You have been wondering when the first item in our newsletter would solicit your help and now is the time! Mother’s Day is May 13^th! I asked last month if you were thinking about Mom and that may have been too soon – but you see we DO think about Mom all the time at HappyBottoms and Mother’s Day is our largest fundraising campaign to support Mom. I am talking about the Moms who receive our diapers. You cannot imagine how the gift of diapers can help a Mom and her baby.

We make it simple for your to help and you get something in return – so here goes – click right here – and go to our website to donate to HappyBottoms in honor of your Mom or another special woman in your life. Give us the name of the special woman and we put it on our honor roll on our Facebook page and website. We send you a certificate via email to print and give to the Mom you are honoring  and most importantly your donation supports HappyBottoms ability to provide diapers to families in need in KC.

If you want to get your company involved in helping us – please email me – liz@happybottoms.org – as we have a contest for companies who participate where the winning company – as measured by the greatest cumulative donation given – will be recognized by the media and will receive our traveling trophy and a special prize. All who participate will be invited to a special celebration we have planned hosted by Freedom Bank on May 24^th where the winner will be recognized.

You can see our progress on the website as we have a thermometer tracking our overall goal. That goal is $50,000! To those who have already contributed – thank you!

That’s it! The bottom line is we need your help – and yes the pun is intended!

What happened at HappyBottoms in April?

1. 1.       We added a new partner agency. A Simple House of Sts. Francis and Alphonsus picked up their first diapers in April.
2. 2.       We provided 36,047 diapers to kids through our partner agencies bringing our total diapers distributed in 2012 to 105,521.
3. 3.       We held a wildly successful Bottoms Up event thanks to StickSisters in Hawthorne Plaza and brought in $1220.
4. 4.       We got an incredible donation from North American Savings Bank! The generous folks at NASB sent us a check for $7500. We are incredibly thankful to this wonderful organization who understood what HappyBottoms is trying to do after reading the article in the KC Star.

Have we got a deal for you – we joined Dealbug thanks to 810 Sports Radio! Click here to go to their site and direct $1 of your coupon purchase to HappyBottoms. The more coupons you buy the more dollars we get! Here is how it works.

On the top of the page and over to the right you will see the words “Join or Login.”  When you land on the site and click “Join”, you can subscribe with your email address and to start receiving deals in Kansas City.  When you purchase the deal, a drop down menu of charities will appear. We ENCOURAGE you to choose HappyBottoms every time you purchase a deal.  The more you shop – the more HappyBottoms earns! Click here to start dealing and supporting HappyBottoms today!

 Did you know national volunteer week was  April 15-21? We did and would like to recognize  all our outstanding volunteers without whom our diapers would not make it out the door of our warehouse. Thanks for the moving, stacking, counting and sorting! And oh by the way – if you volunteer for HappyBottoms you get invited to our Mother’s Day celebration too! This month some special recognition goes to:

Chrystal Johnson who helps us with database management and warehouse logistics!

Jodi Danziger who is our Diaper Drive coordinator and Facebook and Twitter guru!

Emily Bengston who helps us with Facebook and works on the featured agencies and drop sites!

Jenni Purvis who has become our Drop Site manager and helped us with our new Google maps!

The Kansas City Junior League who provides wonderful volunteers every month to help with diaper distribution.

Pat Dowey for orchestrating the Bottoms Up event at StickSisters!

Why we need your help.

April was another great month at HappyBottoms. We had more volunteer support including diaper drives and some truly awesome donations – but there is one thing I did not mention earlier. We had two more agencies apply for diapers bring our list of waiting children to over 1100! That is right. These are the number of children who we don’t provide diapers to yet. Why is that? We don’t have the funding.

That is why your donation to the Make a Difference for Mother’s Day fundraiser is so important. Your dollars help us move agencies off our wait list and provide diapers to more kids. So please, click that pink button, make a donation and honor Mom in the process. A mom you don’t even know will thank you for your generosity.

Liz

 P.S. - Don't forget to check our Drives and Events page to see all the great organizations who helped us this month and our upcoming events.

What else happened in March?

