The nonprofit has an opportunity to tell the story of how the organization adapted to tremendous external changes in the last year.
In the last year, Born This Way Foundation has adapted internally and externally to shifted world conditions due to the pandemic.
Internally, Born This Way Foundation was a remote workplace before the pandemic but we made further investments in the capacity of our team to successfully work from home. We expanded our cell phone benefits, our reimbursements for office supplies, our technological resources, and our flexible schedule based on the multiple time zones. The COVID-19 pandemic further underscored for us that we needed to create a workplace that would allow our team to bring our full selves to work. Our weekly check ins turned into daily check ins for the first year of the pandemic, and they have now hit a cadence of 2 – 3 times per week, allowing us to find new and creative ways to check in personally and professionally.
Externally, the Foundation leaned further into our hopeful, action-oriented approach to mental health and pivoted to launch the Be There Certificate with our friends at Jack.org. This free, online mental health resource is available in English, French, and Spanish, and it represents the Foundation’s understanding that mental health resources needed to live online, offline and everywhere else. Especially during the pandemic, we needed to give as many people access to these resources as possible. Additionally, we launched the KiC (Kindness In Community) Fund, which is a responsive funding vehicle to meet unmet needs in the world that has been used primarily by our team to support the communities Born This Way Foundation serves. In Summer 2022, the Foundation pledged $1,000,000 of KiC funding to nonprofit organizations across the country supporting youth mental health.