FLUSH

Kimberly Worsham is a water & sanitation specialist leveraging her diverse experience to build a new initiative on public awareness development. She has managed programs and initiatives from the ground up around the world with government, for-profit, and not-for-profit institutions.

Kimberly is currently a consultant as well as the Founder of FLUSH, a boutique consulting business building capacity in sanitation. She's passionate about connecting data to the stories it tells about people and progress, and is driven to create bankable solutions that increase sanitation globally. Outside of water and sanitation, Kimberly has led performance management in city government programs, analyzed marketing and financial models in the healthcare industry, and taught maths and sciences to women globally. She was also a board member and founding member of local water advocacy organization NYC H2O. She has worked on initiatives in Australia, Cambodia, Ghana, India, Kenya, Rwanda, South Africa, Thailand, and the US.

FLUSH is a sanitation superhero. We raise awareness about sanitation and hygiene to create global change. Studies show that to create philanthropic movements and change, awareness must be built. We change the public perception of sanitation by making it fun and approachable, shifting away from the taboo of "toilet" topics, to ultimately get people talking. 

We offer "edutaining" public events about sanitation. Our events maximize the balance of entertainment and education while using different lenses - from history lessons to environmental superhero stories. We have built several stimulating classes, but we know there is need for more classes about sanitation equity, design, plumbing, and so on. This project would let us build more classes and offer them on different platforms and for lower costs.

Our hope is that increased awareness will be more interest and funding to transform sanitation in our own lives and the lives of those less fortunate.

About 25% of the world's population don't have good access to sanitation facilities - toilets. The number has improved from 2000, when it was 41% of the world's population; that said, with a growing global population, that means that about two billion people in the world still do not have a safe place to go to the bathroom. Lack of sanitation causes an array of problems; along with dirty water, it causes five million deaths annually through diarrheal diseases like cholera, typhoid, and yellow fever. Limited access creates challenges for global public health, equity, education, economic development, and climate change resilience. In a large way, sanitation is at the crux of many development efforts.

Despite the clear need for sanitation and the immense scale of the problems attached to it, the sector is poor; less than 2% of all aid funding goes to sanitation projects. Few are funding the need and what is available is insufficient; this is partly because no one wants to talk about sanitation - it is not as glamorous as other causes, and the prevalent taboo and disgust of toilets results in a dearth of public knowledge about the subject. It’s a vicious cycle.

Our project works simply - we connect with organizations/communities and teach them about sanitation in fun ways. We offer one-off edutainment classes that are a short and memorable two-hours long, which get people thinking about sanitation in new ways - and often for the first time. Our classes avoid jargon and try to tell the different stories about toilets and sanitation so that people begin feeling comfortable thinking and speaking about sanitation. The key to our classes is telling stories that people can remember and think about in their daily lives.

We have classes with different themes to increase our audience pools and make sanitation approachable to the general public like history, saving the environment, and touch on hot topics that are covered by the media like fatbergs and bidets. The class is part interactive, part comedy, and part lecture, making it engaging and fun for adults and children to enjoy.

We currently offer classes in-person and online, depending on our clients, and can teach up to 100 people online, or 50 people in-person. This project would afford us to expand our reach to more institutions and develop the beginnings of a podcast that would help us expand reach.

Our events serve everyone; our simple language ensures everyone can understand how important toilets really are. We have taught classes of different groups of people - from affluent urban settings in the US, children in kindergarten, sanitation organizations in Kenya, and lower-income students in Cambodia. The point is to be approachable and helping them learn more about sanitation - something we all deal with in our daily lives - and what gaps they can help fix for others' lives. 

In the grand scheme of things, everyone in the world could benefit from improving their sanitation practices and systems - from the millions who still defecate outside, to urban dwellers in America in need of public toilets, to rural homes that have broken septics.

All of our events are started with someone asking us questions about toilets when we are out talking with people in different communities around the world. We have seldom met people who have not had questions about their toilet practices or if they are using toilets "right". We give people a place to learn about something important for their personal lives, and expose them to how we can. Developing a platform could build a larger activist community.

