc.

HOPE AND COMFORT'S MISSION IS TO PROVIDE SUSTAINED ACCESS TO ESSENTIAL HYGIENE PRODUCTS TO SUPPORT THE HEALTH, DIGNITY, AND CONFIDENCE OF CHILDREN AND ADULTS IN NEED IN MASSACHUSETTS.

We strive to end hygiene insecurity by removing barriers to access basic hygiene products. No one s

Goal One: Hygiene insecurity is a big unaddressed problem in Massachusetts. Despite distributing roughly 2,00,000 items in 2021, there are many without regular access to items like soap and toothpaste.

Goal Two: Deepen relationships with community organizations to effectively source and distribute more product, to enhance feedback, and to measure and maximize our impact with efficiency and dignity.

Goal Three: Increase our efforts to accelerate awareness of Hygiene Insecurity as well as of our organization, to increase critical resources (of money and products) and advocate to policy makers for support.

Attracting and retaining talented leaders with varied expertise, including staff as well as Board members and Advisors, is critical. Also critical is encouraging and supporting staff, Board and Advisors to continually enhance their skills across key disciplines such as finance, corporate governance, fundraising, marketing, and operations. We encourage participation in educational and developmental opportunities across all of these disciplines, as well as learning through formal and informal mentoring and coaching opportunities. One of our Board members, with an expertise in marketing ,has invested a lot of time to mentor and coach our head of Community Engagement and Marketing. This has been invaluable to her and accelerated our impact in Marketing and Advocacy.

The organization responded aggressively and rapidly to the enormous challenges and changes required over the last year. The pre-Covid demand for Hope & Comfort was incredibly high and rapidly growing; Covid only made the need more urgent. And despite having to move most of our small staff offsite, as well as having to curtail and eliminate many of our on site volunteer operations, H&C was able to increase our impact and number of people served and items distributed meaningfully. Through even deeper collaborations with our existing distribution partners as well as innovative new collaborations with new partnerships, we were able to distribute more than 1,500,000 items in 2020, and 1,900,000 in 2021, up from 500,000 in 2019. We evaluated our processes and routines across all our key functional areas such as marketing, supply chain, technology and fundraising to drive more efficiency and innovation both internally and externally to those we served to be able to deliver more impact in an ever changing environment that at times put pressure on our distribution and supply chain partners. A great example of this is making it easier for our partners to request items and for us to fulfill them by having them request all orders on line from our homepage using ,a Google form. This has reduced the time to fulfill orders (saving critical time for our staff and getting products to those that need them faster). Also, one of our most critical success factors is obtaining high quantities of high quality but low cost hygiene items. The ability to source products either on an in kind or purchased manner has been more difficult at times. Hope and Comfort has had to expand the number of sourcing partners through creative partnerships with individuals and organizations. As a result, in a difficult and volatile environment, we have been able to increase our distributions 3 fold vs 2019, and this year it will be closer to 3.5 to 4.