Real Talk

Joanne Goldblum is CEO and founder of the National Diaper Bank Network, encompassing more than 200 member organizations that provide diapers and other basic needs to families across America. In 2018, she founded the Alliance for Period Supplies, which provides free hygiene products to the one in four people for whom menstruation means difficulty attending school and work. Joanne has spent her career working with and advocating for families in poverty. She has written op-eds for The Washington Post, US News & World Report, and HuffPost. She has been an ABC Person of the Week and the subject of profiles by CNN, People, and many other outlets. Joanne is an inspiring and in-demand speaker. In 2007 she was chosen as one of 10 Robert Wood Johnson Community Health Leaders on the basis of her work to found the New Haven Diaper Bank.  

In a US study by Kaiser and NPR, people were nearly equally divided when asked if poverty was a result of people “not doing enough” or of “circumstances beyond their control.” Blaming poverty on a lack of personal industriousness was more common among affluent respondents. Because poverty is so often seen as a character deficiency, policies that could address structural issues lack support. By empowering our national network of nonprofits to help clients tell their stories, we will create a wave of narratives challenging that stigma. I believe that poverty persists in the US not because people do not care, but because they do not understand. Building understanding of the causes and personal impact of poverty has the potential to change our society. We will elevate humanity in two ways: By amplifying the resilience of people in poverty and by cultivating empathy in more economically fortunate US Americans.

Numerous studies show a large proportion of US Americans assigning negative personal qualities to people in poverty and attributing poverty to a lack of hard work. According to the federal government’s extremely narrow definition, about 40 million Americans lived in poverty in 2017. All are affected by this stigma, which leads to a lack of support for anti-poverty programs – such as SNAP and TANF, expenditures perpetually on the chopping block though evaluations have found them quite effective – and a reluctance to explore how unjust structures create and prolong poverty. 

NDBN has proven that providing people with basic needs makes them healthier and actually opens up a pathway to work. Our clients negate the longstanding and damaging narrative that giving people assistance creates dependence. In fact, assistance can foster independence. That thinking does not gain more ground because the stories of people in poverty rarely get told. Reporters have trouble connecting with them. (You can’t Google “low-income person” or call their PR agent.) There is no organized way to challenge mythology about poverty with real stories.

We will give the 200+ community-based nonprofits in our network the tools to help their clients tell stories. This will include extensive training on interviewing and storytelling as well as resources to help them with the story format they choose, be it print, performance or what have you.

Grassroots organizations – the organizations closest to people in poverty – do not have dedicated communications staff. So the essential work of lifting up stories goes undone. At our annual learning conference, we will provide members with training in interviewing. We will also create webinars and toolkits on communications topics like: preserving confidentiality; building relationships with reporters; and leading a writers’ workshop. Selected members will get ongoing technical assistance from professionals who will work with them and their clients on projects that could include anything from visual arts to helping clients hold a teach in at their state legislature.

The project will directly serve leaders of our member diaper banks and indirectly serve their clients. Most clients are living at less than 150% of the federal poverty level and have children under the age of three. The majority are women. 

Most diaper bank leaders are volunteer, though often a diaper bank will evolve into a large organization that has paid staff. They are typically working with limited time and financial resources. NDBN helps them develop a high level of efficiency by connecting them to best practices. We regularly survey our members to learn what specific areas they need and want more training in.

Most people enter the field good at publicity, e.g. getting the word out about a diaper drive or a fundraiser. But communicating about the nature of poverty in their service area is a more complex job, where mentoring from national staff can be extremely beneficial. Helping clients tell their own stories is a specific skill that even large nonprofits often lack the capacity to do. Training that directly addresses that topic will make our members stronger nonprofits and even more importantly will help change the conversation about US poverty.

People in poverty are traditionally left behind, especially in the US where the wealth and earnings gap between the most and least prosperous is growing. Misconceptions about poverty prevent Americans from embracing effective solutions, so building awareness through Real Talk is essential to driving action. We are absolutely striving to change attitudes in the US toward poverty by giving people a platform to tell their own stories of economic hardship.

This idea evolved over a number of discussions among our staff about poverty stigma. Both program and communications staff were involved. We started from the orientation that we wanted to use our network to tell stories that would shine a light on the direct experience of poverty. It quickly became clear that we could spend a whole lot of time and money and only come up with a handful of products – some videos, a book, a blog – that would have a limited shelf life and might appeal only to people in a given region. 

