Since March, when COVID-19 started impacting the U.S. in a major way, Project Beauty Share has been fully operational as an “essential business,” but without its volunteers.

Project Beauty Share’s staff has been grateful to be able to work in the warehouse each day and continue providing services to our partner agencies. However, like many other businesses and non-profits, Project Beauty Share has not gone unscathed by COVID-19.

Many of our partner agencies have doubled, and in some cases, tripled the number of people they are serving during these difficult times. For example, one of our partners, the Salvation Army, has jumped to serving 750 individuals a week. With the large increase in need, the requests for hygiene items has also grown. Unfortunately, our incoming donations have decreased by 50%. On average, Project Beauty Share receives 300-350 pounds of product each week. In the last few months, we have been receiving less than 150 pounds of product. To offset this gap, we put a call out to our community and supporters about our need for soap and body wipes. We were blown away by the response and were able to supply all of our partner agencies with much-needed soap and hygiene items. In May, we launched our National Beauty Drive campaign, with the goal to raise 10,000 feminine hygiene products and $10,000 throughout the month. We surpassed our goal of feminine hygiene products, raising more than 20,000 individual pads and tampons! While our financial goals was not met, we were proud to raise $4,566 to help support warehouse operations.

The financial hit from COVID-19 has been hard for many non-profits, Project Beauty Share being one of them. We have had to cancel two fundraisers, resulting in an estimated loss of $80,000. Additionally, we chose to move our largest fundraiser, Evening en Blanc, to a virtual event, resulting in another financial loss for our organization.

We would like to thank all of our supporters, donors and followers who have remained by our side through these unprecedented times. Project Beauty Share is celebrating our 10 year anniversary and we plan on being here another 10 years! We will do our best to navigate through 2020, with our continued mission to help restore hope and dignity to the lives of thousands of women and their families.