1. We distributed our 316,316^th diaper! How do we know? We count every single one! In April with the addition of Operation Breakthrough we will be providing diapers to about 700 children each month and we hope to add another agency to the group. If you follow us you know our wait list of agencies continues to grow. We now have 15 agencies on the waitlist with over 1050 children waiting to receive diapers.
2. We got another donation from the United Way Gifts in Kind Program of over 5000 diapers!
3. Arbor Pharmaceuticals, makers of Pediaderm AF, came through with financial support for us again. This year they donated $10,000! What a wonderfully generous company! They truly understand baby bottoms as they make prescription diaper cream.
4. We have a freelance graphic designer, Courtney Wasson of Busy Bee donating her time and making some terrific new resources to support drives, events and marketing materials. Check out her work at www.freelancebusybee.com – she rocks.
5. We added a new Board Member! Joe Calhoun of Renaissance Financial joined our board and will be our Fundraising Chair. He has already rallied the board to get busy and raise more money to buy more diapers and serve more children. We are excited to have him.
6. We got our new warehouse/processing space ready for action! That means we can bring in groups to help us count sort and repackage open packages of diapers. Want to bring in a group to help? Click here.

They say April showers bring May flowers – but we say April baby showers bring diapers. Would you like to help? How about holding a baby shower for HappyBottoms? We have a new email invite on our website that you can use. Just click here to go to the page. What do you ask your guests to bring? Diapers of course and dollars to buy them. We also need folding tables and chairs for our warehouse as well as pack-and-plays to collect the diapers in. They can all be used. We love repurposing! And don’t forget those open packs that baby has grown out of – we can find babies who need those unused diapers so please don't throw them away.

We are gearing up for Mother’s Day - On April 1^st – it will be 43 days until Mother’s Day. Have you thought about Mom? At HappyBottoms we think about her every day. This year we are launching our biggest campaign yet to get the entire community involved in helping us raise money to provide diapers for babies in the greater Kansas City Metro area. We want businesses and the media to help us. In April we will be reaching out to businesses, individuals and the media to help us “Make a Difference for Mother’s Day” and donate to HappyBottoms in honor of Mom or a special woman in your life. That donation will help a Mom who cannot afford to buy diapers for her  baby. If you give us the name of the woman you are honoring – we will add her to our honor roll on our Facebook page, website and Twitter. If you want to get involved and volunteer  to  Make a Difference click here to contact us. Any size business can participate and we would love every media outlet in KC to pick this up.  Or you can donate right now by clicking on the big pink Make A Difference for Mother’s Day button on our website.

OK – we are Marching on – but before we go – did you know part of the mission of HappyBottoms is to create awareness of the need for diapers for low income families. You may ask why? Frankly because very few people know about it. You see – if they did know, they could not help but want to support our cause. Every baby deserves a clean, dry bottom. Right? Would you reuse a soiled diaper? I am sure you would not. If you are reading this you don’t have to. And guess what – no one else should have to either. You can help us make sure these babies have happy bottoms  by joining us in providing diapers to families in need.

So make your March Memorable and March with us at HappyBottoms!

Liz

It is Leap Year and HappyBottoms is leaping forward once again to provide diapers to more children in the greater Kansas City Metro! We will receive another 18 pallets of diapers on Leap Day – February 29^th! AND…. We just notified Operation Breakthrough that they will be the next agency to receive diapers every month from HB! We are excited to add Operation Breakthrough to our list of current partners and to continue to grow to meet the needs of the community.

Spring Forward
HappyBottoms Spring Contest
See how you can win HappyBottoms Final Four prizes by helping us diaper more babies in need. 

Do a Diaper Drive for HappyBottoms in March and compete for our final four bracket with prizes! Click here to learn how to help and win!

Diaper Banks are Different - Why do we say that? Two reasons.

 First – we only focus on baby diapers and they are not a fungible product. That means you cannot use something else in their place and achieve the same result. Unlike clothing or food – where you can substitute a sweater for a jacket to keep you warm or peas for corn to provide nutrition you can’t substitute another product for a baby diaper and keep that little bottom clean and dry. That is why we focus on diapers. And guess what? No one else in our community does that.

Second -  when an organization becomes a current partner of HappyBottoms that means we are making a commitment to become a reliable source for their diapers every month for at least the one year contract we have signed. That is right – every month! That is why this is such a big job and why we need your help.

Short Months do not mean short changed at HB.

Our top five accomplishments in February are –

5.            Scheduling  our first big event on June 11^th when HappyBottoms will be holding an event with the T-Bones! That is right – HappyBottoms will be at the T-Bones on Monday June 11^th and we want you to come for a night of Fun Well Done with the T-Bones and opportunities to support HappyBottoms in providing diapers to low income families. Plan to bring any open packs of diapers that you are not using to place in our bins. You can also bring new packs of diapers, a few dollars and some really big checks made out to HappyBottoms! More to come as we get closer.