Sanitation is a critical problem for the world that is ripe for elevating in the world's zeitgeist. Not only is sanitation a fascinating topic, it's also complicated, thorny, and unspoken. Many in the world, though, do not realize the many sanitation issues and how big of a deal they are to our modern world. We need activists to push the topic to the public in different ways - from the need to make toilets equitable to finding climate change resilience through better sanitation systems.

I have traveled and help organizations provide low-income communities clean, safe toilets for a decade. Something that bothered me was my inability to understand what toilets had been like in the past. I knew that toilets weren’t new – people have had to defecate since forever – but that’s all I could glean. The sanitation sector has (1) a dearth of knowledge beyond project needs and (2) horribly storytelling.

So, I started creating a simple 2-hour “History of Toilets” class that I could share with other curious and nerdy adults in New York. I really made the class for myself, to help me grasp some kind of story that I couldn’t find in my work. I offered my class at a local venue, thinking maybe I would have six attendees; I arrived to a sold-out class. Thinking it a fluke, I re-offered it. It was sold out again. And again. Clearly, people wanted to know where toilets come from. Soon after, people started to come to me with more toilet questions they wanted me to answer for the world. Now, I want to build more events and begin exploring the potential of building a toilet podcast community to share more.

Growing up, I always had stomach ache. I have spent a lot of my life in the bathroom, trying to feel better. When I was younger, I would inspect restaurant bathrooms before my family sat down to eat, knowing that I would likely find myself there before long. As an adult, when I found out that this was not a possibility for many people in the world, I was horrified. What about all of those other sick young girls who regularly needed a toilet, like me? I discovered that sanitation was the center of my universe, and I was determined to help others have the same comfort I find in the bathroom.

I'm also a teacher at heart. Having my passion for toilets, I wanted to give people a comfortable safe space where they could learn about a place they spent a lot of time in but don't normally get to explore. I'm passionate about listening to people and helping educate people about sanitation so that they feel empowered and curious about how our world works, and how to make it better.

First of all, I am a great public speaker. Growing up, I was a theater kids, comfortably performing the roles in plays known as "the ham" and singing in competitive choirs. As an adult, I have taught students at educational institutions and learned how to best engage students in new information - through fun, experiences, and stories. I began my career in entertainment, working for film houses and producing short films with friends.

Secondly, I am a good storyteller. I have been educated through my theater upbringing and avid reading on the elements of good storytelling, which has made me pretty good at telling tales to people to get their attention. It helps that I also have a marketing degree, where I learned key ways to say memorable things.

Thirdly, I am passionate about sanitation. I have worked on sanitation projects for over a decade and I know what is happening on the ground. Knowing how sanitation works so intricately also means that I am able to quickly absorb new information about toilets and sanitation and figure out how to simply boil down the concepts for them to be easy to understand. 

Lastly, I have been working on this project already for four years. I have only met one other professional working to increase sanitation awareness; as a friend, he has admitted he has tired of the topic and may leave soon. That means that soon I will be alone in increasing sanitation through fun.

FLUSH is also support to provide advisory services while I offer my edutainment to the public. There have been plenty of setbacks in running a business as a solopreneur; the most recent difficult situation was recently during COVID-19. Beforehand, I had lined up a number of contract signings to get FLUSH off of the ground as a consulting agency and ultimately quit all of my other jobs. Two weeks into the pandemic, I lost all of the new projects in my pipeline, eliminating all 2020 revenue for FLUSH. I was also living in Kenya on an ending contract at the time, and had to evacuate back to the US as the borders started closing in March. I landed back in the US with no work lined up for FLUSH, jobless and contract-less, and utterly broke. I started working tirelessly on a borrowed bed, pivoting FLUSH's focus and building more edutainment content. I also networked for hours to get more interest in classes and rebuild my brand. In two weeks, I was able to start offering events online for the first time, and I have been able to build myself up from the online classes and develop new revenue streams.

