In the short term, we strive to provide free tampons, sanitary napkins and underwear to those women and girls who cannot afford or readily access them. Addressing women’s most basic needs is central to improving the quality of their life, which in turn improves the lives of their family and all those around them. Through our current programs at shelters, public schools, food pantries and medical centers for homeless population, Dignity Matters support 2100 women EVERY MONTH with full period protection, as well as required underwear. Our long term vision is a world where basic feminine hygiene products are available in all public bathrooms, free of charge, just like toilet paper is (and, incidentally, for similar health and cleanliness reasons). Accomplishing this, ideally though legislative changes, would bring us a big step closer to achieving true equality, which is imperative for a fair and sustainable world where everyone can thrive.

After two years of operations Dignity Matters grew from a small grass-roots organization to the largest reliable provider of period protection and underwear for homeless women in Massachusetts. Currently, to scale up, Dignity Matters is going through a strategic shift from predominantly in-kind donations, to a more scalable product purchasing strategy. This higher efficiency model of increased purchases of products directly from a low-cost volume manufacturer will quickly enable us to increase scale of operation by directly delivering the right specification product, straight to the women in most need, with more controlled delivery timing and product batch quantities exactly matching the needs of the shelters, schools, food pantries we support on monthly basis. We have negotiated extremely low built-to-spec product supply costs and we plan to pursue our strategic shift over the next 3 years to reach over 8000 women monthly in 2021 instead of 2100 women we currently serve.

Dignity Matters is managed by a strong Board of Directors and Advisory Board (8 Directors together) who work closely together on governance, vision, relationships, advice and funding. Our staffing consists of the Executive Director, Grant Writer and we plan to employ a Development Director in 2019. The majority of our operations is run by our group of 200 volunteers, including; 15 chapter and co-chapter leaders, 1 distribution manager, 10 regular location liaisons, 3 program managers and 2 volunteer coordinators. Through the 15 chapter leaders, we run over 350 drives twice a year resulting in almost 400,000 items collected annualy. We are building our fundraising capacity which already resulted in almost tripling our revenue in 2018 (versus 2017). We also invested in needed systems (client relationship management system, professional inventory systems etc) and rented a warehouse needed to house all the donations.

Dignity Matters measures success monthly and quorterly in a number of ways, including: 1. The number of in-kind donations collected and distributed throughout the year to women in-need in Massachusetts 2. Value of monetary donations 2. The number of homeless women/girls served on a regular, monthly basis 2. Growth in the number of partnerships with shelters, food pantries, schools and social service agencies 3. Geographic diversification of our partners (which also allows a diversification of women served) 4. Extension of our programming in regards to types of places served (an extension from shelters to schools, then after-school programs, then domestic violence centers, then food

In short two years Dignity Matters developed 5 solid programs through which we serve on monthly basis 2100 homeless women and girls at: 1) homeless shelters 2) public schools 3) food pantires 4) medical clinics Dignity Matters also organizes bra and underwear fittings (Dignity Beneath the Blouse Program) through which we serve women at shelters in Boston, Cambridge and Metro=West. 24 'bra fitting" have been organized in 2017 alone with some of the events large enough to fit 150 homeless women with bras in one day. Dignity Matters moved from serving women in Metro-West only to Boston, cambridge and Merrimack Valley. Dignity Matters moved from serving apron 40 parents (nonprofits including shelters, schools and domestic violence programs) to serving 81 parents as of October 2018. Dignity Matters employed its first two part time employees in 2018 and secured a below-market rate for a sizable warehouse in Framingham which allows us to run our volunteering operations.