4.            Securing a donation of product from Indigo Wild for our Mother’s Day campaign. Yep – We are already talking Mother’s Day even though it is 2.5 months away. It is our biggest annual celebration and we are going all out this year with drives, partnerships and events. This donation from Indigo Wild will actually go to our Moms who receive diapers as washing your hands is one of the most important parts of healthy diapering. See our educational brochure to find out more.

3.            Holding our second Happy Hour at The GAF and receiving donations of diapers and dollars on February 23^rd. If you were there, thanks for coming – if you missed it, come to our next event on April 19^th at Stick Sisters in Hawthorne Plaza. Our thanks to the GAF for the great appetizers and the great atmosphere. We even saw Frank Boal of 810 Sports as he did some live broadcasting that night. So don’t miss out on our next event – you never know who will be there.

2.            Securing another 57,000 diaper donation through the National Diaper Bank Network  as part of their partnership with Huggies Every Little Bottom and the children’s charity K.I.D.S. - Kids In Distressed Situations. We hope to be included each quarter as they distribute 20 million diapers through diaper banks and other agencies across the nation. As we mentioned earlier that donation will be received Wednesday, February 29^th!

1.            Receiving a donation of space that will give HappyBottoms work space for our volunteers to process diapers from C&C Group and Kessinger Hunter! This is the most exciting piece of news on this list.

You may be asking why – so I will tell you. It provides a place to work. It means all those girl scouts and boy scouts who have asked how they can help will have a place to help us.

It means that all those open diaper packages can be repackaged and given to children who need them in a more efficient fashion!

It is utterly amazing as it is through  tremendously generous donors who totally understand why we do what we do. We are so thankful to have made this incredible connection.

More to come on this new space in March so stay tuned!

Nuff said – right? Well, almost. I can’t close without saying how much we still need your support to meet the diaper needs in our community.

So here is a list of just what we need –

Your time – volunteer to help us by clicking here.

Your talent – by becoming and Ambassador or joining our board. For Ambassadors – contact Joe@happybottoms.org. For Board positions – contact liz@happybottoms.org

Your dollars – we still need to raise $50,000 to meet our expense targets this year. Click here to donate today.

Your diapers – new packs and open packs too. Here are our drop sites.

And finally your support to get the word out about this unmet need in our community. All you have to do is forward this letter to one friend to help us increase awareness.

Thanks!

Liz

At HappyBottoms we can sum up January by saying we learned a lot of little things about the kids we serve and we are thinking you might like to know these little things too. First, we provided diapers for over 1500 unique children in 2011. We touched their lives and, literally covered their bottoms, with your help.

They are male and female and almost every ethnicity – African American (36%), Caucasian (37%), Hispanic/Latino (18%),  American Indian/Alaskan Native (1%),  Asian/Pacific Islander(2%) and 6% other.

They live right here – in Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas and Jackson, Lafayette, Cass, Clay and Platte Counties in Missouri.

Sixty-seven percent live below the Federal Poverty Level and 25% live at income levels up to 200% of the federal poverty level.

The bottom line (pun intended) is they need your help to just have diapers – a basic need we believe every little bottom has a right to. Diapers matter A LOT!

How does HappyBottoms know this stuff?

You may be wondering – how does HappyBottoms know this stuff? Ok – we will let you in on our secret – as it is really not a secret but it is confidential… and secure. We have been gathering data on the children we provide diapers to in a blinded fashion since we began providing diapers in April of 2011. This data helps us share with you and any other individuals, foundations, corporations, etc. who we help and provides the reason for why they should help us at HappyBottoms. Data helps identify the problem of diaper need and is the first step in being able to solve it.

Problems and Consequences

Solving the problem of diaper need and the unintended consequences of not having diapers – what are we doing about it? Here are the top five things HappyBottoms did in January to help solve the problem –

1. We added another agency to our list of current partner agencies who will receive diapers from HappyBottoms. Welcome to the Don Bosco Center. (For a list of all current partners click here.) BTW – that means we will be providing diapers to more children!
2. In collaboration with CAPA – Child Abuse Prevention Association and MCHC – Mother and Child Health Coalition – we developed and educational brochure that includes tips on Healthy Diapering and Stress reduction techniques for parents and caregivers to be distributed with our diapers. Click here to see the brochures and download copies.
3. We held our first meeting of the Ambassadors for HappyBottoms under the leadership of Joe Calhoun to kick off the volunteer activities that will help grow and support this organization. It was a great meeting with some amazing ideas which will help us continue to grow to meet the needs of the community. Thanks to all who came! If you would like to join this awesome team – contact Joe@happybottoms.org – we always need more help.
4. Our Board of Directors met and approved the 2012 budget which will fund providing diapers to an average of 800 children a month this year. This is really important as it demonstrates the commitment of these leaders to grow HappyBottoms to serve more kids. (BTW – we are still recruiting for a few more board positions – so if you have the time and talent to devote – please send us your resume.)
5. Our grant writing team – Pam and Liz (well mostly Pam) spent countless hours writing two grants to support the ongoing operations of HappyBottoms and fund our first paid employee – a part-time Program Manager. We will keep you posted on this one as it will signal the next step on the road to HappyBottoms continued evolution to become a sustainable part of our community support network for families in need.