I was recently worked on a project in Kenya to help an organization develop a data management strategy. I built their business analytics from the ground up, crafting how they may use data to better share stories of success and failures.

While there, I did what I do best - lead through listening. For the two months of the project, I sat with colleagues in different teams and asked questions about their work, listening to their concerns and frustrations about data. I also built relationships, sharing news articles that reminded me of someone may or getting tea for a colleague with a sniffle. 

I started formulating a plan for a taskforce with key teammates to manage data for the organization through collaboration. I worked on many iterations of the project and its structure, asking colleagues their feedback and opinions, making sure that its approach worked for everyone. The taskforce was a hit from launch and interested colleagues came to ask me for updates regularly. I still hear from Sanergy's staff regularly, and the taskforce is working. Colleagues have thanked me for listening to them and leading through support by giving them something they needed.

My work is unique because even though sanitation is such a vital part of improving humanity, there are very few people who make sanitation and toilets approachable in the world. There are many who make sanitation all about fart and poo jokes, keeping it a topical conversation of chuckles and uncomfortable looks. My project is innovative because it gives people the opportunity to approach sanitation safely and with curiosity. 

The sanitation sector has failed at engaging the public, which means that up to now there hasn't been an easy way for people to engage and learn about toilets without feeling overwhelmed by sad statistics and asks for donations. The project focuses on storytelling and sharing with people practice things they can do in their daily lives to improve sanitation for themselves and others, which helps empower people to create change. 

My work is also unique because it works on building a community around toilets and celebrating the many different virtues about sanitation with fun and play - always addressing the serious somewhat, but letting people explore a topic that has otherwise been untouched.

FLUSH's Theory of Change is as follows...

Activities: 

• FLUSH provides dozens of edutaining events for the public within a year, online and in-person. 
• FLUSH begins developing a podcast platform. 
• FLUSH develops more content and offers a diverse portfolio of themed events for people to attend.

Output: 

• At least 30-50 people show up at each edutaining event, learning about sanitation while having fun. 
• Once available, previous participants can become a community of followers begin listening to a sanitation podcast.

Outcome: 

• Class participants start openly talking with their friends and family about sanitation. 
• People start sharing information and stories about sanitation. 
• People begin to change their hygiene habits because of learnings from an event. 
• People start thinking about how they could help change sanitation in their community or for the world. 
• People research ways to provide support to sanitation efforts elsewhere.

Impact: 

• FLUSH supports in unlocking funding opportunities and new innovative thinking for sanitation work. 
• Sanitation becomes an acceptable topic of public conversation. 
• Social entrepreneurs increase disruption of the sanitation sector with new innovations. 
• Political officials increase their willingness to invest in sanitation projects. 
• Activist communities grow for supporting better sanitation in communities like public toilets, equitable sanitation access, and newer environmentally-sustainable toilet models.

• Current number of people I've served: 900
• The number of people I'll be serving in a year: 1,500
• The number of people I'll be serving in 5 years: 25,000

Within the next year, FLUSH aims to have a portfolio of at least ten different events to readily offer for public activities. New classes we hope to develop by the end of the year will include topics like:

• Toilet Design Successes & Failures
• Where Does My Flush Go?
• Plumbing Basics for Everyone
• Toilet Activism & Building Potty Access for All (Equitable Sanitation)
• The World of Public Toilets

Some of these classes' developments may spill int 2021.

We will also expand our audience scope by offering more events for children under five years and at different primary and secondary school levels. We have already begun offering classes for Pre-K students, and we hope to develop more fun and playful ways for kids to expand their knowledge about sanitation, which will also mean their parents will learn more about sanitation, as well.

Within the next five years, FLUSH will continue to offer new and interesting events to the public about sanitation. FLUSH will have started a podcast and built an international community around sanitation learning and awareness building that is reputable and influential in political and social spheres. We also will work with the sanitation on improving their storytelling skills and framing of sanitation to gain public interest and steer dialogue in the sector about what works, and what doesn't work. FLUSH will be a key though leader that will result in influencing causal interests, which will mean that sanitation will emerge as one of the key causes for people to champion.