Helping diaper banks build capacity is a core function of NDBN. So the conversation moved in that direction. If we helped member diaper banks become better at elevating stories, we would seed a great deal of paradigm-shifting communication activities that could go on indefinitely. We thought that we could leverage our existing skills and resources, including an annual learning conference, and partner with consultants and board members with special expertise in storytelling with oppressed people. 

As a social worker serving families in deep poverty, my job included getting parents registered for job training, a precondition of their getting cash assistance. I had vouchers for free childcare, so that wouldn’t be a barrier. But no center would accept a baby unless parents provided diapers – which they couldn’t afford without cash assistance, which they couldn’t get until they were in job training. 

Our fundamental distrust of people in poverty was putting families in a no-win situation. More flexible (and more generous) help would allow people to get on their feet. But we don’t do that in the US because we believe it causes dependency. 

When I started diaper banking, most of the response was kind and generous. But we regularly get phone calls from people who insist that “Those women shouldn’t have children that they can’t afford” and that “they should just use newspaper.” There is true animus toward people in poverty, and this is why a simple thing like getting food assistance involves so much red tape in the country and why those lucky enough to qualify will find that the aid they get is insufficient and short-lived.

There is no one story that encapsulates US poverty, it is urban, suburban and rural. People of all races, sexual orientations and beliefs experience poverty. Because we are a national network, we are positioned to hear from divergent communities about their experience of poverty.

NDBN has never just been about diapers. Our goal has always been to work on the root causes of poverty, as evidenced by our participation in policy and our CEO’s role as a thought leader frequently quoted in the press and the author of a forthcoming book on US poverty.

This grant calls for NDBN to build the capacity of its members to do community-based storytelling. Providing assistance to members to help them function with excellence and efficiency is central to NDBN’s mission. We have tremendous expertise in helping adult learners operate nonprofits. We also have a sophisticated communications staff, who will augment their expertise by hiring artists and other communicators to do in-services with member diaper banks.

In 2018, NDBN introduced a Standards of Excellence program that offered diaper banks additional benefits, including large diaper donations, as they grew. We must scale up our operations to serve more children. Diaper banks worked with us to adopt practices that made them more efficient. In two years, we went from distributing 64.5 million diapers to distributing 87.4 million.

I began having deep conversations with Black diaper bank leaders about their satisfaction – and lack thereof – with NDBN. Diaper banks are commonly started by an individual who quits her job and devotes herself to a volunteer effort. Black diaper bankers told me that they couldn’t afford to do this. As they could only devote a part-time effort to growing their organizations, their diaper banks grew more slowly. With our structure rewarding rapid growth, Black-run diaper banks were at a disadvantage.

We are not abandoning the Standards of Excellence, but we are creating other ways for diaper bankers to earn benefits for their organizations outside of sheer volume, including excellence in achieving community partnerships. We are beginning to examine network data specifically in terms of race to look for ways that our policies and procedures may unwittingly create inequity.

I started the organization that is now The Diaper Bank of Connecticut out of my house. It was an eccentric idea: Just give people diapers, no questions asked – eccentric enough that I found myself on ABC News and in the pages of People. Then the phone calls started: I’d like to create a diaper bank in my community – how would I go about that?

I realized that diaper need is a national problem. Every community should have a diaper bank – and that wasn’t going to happen by me talking to people on the phone one at a time. So I decided to walk away from an organization I had founded (and loved) to start the National Diaper Bank Network. Rather than doing – my work was to inspire and empower other people to do. Now NDBN has more than 200 member diaper banks covering every state in the US. 

Part of my work has not changed. I continue to speak out about misperceptions of poverty in the US that blame people for their economic hardship rather than the structures that cause that hardship. But today, I have a national platform to do it.

Real Talk will be a project of the National Diaper Bank Network (NDBN).

Most anti-poverty work spends little time talking with the people it serves – and even less looking for their strengths. Real Talk is asking for people’s stories – not simply asking them to fill out a questionnaire about a service. The opportunity to create visual art, stories, or theater will be new for most of the participants, as self-expression is among the things people in poverty are typically denied. The very act of asking clients about their stories in itself can be transformative.