So what’s on tap for the rest of the year?

2012 will be another crazy year for HappyBottoms. You read how we plan to take on providing diapers for more children – but quite honestly I will tell you, we are not setting our sights high enough to meet Kansas City’s needs. There are at least 4000 children out there who need diapers in our community.

 We are talking babies. They cannot ask for diapers and their parents are struggling to get diapers. IF – and I really am saying  IF  because it is uncertain - we raise the money to support our plan for 2012, we will only be providing diapers to 20% of the kids who need them.  That is not enough.

So if it bothers you as much as it bothers us that there are children in our community who do not have clean dry diapers this year – make a commitment to help us blow this plan away and get diapers to more than 20% of these kids by providing your financial support – or your time and talent – or volunteering your company to do a diaper drive for us. These kids really do need every diaper we can give them.

It is the little things – diapers – that matter A LOT!

Liz

Don’t forget to check out our upcoming events by clicking here.

2011 was a year of amazing accomplishments at HB. Did you know we started in January with no diapers? That’s right. The current leadership team of Pam, Linda and Liz started in January with a great website, some files on our current partner agencies, a great name and 501c3 designation and an envelope with a little over $1000. In this letter we would like to share our accomplishments and thank all the wonderful partners, donors, sponsors and volunteers who made them happen!

FACTS AND FIGURES – OOPS – I Mean Diapers!

We began distributing to our partner agencies in April of this year. Since April 18^th, we have distributed 166,842 diapers! The number of children we have provided diapers to each month has grown from 148 children in April to 450 in November. We expect that December’s number will be close to 900 as we added new agencies and provided a one-time distribution to the Johnson County Christmas Bureau’s Christmas Shop to give diapers to 300 children in Johnson County, KS, for the holidays! Our other new partner agencies are True Light Family Resource Center, Synergy Services and reStart Inc  bringing the total number of agencies we distribute diapers to each month to 14!

DONATIONS and DOLLARS

As I mentioned, HB started the year with a little over $1000. We finished the year having raised over $55,000 through the generous support of our donors, sponsor organizations and writing and receiving several grants. If you follow us, you know we have no paid employees and maintain the lowest possible overhead to provide the greatest number of diapers to children who need them. We also received in-kind donations of products and services that have allowed us to experience tremendous growth. We plan to share all the details on our success when we file our financial/information return -  Form 990.

DECEMBER”S BIGGEST ACCOMPLISHMENT WAS….

Distributing diapers from our new warehouse space! We made the news once again thanks to NBC Action News KSHB- 41. Here is the clip if you have not seen it. In December we distributed 39,746 diapers from our new space at Hope Faith Ministries. We want to thank HFM for their generous donation of space as we could not have achieved this success without their wonderful support.

EXCITING EVENTS DROVE DECEMBER SUCCESS

December was our biggest month for Drives and Events to date thanks to the following organizations –

M!NT rallied Gordon Biersch and Spaces Magazine to hold a shopping event on December 15^th

The Overland Park South Rotary presented a matching grant of $1500 to HB at our Open House at Hope Faith Ministries on December 14^th 

Children’s Mercy Hospital donated $500 to our cause this month!

The Quilters Guild of Greater Kansas City, Research College of Nursing RSNA, P.E.O. Chapter LJ, The YMCA of Greater Kansas City, Children’s Mercy Hospital, Prairie Life Fitness Centers and Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church all did drives for HappyBottoms this month!

T-SHIRTS NOW ON SALE – GET YOURS TODAY

We have our t-shirts on sale through our website. Click here to check them out. When you purchase a t-shirt you are making a tax deductible donation of $10 to HappyBottoms in addition to getting a very cool shirt. Wouldn’t it be great to see these all over the metro – or perhaps the country??

THANKS, THANKS and MORE THANKS

Our list of organizations and individuals who we are thankful to continues to grow each month. Here are just a few of the names of those who make our mission possible. (For more great supporters, please scroll through our previous newsletters.)

Kebra Rios of Tastefully Simple for donating food for our Open House and Vicki George for donating desserts.