Financial:

• Next year - FLUSH remains a part-time project and I must continue to work other contracts and jobs to pay bills, so I will have less time to develop FLUSH.
• Five years - FLUSH may be unable to continue operations if its operating costs far exceed its revenue and becomes a financial burden to me that I cannot sustain.

Technical:

• Always - FLUSH lacks the design capacity to be able to create visual content in-house, such as infographics, cartoons, videos, etc. This means that we have to outsource that labor, which can be time-consuming, risky, and expensive.

Legal:

• Always - Copywriting and trademarking all of the content for FLUSH is time consuming and costly, which leaves us vulnerable to content theft. 

Cultural:

• This year - COVID-19 is such a large topic right now for the world that it is hard for FLUSH to expand our network of classes beyond our current venues and find other projects to sustain our services financially. People are unwilling to invest in new projects or events, and the sanitation sector is so focused on COVID-19 it is not thinking about sanitation communications or storytelling.
• Five years - Culture is fickle, which means that people lose interest in learning about sanitation or in the edutainment events we provide.

Market: 

• Five years - We are unclear what our market size is ultimately, and could find that FLUSH hits saturates its market and hits maximum penetration.

Financial: I will continue to work on part-time contracts so I can continue affording to pay my bills. I have a strong network of colleagues and friends who I will continue to tap and explore to find other ways I can find revenue for FLUSH to sustain it.

Technical: I will tap into affordable services like Fiverr to create some infographics. I will also look into finding volunteers or interns who would be able and interested to work for a low fee (or free) to help FLUSH develop more visual content.

Legal: My partner is a lawyer and I have been working with him to figure out how to manage my intellectual property. I will also look into startup services like SCORE NYC and law school clinics that help entrepreneurs with these kinds of tasks.  

Cultural: I will continue to network and put out my content out in the world. I have blogs where I write, and I will continue to write posts about how sanitation is important and share new information I find that is interesting about sanitation. I also have a library of sanitation books I will read more and pick out new stories that are relevant for our current culture and will listen to podcasts about infectious disease to make posts topical for COVID-19.

Market: I will reach out to NYU Wagner's Capstone Program to see if some students can help me assess my market size.

I am partnering with a number of organizations:

Brooklyn Brainery is an educational venue. I work with Brooklyn Brainery on directly offering my classes through their venue. We work together to offer new classes to the public online and in person.

TUSHY is a bidet seat attachment producer. I work with TUSHY by promoting their bidet seat attachment in my events. They sponsor some of my events with their products as prizes.

The POOP Project is a not-for-profit working on encouraging people to celebrate their own poo and use it for sustainable purposes. I work with the POOP Project by co-hosting events and sharing details about their own events.

PHLUSH is a public toilet advocacy organization. I work with them on promoting advocacy materials and current events related to sanitation. I also may be working on a new class with them.

Wish for WASH is a design-oriented sanitation organization. I am working with them on developing new class material about plumbing.

NYU Wagner is an educational institution. I work with them on student events periodically.

NYC H2O is a water stewardship organization. I have a long-standing relationship with them and we sometimes co-host events.

Gather is a data-driven organization working on sanitation in Madagascar. We work in the sanitation sector together on advocating for better data.

FLUSH provides professional consulting services catered for the WASH sector. FLUSH does this by (1) offering entertaining, unique, and accessible education programs, thereby increasing investor interest and fostering growing relationships between the private sector and sanitation; and (2) building capacity in the WASH sector to address common pain points that bar the sector from private funding opportunities—such as business acumen, monitoring and evaluation, and marketing and storytelling.

As a result, our business model has two prongs: 

Classes: We provide in-person and online edutainment classes to the public about sanitation. We are hired through educational institutions, as well as organizations companies who are seeking engaging and educational events for their communities or stakeholders. We offer pre-made classes for groups of at least ten people at $100 per hour, or tailored classes which cost more, based on level of effort. We offer a sliding scale based on the client.

