Project Beauty Share returns with $10,000 goal

Starting Friday and continuing throughout May, Project Beauty Share will launch its second-annual National Beauty Drive. Through this drive, in honor of its 10th year as a nonprofit, Project Beauty Share hopes to raise $10,000 and collect 10,000 boxes of feminine hygiene products for distribution to local shelters, food banks and other charitable agencies in Spokane and the Inland Northwest.

Last year, Project Beauty Share’s National Beauty Drive called for the full assortment of new and gently used commodities that the nonprofit routinely collects from local and national donors. These include personal care supplies, cosmetics, beauty tools and feminine hygiene products, which the nonprofit then distributes to local shelters and charities.

But while planning for this year’s drive, the Project Beauty Share chose to narrow down its 2020 ask to one area of need.

“We decided to take on feminine hygiene,” said Julie Farley, founder and executive director of Project Beauty Share.

Feminine hygiene products like menstrual pads and tampons are some of the most requested products for the nonprofit. But as paper product shortages have become more common during quarantine, these requests are likewise more frequent. Additionally, while there is no longer any sales tax on these products in Washington state, it is still not possible to buy them using food stamps.

The novel coronavirus had yet to become an international concern when the nonprofit began to plan this year’s drive. “But (even then) we wanted to be a little bit more specific and intentional, so we decided to go ahead and move forward with it,” Farley said.

Now as donations to Project Beauty Share have fallen 50%, the need at local agencies has in some cases more than doubled. “It’s pretty dire,” Farley said.

“Last year, we distributed over 80,000 pounds of product valued at $2.5 million,” she said. In the last six months, the nonprofit has expanded its reach beyond Spokane to the greater Inland Northwest, serving more than 90 shelters, food banks and other charitable agencies.

“These food banks are serving the working poor who are now really poor. There are people in those lines now who never would’ve thought they’d end up in that position before.”

All of Project Beauty Share’s nearly 30 local collection sites are now closed to align with social distancing requirements. Their warehouse collection site remains open with those requirements in mind.

“We don’t have any volunteers working; it’s just the two and a half of us who are in the warehouse,” Farley said. “It’s a pretty big warehouse, so social distancing is really easy, both for us as staff, and then of course for anybody coming in it would be safe.”

The nonprofit also anticipates receiving donations online and through their Amazon Smile wishlist.

“Many of our donations, those that we get nationally, are mailed in anyway,” Farley said. On average, Project Beauty Share receives between 300 and 400 pounds of product a week from national donors. “People send products all the way from New York. That someone would spend $30 to send a box all that way is, to me, surprising and heartwarming.”

If neither dropping off nor shipping is an option, donors can visit Project Beauty Share’s website and contribute toward the nonprofit’s $10,000 financial goal. These funds will go toward operational costs, keeping the lights on in the warehouse, paying rent and the salaries of their small staff – two full-time and one part-time employee.

“A lot of that is going to help us to be sustainable,” Farley said. “Nonprofits are really getting hit hard. We’ve had to cancel our spring events. The $10,000 doesn’t actually make up all the difference, but it’s something. It’s bittersweet.”

Despite the circumstances in which Project Beauty Share will begin its second National Beauty Drive, the team remains in good spirits.

“We really feel that we have created a movement, bringing awareness across the United States to the issue of the lack of these items for women and the hope and dignity that they can bring to women,” Farley said.

After partnering with social media influencer and beauty guru Taylor Wynn in 2016, Project Beauty Share’s reach has expanded far beyond Farley’s initial expectations. “It’s a grassroots movement that has just blossomed into this wonderful organization,” she said. “We’re all so proud.”

Project Beauty Share plans to launch National Beauty Drive annually in May, which has declared “National Beauty Drive Month,” but the nonprofit has not yet settled on an individual product or group of products to call for in next year’s drive.

“Feminine hygiene products are obviously crucial, but there’s something to be said about that mascara or lipstick, things that these women would otherwise never receive,” Farley said. “They know the value of (these products).”