Marti Bodenhamer of M!NT, Jennifer Demerath of SPACES, and Chris Stuewe of Gordon Biersch  for making the shopping event at M!NT an incredible success.

Prairie Life Fitness of Overland Park and Bank of the West of Lees Summit  for becoming new drop sites.

Courtney Wasson of Busy Bee for donating her graphic design skills to help create an educational brochure for HB. (More to come on this in January!)

Arbor Pharmaceuticals for funding the printing of our educational brochure.

Kerry Adam for turning her holiday party into a fundraiser for HappyBottoms.

VML for agreeing to continue to support HappyBottoms in 2012 with a redesign of our website. Just wait until you see how awesome that will be! (Considering it is pretty awesome already.)

OUT WITH THE OLD AND IN WITH THE NEW

As we look to 2012 and what HappyBottoms needs to accomplish to help Kansas City babies in need have diapers, we look to you and ask again for your ongoing support. Our 2012 goal is to provide diapers to 800 children per month- but that only covers 20% of the need in our community. Too many babies have days without clean, dry diapers. HappyBottoms has the ability to serve more than 800 children each month - but we need more funding to do so. That is where you come in. It is not too late to make a tax deductible donation for 2011 or make a jumpstart with your 2012 giving. We will be needing diapers and dollars 365 days a year – every year. So as you enjoy your holidays, think about making a baby’s holiday a little cleaner, dryer and warmer by donating to HappyBottoms.

Liz

Don’t forget to check out our upcoming events by clicking here.

November was a month for the record books for HappyBottoms. We provided diapers to a record number of children, received a record number of donated diapers and crossed the 200,000 diapers distributed milestone. This month 450 children received diapers from HappyBottoms. In the 8 months we have been operating with new leadership we have grown from 148 children our first month to 450 today. And we are not done yet! We can’t wait to report on December!

DID YOU KNOW?

Last month when we sent this letter we knew we were getting 250,000 diapers. Did you know we had no place to put them? Thanks to the incredible generosity of Hope Faith Ministries we now have our own warehouse space to store our diapers! This collaboration is proving to be amazing. We not only have the space but all the tools we need to distribute our diapers. Plus we have great support from Desiree Monize and her incredible team at Hope Faith. Beginning in December HFM will become one of our partner agencies and we will begin distributing diapers to 200 homeless children in the Kansas City community by partnering with them. This amazing partnership is allowing HappyBottoms to grow at an accelerated rate to serve our community. We could not be more thankful.

BECOME AN AMBASSADOR

We kicked off a new program at HappyBottoms for people who would like to help us called the HappyBottoms Ambassadors. The Ambassadors are a group of volunteers who will go and spread the news from HappyBottoms to help create awareness of the need for diapers in the Greater Kansas City Metro area. They will advertise and support our events and encourage donations. Would you like to become an Ambassador? Please contact our Program Chair, Joe Calhoun, at joe@happybottoms.org.

YES! SUCCESS! AT OUR FIRST HAPPY HOUR FOR HAPPYBOTTOMS

November the 10^th was a great night for HappyBottoms as we held our first Happy Hour for HappyBottoms at Coal Vines on the Country Club Plaza. Our thanks to Coal Vines for the outstanding  appetizers and a great setting to hold our first event. We had over 40 new HappyBottoms supporters come out that evening. All reported having a great time while getting a chance to learn a little about what we do. Would you like to attend our next Happy Hour? Please contact us at admin@happybottoms.org  for more details.

SEEN ON TV! THAT”S RIGHT – WE MADE THREE DIFFERENT STATIONS THIS MONTH!

HappyBottoms was on FOX 4, KSMO, and KSHB NBC Action News! Our thanks to FOX 4 and Tess Koppelman for covering the donation of diapers from Huggies and the National Diaper Bank Network, to Dana Wright with KSMO’s Your Kansas City for interviewing us and to Frank Boal of KSHB NBC Action News and Certified Transmission for selecting us for Job Done Right. Click here to see the clips.

THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU

We have so many people to thank this month for their generous support I am worried we will forget someone. Let’s start with card making an pie baking. Thanks to:

 Aubrey Bend Middle School for making holiday cards for the children who receive diapers from HappyBottoms and collecting $186.32 in a change drive to help “change a baby.”

Harmony Middle School’s Helping Hands – for baking the yummiest Dutch Apple Pies at HyVee at 135^th and Antioch and raising $

Teri Kehm – for telling her friends – “don’t buy me a gift for my birthday – just make a donation to HappyBottoms”. This little birthday party donated $455 to the cause!