Communications campaigns tend to be top-down efforts. We’ll build the capacity of community-based organizations to tell stories. Though they may get TA from professional communicators – the work we will produce will be done by clients, with support from local nonprofits. Thus we will be creating a renewable community asset. Our hope is to build a core of skilled communicators who can serve as thought leaders locally for years to come.

This is foundational work. We’re not trying to support a program or pass a piece of legislation. We are trying to fundamentally change the way US Americans view their neighbors in poverty.

NDBN will provide training to help members support clients in storytelling, in whatever form the local diaper bank chooses. We will deliver this content through our annual conference, webinars and one-on-one coaching. We will also contract with master communicators who will offer specialized training in some locations, based on the local diaper banks’ plans.

Members will then work with their clients on story creation.

Our internal evaluations show that communications capacity varies widely among members. Some are quite skilled; others, beginners. There is a universal recognition among them that communications is a core function in which they would like to build skills.

Output: Clients create stories. These stories as disseminated jointly by NDBN, member diaper banks, and other national partners. Teaching members how to disseminate stories is also an important skill that they will retain long after the project is over.

Short-term outcome: Clients feel heard. Nonprofits have better insight into the strengths and needs of the people they serve.

Medium-term outcome: Client stories change perception among those that hear/read/see them. Nonprofits are better able to tell their own stories within their communities and gather more support.

This will be a significant contribution to the national conversation about poverty – at a time when many in the US are open to new approaches to solve social problems. Poverty is rarely covered in depth by the media; and when it is covered significant bias is often present. Only a handful of news organizations making poverty an actual beat. Furthermore, journalists come to their profession with the same biases that muddle the broader society, and that affects the work they produce. For example, a 2015 study of poverty coverage in Newsweek, Time, and US News & World Report found that African Americans were overrepresented in these stories, particularly when the stories focused on government assistance

Long-term outcomes: Changed perceptions make it possible to advance policy that addresses root causes of poverty. Communities have a cadre of skilled storytellers who can advance social justice. NDBN moves closer to its vision: To create a US in which no one lacks basic needs.

200,000

275,000

300,000

Within the next year, we would like to substantially increase the number of diaper banks actively working to improve their capacity to elevate client stories and well-supplied with the tools to do so. Supplying those tools is the meat of the work described in this grant, and goes to our core competency of offering members technical assistance. We aspire to support the creation of works that tell these stories and to be disseminating real stories of poverty in every region of the country.

Within the next five years, we want to see this initiative change the culture of diaper banks. We want them to see their roles as both providing clients with basic needs and providing clients with the opportunities to tell their stories and drive a community conversation about poverty. There will be a growing core of people who have experienced poverty with the skills to testify before their legislatures, write op-eds and lead community conversations. Furthermore, many members of this core will be recognized as experts on poverty and will be sought out by the press and policymakers for their insight. As discussions of poverty become based more on reality than on stereotypes, support for effective anti-poverty policies will grow.

Within the next year, we will face two major barriers: 

The economic distress caused by the pandemic is greatly increasing poverty in the US. Some diaper banks have seen the need for their services quadruple. While many diaper banks are committed to expanding their advocacy role, staff have also had to work harder than ever to simply keep raising diaper donations and to adjust their packaging and distributing procedures to allow for social distancing. We are asking diaper banks to take on a new project when they are already working harder than ever.

To the extent that diapers banks develop communication projects that require media coverage, they will face stiff competition for the press’ attention. The US is entering into what will undoubtedly be the most contentious presidential election in living memory. The pandemic is still attracting a significant amount of newsroom resources. It is impossible to say when this will change.

Within the next five years, we expect to face similar barriers, though we suspect that these barriers will diminish. The demand on diaper banks to provide basic needs will still be high – it was before COVID 19 – and the US will still be a politically polarized place generating conflict that takes up media attention. The scope of both these barriers will be strongly influenced by the strength of the economy, a factor we are not equipped to predict.

Barrier: The increased demand placed on diaper banks by the pandemic and the accompanying economic downturn.

NDBN has sought and obtained large manufacturer donations to replenish diaper and period product supplies for our members. We continue to work to obtain resources for them. Thus far, our supporters have responded to this emergency with extreme generosity.

Barrier: Media attention is focused on COVID and political controversy.

