About Simply the Basics
Simply the Basics is a globally reaching hygiene bank with the goal to improve physical health, wellness, and public health by making hygiene more equitable and accessible.
A core strategy for supporting someone in a crisis is to first ensure that their basic needs were met - when those basics are unavailable, it is unreasonable to expect a person to be able to focus on any other goals. In 2015, after having worked for nearly a decade serving those experiencing homelessness and leading a suicide/crisis center, our founder set out to reconcile the issues of so many people not having access to their most basic needs. Based upon Maslov’s Hierarchy of Needs - Simply the Basics is rooted in the idea that when a person is unable to meet their most basic human needs, they are unable to focus on greater goals, and she saw first hand how difficult access to those proper supplies could be.
2015
Founder, Meghan Freebeck, and a founding team of Simply the Basics board and advisory council members spent a year researching, studying, and surveying the community to understand the issue surrounding hygiene accessibility, the implications on heath and wellness, and the challenges faced by nonprofit organizations in accessing proper supplies without waste. The team learned two core truths:
Thousands of people every year were finding themselves in the emergency rooms due to preventable illness and infection due to lack of adequate hygiene care.
Nonprofits were spending an incredible amount of time collecting, sorting, and managing their in-kind donations to ensure they had proper hygiene for clients. This is time that could be otherwise spent on programs to better serve clients.
In building our core strategy, Simply the Basics studied the effectiveness of the food bank system. Operating similarly to what works well for food bank distributions, Simply the Basics achieves improvements in physical health and overall wellness through consistent hygiene support that is unique to each nonprofit receiving partner. It is by providing consistent support that we can see actual health improvements and are also able to save our partners time and resources so that they may better focus on their Missions - ultimately supporting their client’s goals.
Today
Simply the Basics is a globally reaching Hygiene Bank that has provided support to more than 180 receiving sites and respond to dozens of natural disasters. Simply the Basics has been recognized by Michelle Obama at the United State of Women Summit, is a Daily Point of Light award winner, and has been recognized by the United Nations for achievements in public health.
Years after funding, Simply the Basics developed the concept for the Hygiene Bank Association™. Years of service and community connections demonstrated that while there were many hygiene distributors across the globe, many did not have access to the same tools, resources, or backgrounds in public health, service to the low income community, or nonprofit operations. In the same way that an individual needs healthy, nutritious food every day - and food banks must adhere to minimum quality standards for food distribution - we know that individuals need quality and varied hygiene products with dignity and care. Until this time, there has never been a Quality Control Standard for distributing hygiene care as we see in food distribution - resulting in many people receiving inadequate services, limited accessibility, and challenges having measurable impacts on health and dignity. Simply the Basics wants to fix this!
Which has led to Simply the Basics formally launching the Hygiene Bank Association™ - a platform and community of hygiene banks to achieve greater goals with more thoughtful standards of care. Through our learning, data, and proof of concept, Simply the Basics has developed Hygiene Distribution Quality Control Standards for external services and hygiene banks to follow, ensuring that we are all reaching the goals of improved health with dignity. The Hygiene Bank Association is a conglomerate of hygiene banks across the world who share in the same Mission of establishing a more healthy community.
And it is not just our insights! We all have space to learn more - which is why the platform includes speakers that are experts in their fields and a blog for Members such as yourself to share insights, knowledge, and lessons so we can all learn within our community.
In time, we believe that our work together will bring the collective data, education, and reach necessary to make hygiene insecurity as understood as food insecurity - and ensure it is more readily available for everyone in our communities.
Thank you being apart of improving the health and wellness of our communities!