Coal Vines on the Plaza for hosting our first Happy Hour for HappyBottoms!

The Lenexa Rotary Foundation for providing a $500 grant to HappyBottoms!

Trabon Companies for donating printing! (Again)

Posterworx – for making the coolest banner ever to hang at our diaper distribution and VML for designing it on very short notice!

WHAT YOU CAN DO – DONATE TODAY

You have read all the great things that continue to happen for HappyBottoms – so it is time to ask you to help us keep growing to meet the needs of the community. You may think we don't need you as we have 250,000 diapers. That is the furthest thing from being true. If you follow us you are beginning to see how overwhelming the need for baby diapers is for low income families in our community. We estimate that 250,000 is about enough to supply the children who need them for one month. If we ever hope to get diapers to those children we need your help. Please consider making a donation to HappyBottoms through our holiday fund drive today. Our goal is to raise $10,000. Just click on the bright red square on every page of our website to find out how. If you would like to create a Wish for HappyBottoms for the holidays through Causes, just click here to get started.

On behalf of all the HappyBottoms volunteers, we wish you the happiest of holidays and thank you for your support.

Liz

This incredible donation will allow us to immediately serve more children who have no other source for diapers by taking on additional agency partners who will provide the diapers to the children each month.

A new collaboration with Hope Faith Ministries helped to make this donation possible as HappyBottoms will be using warehouse space provided by Hope Faith Ministries. Please click here to go to their website. This new partnership will also mean that HappyBottoms will provide diapers to Hope Faith Ministries as a partner agency and will be able to reach children who are homeless in our community.

Even though 250,000 diapers sounds like a big number, we will only be scratching the surface of filling the gap in the need for diapers for KC babies. When we use the poverty statistics for the Greater Kansas City metropolitan area we conservatively estimate the need for baby diapers at over 200,000 per month. This means we must continue to ask for donations of dollars and diapers to grow to meet this basic need.

In October we provided diapers for 450 children. After partnering with Hope Faith Ministries we will likely be serving well over 600 children per month. The sad thing is there will still be over 500 children on our waiting list.

It’s a big job to try to fill this gap for babies in KC and we would love to have your help. Please consider volunteering or making a donation today. Then we can really provide Life. Liberty. And Diapers. For All.

Check our website on November 7^th for some very exciting news for HappyBottoms and our community! If you like our Facebook page – HappyBottoms.org – you will automatically receive an update.

 Record Distribution Month – HappyBottoms Hits New Milestone

September was the largest monthly distribution in the history of HappyBottoms. We provided diapers for 409 children in September. HappyBottoms also hit a new milestone with the October distribution. We have distributed over 100,000 diapers to our partner agencies since April. 106,778 to be exact. Thanks to all our terrific donors and sponsors who helped make this happen.

Fund A Cause Success at the KC CAN! Auction – THANK YOU!

On Friday night October 14^th we had the honor of speaking to the attendees of the KC CAN! Auction which was followed by auctioneer, Tanna Guthrie, asking the audience to donate to HappyBottoms. . We owe a very special thank you to Peter and Veronica Mallouk and the entire Board of Directors for KC CAN! for their incredible support of HappyBottoms this year.

Tanna started the bidding at $1000! Thanks to her terrific auctioneering skills, the generosity of the incredible donors and the opportunity provided by KC CAN!, HappyBottoms raised $10,650. It was amazing. The Board’s recognition of our cause, their donations of diapers and their willingness to make HappyBottoms the Fund a Cause with their supporters was unimaginable. We also want to thank each of the individuals who donated for helping HappyBottoms help KC families in need.

New Drop Site – Dave and Busters at the Legends

HappyBottoms now has its first Wyandotte county drop site as Dave and Busters at the Legends is hosting a donation bin. We truly appreciate Greg and his team allowing us to place a barrel there. If you are looking to donate diapers or dollars you will find all the drop site locations on every page of our website. We want to thank all these generous merchants. As a reminder, we do take those open packages, so please bring them to us and don't throw them away.

Spreading our Message at Recent Speaking Engagements

HappyBottoms would like to thank the Village West Rotary Club, Grace Covenant Presbyterian Church, the EWGA KC Metro Chapter and the Quilters Guild of Greater Kansas City for allowing us to speak to their members and spread our message of the need for diapers in our community. The EWGA completed a drive raising $205 and 340 diapers! The Quilters are holding their drive in November and December. Many thanks to all these organizations for helping us provide diapers to babies in need in KC.