We believe that we can position our clients’ stories to relate to the subjects that the media is already covering. For example, the economic distress caused by COVID is driving demand at diaper banks. Many of our clients have lost work because of the pandemic. The national focus on racial equity is also a story that can be told through the diaper banking lens. Our clients are disproportionately people of color because in the US poverty is disproportionately distributed among ethnic and racial minorities. Economic justice is an essential component of equity. Diaper banks are a great place to report on that story.

Creating media partnerships – an ongoing relationship with individual journalists and their outlets – will help NDBN and our members overcome all the barriers we have described.

We partner with a number of organizations that help us to distribute diapers  and period supplies where they are most needed, notably the Feeding America Network. We receive major corporate support from Kimberly Clark, which makes large in-kind donations from its Huggies and UbyKotex brands. We advocate with organizations that also work to advance our clients’ interests, like Witness to Hunger, Moms Rising, First Focus and the National Women’s Law Center.

NDBN increases access to basic needs that aren’t covered by government programs, primarily diapers and period supplies, to families in poverty. We do this by distributing donated diapers and period supplies through our 200+ nonprofit, community based member organizations. We also do it by advocating for large scale change. For example, our campaigns to raise awareness of period poverty have inspired many school districts to start providing free period supplies for students.

The effect of providing these products is profound, increasing the health and wealth of participants. For example, a study of families receiving diapers found that their income increased $11 or every $1 spent on diaper aid. Childcare providers require parents to supply disposable diapers while their children are in care. Parents who could not afford diapers – an expense that typically runs $90 per month – were missing work because they didn’t have the diapers they needed to access childcare. Families experiencing diaper need also missed work because their children were sick more often. We have found that period supplies also boost attendance at work and school.

We obtain revenue through philanthropic support and also through membership fees. Member nonprofits find that their membership fees are a small percentage of the benefit that they obtain through large diaper donations, grants, access to discounted bulk buying and technical assistance.

Our primary source of revenue is in-kind product donations. These donations have significantly increased throughout our 9-year history, so we are confident that this will continue to be a major resource for us. We have been expanding our corporate partners beyond our founding sponsor, Kimberly Clark. We believe that brands serving women and children in particular have a strong incentive to associate themselves with NDBN.

Our primary source of cash is individual donations. We have recently hired a major gift manager to help us solicit more substantial individual gifts. We believe that this a growth opportunity for us and are developing a stewardship plan to ensure that donors get the information they need from us to deepen their commitment.

We also obtain revenue through membership fees and conference admissions. Member nonprofits find that their membership fees are a small percentage of the benefit that they obtain through large diaper donations, grants, access to discounted bulk buying and technical assistance.

Our CEO Joanne Goldblum has written a book about US poverty which is due to be released in 2021. She is donating all her royalties from the book to NDBN. Since her publisher has an aggressive marketing plan for the book, we are hopeful that this will constitute a substantial amount.

Finally, our foundation support has been fairly small thus far. This application is part of a drive on our part to seek out more substantial grants.

This is the first request we are submitting to fundraise for Real Talk.

$350,000 for the Real Talk project.

The Elevate Prize is a chance to put our work on a bigger stage – particularly our advocacy work. It will allow us to connect to partners and to get technical assistance and financial support for a major project. 

We are incredibly proud of the work that we do getting basic needs to people in poverty. But we realize that philanthropy alone cannot meet that need. One in three babies in the US experiences diaper need. One in four menstruators experiences period poverty. For deprivation on this scale to end, policy needs to change.

That means we must substantially scale up our advocacy work. The Elevate Prize would be an excellent opportunity to do that while recruiting great communicators to partner with us.

We believe that there has never been a more opportune moment to change the conversation about poverty in the United States. A larger percentage of the population is experiencing economic hardship than at any time since the Great Depression. There is a clear recognition that existing structures perpetuate inequality.

We want to do this work now because we believe that people will listen.

We will be seeking artists and other master communicators in key locations to work with clients who are creating stories in various forms. Finding people with talent in their fields as well as talent in partnering with diverse communities will be essential.

After story creation comes the task of dissemination. We recognize that the most efficient way to do this is on existing platforms -- digital, print or other. National media partnerships would be extremely useful. Our goal, after all, is to get a large audience for these stories so that they can change public opinion

We would like to partner with National Public Radio’s Story Corps. We believe their participatory format would be an excellent one for families in poverty to tell their own stories without an intermediary. Furthermore NPR has a huge reach that could amplify our clients’ stories.