Consulting: We provide personalized advisory services to organizations of different types working in water, sanitation, and hygiene. Clients can pay us to provide specialized services include marketing, storytelling, strategic management, training, social impact and investing, and data analytics. We have a pool of consultants with business acumen who are matched to projects based on need and their expertise, and will provide regular work plans for projects. Our cost structure is based on each project's level of effort and overhead costs, and is on a sliding scale based on the client.

FLUSH has low overhead and the main costs are for personnel.

Our path to financial sustainability will be to provide a diversified set of revenue streams. They will be:

• Classes: Having a large-enough portfolio to easily offer to clients event that require no additional costs other than the delivery of the event.
• Swag: Creating swag products people can purchase online of cartoon and FLUSH materials, which FLUSH will be able to receive a large margin of the revenue (the remaining going to paying for postage and the initial payment for inventory)
• Consulting: Building enough of a client pipeline that we have a steady stream of money to pay for our personnel and some other organizational costs such as the website and advertising costs.

Our initial break-even will be when we are able to gross $90,000 in revenue so that we can pay for one year of salary for the founder and the remaining going to ongoing costs like the website. 

A key to our financial sustainability will be to remain a remote-based organization to reduce overhead and keeping a lean team of professionals.

Currently, FLUSH generates revenue through ticket sales of events and service fees for clients asking for personalized or private sanitation classes. In the last 12 months, FLUSH has earned revenue for the following:

• Online ticket sales: $800+ for about six classes (online)
• A private NYC primary school: $175 for a Pre-K class (online)
• A NYC law firm: $200 for a private sanitation class (online)

FLUSH has applied to an accelerator this year for $100,000 to develop advisory tools for projects not related to the edutainment events.

I am not seeking to raise any other debt or equity for FLUSH at this time.

My estimated expenses for FLUSH in 2020 is about $8,000.

The Elevate Prize would be able to support my ability to completely cover FLUSH's costs without having to sacrifice my time to it by needing to take part-time contracts and jobs to cover my costs. Being able to afford FLUSH would put me in a much better position to make sure the company can continue to grow and evolve into a sustainable, financially viable company.

The Prize would also provide me an immense opportunity to gain more knowledge and support from a network of professionals and partners that I previously don't have that can help me (1) further develop out my business model, (2) create other opportunities for funding for me, (3) build skills that I need to run the company independently, and (4) learn how to be prudent and more strategic in the company's growth and changes.

Having mentors and service providers specifically cheer-leading and guiding me as I manage FLUSH alone would be monumental. It can be very lonely and overwhelming running a company alone, and having guidance and coaches would help me check my sanity

I would also hope that the Prize can help me secure my legal needs for FLUSH, as well as my technical needs for visual content. Lastly, the Prize could help me build out my fan base for people interested in taking my classes and help me promote my events more than I can currently do alone and with my current network.

Funding and revenue model: I need support in making sure that I have developed a revenue model that is most beneficial for my work and maximizes my opportunities for funding.

Mentorship and coaching: As I've mentioned, I would love having support and mentorship to help me check my sanity while running a company alone. I need to connect with more successful entrepreneurs and solopreneurs who can hold me accountable and assure me when I'm doing things right.

Legal or regulatory matters: I really need help protecting my intellectual property. My content is precious, and I am always vulnerable from theft.

Marketing, media, and exposure: While I have a marketing degree, I often find myself having little time to focus on my marketing material. I need support in developing good hooks, strategically thinking about promotion, and getting more connections to improve my exposure.

I would love to partner with the Gates Foundation, who could help boost my events' exposure and provide me resources I could use to develop more classes.

It would be amazing to partner with Gimlet Media on developing and implementing a podcast about sanitation. I think that they could be interested in the topic and delivery, and that would help me further develop a community of sanitation advocates and provide a revenue stream for FLUSH.

I would also be interested to partner with other companies like Lixil, Toto, Squatty Potty, and other sanitation product manufacturers, in terms of hiring me for events.