 More Media

Watch for us on the NBC Action News Segment – Job Done Right – with Frank Boal. This spot is supported by Certified Transmission who provides a donation to a KC Charity every week. We are very thankful to have been selected to receive the donation and the recognition and the air time.

Upcoming Events

Aubrey Bend Middle School, (Blue Valley School District) will be making holiday cards for all the HappyBottoms kids on November 1^st. They will follow this with a loose change drive. Their change will help us change a baby!

Harmony Helping Hands  – a group of Harmony Middle School Students - will be at HyVee at 135^th and Antioch in Overland Park making Dutch apple pies on November 18^th from 4:30 to 6:30pm and the 19th from 10:00 a.m. to 4:00 p.m.. All proceeds will go to HappyBottoms. Come on out and buy a pie!

The first Happy Hour for HappyBottoms will be held on November 10^th from 4:15 to 6:30 at Coal Vines on the Country Club Plaza. If you would like to attend, please RSVP to liz@happybottoms.org

HB t-shirts will go on sale in November. We will post on Facebook how to get your very own HappyBottoms t-shirt.

Our holiday fundraising campaign will kick off around Thanksgiving. More details heading your way soon.

The first HB video will be on our Facebook page in November.

Why Diapers

You may wonder why we work as hard as we do at HappyBottoms and why we get so excited when someone joins our cause - so let me try to help you understand why we say ask not what diapers can do for you, ask what diapers can do for your community.

November will be another milestone month at HappyBottoms. We will distribute the 200,000^th diaper since our organization started. That is a big number. The good news is we will have distributed 200,000 diapers. The bad news is, it took us two years to get there. When you look at the greater Kansas City Metro Area and calculate the need for diapers it is about 200,000 diapers per month! So we have only scratched the surface of providing this basic need to low income families in KC.

That is why we would love for you to volunteer or just spread the word that HappyBottoms is working to make a difference for babies in KC. Just send us a note and join the team.

Liz

We started the month by adding two new agencies to our current partner list. Welcome to The Upper Room and Bridge of Hope! When an agencies moves to the current partner list that means we at HappyBottoms commit to supplying diapers for their children on a monthly basis. This brings our total number of children served each month to 340.

We also welcomed back our intern from Rockhurst University, Beth Beckman, who is helping us by working with our drop locations and taking the things she is learning in her Non-Profit curriculum and applying them at HappyBottoms. We are pleased to share we have another intern who has joined our team, Kathryn Deck. Kathryn is a communications major at Kansas University and is helping us with social media and marketing. Beth and Kathryn are working together on several campaigns you will be hearing about in future news

Our first Board of Directors meeting was September 14^th. It is incredible to put powerful people in a room and turn them loose on a problem. Our board prioritized fundraising and warehouse space as our top two priorities. If our goal is to serve all the kids on our waiting list and keep accepting new agencies, we absolutely must become successful fundraisers. This means finding individuals in our community who can help us grow by giving us the funding to do so. Even if we held multiple successful diaper drives every week we would still need to money to support our infrastructure.

Here is an example – we need at least 2500 square feet of warehouse space. (We could really use closer to 5000 – but we are trying not to be greedy.) We had hoped to get the space donated – but so far we cannot find anyone who is willing to donate space. So, we started pricing space. To get 2500 square feet it will cost us $1900 a month or almost $24,000 per year. That’s a lot of money. Money we don't have – yet.

I could go on and on, but I think you get the drift. Distributing diapers is an expensive proposition even when you get great support through drives. If you know someone who may want to help fund us – or has a warehouse – can you please send them our way?

Now for September “thank you’s” -

 Overland Park South Rotary Club did a diaper drive for us and collected over 200 diapers and $437!

TPP Certified Public Accounts agreed to donate their time to do a year end review of our financials!

KC CAN! made another donation of over 7000 diapers! The support from this great organization is absolutely incredible. Don’t forget to come to their auction on October 14^th as they have selected HB as their” fund a cause” that evening. You could support two great organizations in one night!

Radio Disney – thanks for interviewing us. We appreciate the support to increase awareness of the need for diapers.

Blue Springs Harley Davidson – thanks for dong a drive for us!

Coming next month….

T-shirt sales! We think you will like them and they should bring in a little cash.

E-Newsletter – please contact us about getting on our distribution list at admin@happybottoms.org

More publicity – we will break into another TV station – so exciting!

Now for the close. Pam and I had an opportunity to ride the Operation Breakthrough Urban Education Tour Bus on Wednesday. It was a real education. We drove right past 26^th and Prospect where the police had roped off the area of shooting. We learned two men died there that evening. How sad. The truly encouraging parts of the tour were getting to hear from parents who have pulled themselves up by their boot straps to escape this violence and take care of their children. The challenges to success for them are huge – but these parents are doing it all because of their love for their children. So please, while sitting in the safety of your environment, consider helping these families by donating to HappyBottoms.

