Bridges & Balm December Funding Initiatives Update
THANK YOU ALL for your response and support for our Holiday Funding Initiative and our Inpatient Funding Outreach! Both campaigns were successful beyond our wildest hopes and dreams. We are extremely grateful and humbled by your generosity, compassion and trust in us. Your support motivates us to fulfill our responsibility of helping those in need within our fellowship community.
Holiday Funding Initiative
The Holiday funding initiative exceeded all expectations, with donations totaling over $32,000! Of that $20,700 qualified for the donation match incentive (match up to $200 per donation for new donors). In all, 99 new donors took advantage of the donation match, which resulted in an additional $14,185 in matching funds. So in all, Bridges & Balm raised $46,200 during the Holiday Funding Initiative. Thank you!
Inpatient Therapy Outreach (S0995)
The Inpatient Therapy Outreach is a separate campaign (not included in the donation totals above) that also surpassed expectations. So far we have received over $13,300 in the seventeen days the campaign has been active, which exceeds our funding goal of $8,000-$11,000, and donations are still trickling in. Your compassion and care for abuse victims is heartwarming to all! Thank you for your heartfelt love and generosity.
December Donation Summary
The table below summarizes the December funding initiatives and results in more detail. As you may have noticed, we are really into performance metrics at Bridges & Balm, partly because they enable us (and you) to measure our performance and identify areas where we need to improve. Even more importantly, they provide transparency in our operations so you can see where our funds are coming from and where they are going.
Wondering about donation receipts? Click here
Operations Update
Exciting things have been happening on the operations side as well! A quick summary of updates is below. More detailed information will be coming soon in our blog posts and on the Funds Overview & Activity page on the Bridges & Balm website.
Survivor Assistance Improvements - Bridges & Balm has recently partnered with Pathways to Healing Network (P2HN) to onboard survivors and help match survivors with qualified therapists. Natalie Bolin & Donna Atkinson Smith are P2HN officers and are familiar faces from AFTT. More details are available on the “Survivors Referred From AFTT” link on the Bridges & Balm CSA/SA Survivor Assistance Fund page.
Following AFTT’s dissolution, Bridges & Balm and other fellowship survivor charities are now accepting referrals from AFTT to continue therapy funding for survivors they were assisting. We expect a significant increase in survivor therapy assistance requests over the next few months.
International Assistance Support - We are pleased to announce that Bridges & Balm is now able to provide assistance to survivors as well as resting and transitioning workers internationally! This has been a huge gap in the past and we are excited to extend our coverage. In the near future, we will add an approval checkbox to the Bridges & Balm donate page so that you can enable your contributions to be used internationally.
Assistance Updates - During December, we added four more resting / transitioning workers and eight survivors (AFTT referrals) for assistance (both domestically and internationally). As mentioned above, we are expecting dramatic increases in assistance requests and extending our operations so we can scale appropriately. More detailed information will be forthcoming in our blog posts and on the Funds Overview & Activity page on the Bridges & Balm website.
Blog Posts - We are increasing the frequency of our blog posts so check back on our website often! In the next few days, we will be starting a series of posts that provide help and information for those in need or transitioning to a new lifestyle.
What's Next?
Your generous support has given us the resources to expand our impact. Now it’s our turn to deliver. We will keep you informed of both our successes and challenges along the way. Thank you so much for your financial and emotional support!
While celebrating our funding success, we recognize the sobering responsibility ahead. With the increased referrals from AFTT and growing inquiries from resting and transitioning workers, we will need to scale appropriately. We are working internally to scale and automate our operations to maintain and improve responsiveness and avoid burnout. As our spend rate increases to meet these growing needs,we encourage you to check back on our status often and donate when you can.
And join us! If anyone has time and energy and wants to join the Bridges & Balm team please contact us! You will make a difference. We can guarantee you that it will be a very fulfilling and rewarding experience.
Thank you again for your compassion, caring, and continued support. You are truly amazing!