Liz

The month started with a call from the United Way Gifts in Kind program saying that they had received a donation of diapers and pull ups that they were willing to give to us. The donation was 5 pallets! Most of the packages were open but when we finished counting the total donation was 26,499 diapers and pull ups! Can you say HAPPY?

 Between this donation and two  grants we mentioned in the JULY NEWS we will be taking agencies off our waiting list and adding them to our current partners in September! Congratulations to The Upper Room and Bridge of Hope. This means more children will routinely receive diapers from HappyBottoms. We will be serving an average of 340 children per month. We will still have over 500 children on our waiting list with more agencies applying each week.

Speaking of grants we did get the grant for $2000 from the Overland Park South Rotary Foundation which we can spend on diapers and the $1500 from CES to buy shelves and collection barrels. These were huge as we needed continued funding for new agencies and we needed shelves to store all those diapers!

The good news kept coming as we found out on August 10th that KC CAN! has chosen HappyBottoms to be their “Fund a Cause” at their auction event on October 14^th at the Ritz Charles in Overland Park. The event theme will be “A Night at the Movies” and includes a live and silent auction, gourmet dinner and open bar. It sounds like a fun event. Check it out on their website – KCCAN.org – and plan to attend!

We said we would announce our new Board of Directors this month and here they are:

Jill Gaikowski, Founding Director of HappyBottoms

Jennifer Miller, Vice President Community Banking, Citizens Bank

Patt Papenfuhs, Development Director, The Women’s Foundation of Greater Kansas City

Sister Berta Sailer, Co-Founder/Co-Director, Operation Breakthrough

Karla Shepard, Partner, Seigfreid, Bingham, Levy, Selzer, Gee

As you can see we have a small – yet powerful – board. Linda, Pam and I wear dual hats at HB and are Board officers who also have acting roles as staff members until we can hire real staff. We look forward to working with our new board to continue the growth of HappyBottoms. BTW – we are still looking for a few good men (or women) to join the board so if you are interested, please email Liz at liz@happybottoms.org

As you know if you read our July News, HappyBottoms occupied the Buck O’Neil Legacy seat on August 16th at the Royals game.  It was quite an honor to be nominated and win. Two of our board members, Patt Papenfuhs and Karla Shepard joined us in these terrific seats. We thank Baby Grace for the nomination and all the friends of HB who posted on our Facebook page and sent us text messages.

Jake Costanzo of Boy Scout Troop 118 is conducting a diaper drive for HappyBottoms for his Eagle Scout project. He collected diapers (and cash) donations at St. Peter's Church (Meyer & Holmes)August 20 and 21 and will be continuing his drive at Polsinelli Schugart PC after the Labor Day holiday.  Jake and the scouts have already assembled shelves for HB and filled them with 4815 diapers and $1185 to purchase diapers so far!! Thank you Jake, Troop 118 and St. Peter's Parish!!!!

The CES Grant we told you about has also allowed us to fund new printed materials which we will have in the next week or two. We would like to thank a new sponsor – Trabon Companies for their in-kind donation of printing and the awesome in kind support of VML  on creating these new resources. We can’t wait to get them out in the market.

Our youth intern, Kierra Jackson, (also funded by CES) has almost finished the video that will tell the story of HappyBottoms. It will include parents discussing how important receiving diapers is to them, our agency partners talking about how getting diapers from us helps their programs and will show some of the children we serve. Look for it on our Facebook page and website by the end of September.

We had a few new media opportunities this month. First we have a  PSA spot that Union Broadcasting has been running. Did you hear it yet? Click here . It plays on 810 AM and 1510 AM. Thanks to Union Broadcasting for supporting us and don’t forget to listen for HappyBottoms. Second, many thanks to Tess Koppelman and Fox 4 for running a quick segment on us the night of the Royals game. We hope to post that clip to the website soon. Third, we have an upcoming interview on Radio Disney in September. We will let you know more about it via Facebook so you can check it out.

Last but not least we want to thank our volunteers. Our newest volunteer is Laura Monsees who without her help we would still be counting diapers! Our ongoing volunteers have been critical to building our infrastructure. Many thanks to Staci Cross, Chrystal Johnson and Lisa Wear.

I will close the month by sharing a comment from a family who is receiving our diapers. She closed our interview with the following comment, “tell your supporters they are angels as your diapers help me be a better Mom.”