In 2024, Born This Way Foundation faced an exciting challenge and opportunity. We expanded our Kindness in Community Fund grant internationally for the first time, funding $3,000,000 USD into organizations across 10 countries with each nonprofit possessing varying levels of experience sharing about their work broadly.
Globally, funding for grassroots organizations is already limited, and within the funding they do receive, allocating resources for visibility and storytelling is not always feasible. We also surveyed our Kindness in Community Fund recipients directly, and 82% of organizations reported storytelling and reach were critical needs.
Given the above, we built this campaign with two major goals in mind:
1. Ensure each grantee’s impact was seen, celebrated, and shared—so we launched a strategic, collaborative digital campaign to spotlight their work.
2. Provide each organization at least one beautiful video asset and template they can use going forward for their own promotional and funder outreach purposes beyond this campaign.
To highlight each organization’s incredible work, we created individual video spotlights, capturing their missions, their impact, and the voices of the young people they serve. These videos weren’t just promotional materials—they were powerful stories of resilience, hope, and kindness in action.
Challenges and How We Overcame Them
Coordinating Content Across 65 Organizations:
Each grantee had a unique mission, focus area, and storytelling style. We needed to ensure consistency while honoring their individual voices and maintaining a consistent tone in the videos that was actionable and relevant to young people experiencing unique challenges across the globe. The ability to communicate these resources and stories in the face of the changing landscape for the nonprofit sector is incredibly valuable.
Solution: We developed a flexible content framework that allowed each organization to share their story authentically while maintaining a cohesive campaign look and feel.
Capturing and Showcasing Their Impact Effectively:
With so many incredible organizations doing vital work, it was challenging to ensure that each one received the recognition they deserved.
Solution: Instead of one large, aggregated campaign, we created individual videos for each grantee, giving them a dedicated spotlight and ensuring their work reached the right audiences.
Bridging the Digital and Physical Connection:
We wanted to ensure the grantee organizations felt supported beyond financial assistance and digital amplification.
Solution: We facilitated regional calls, in-person gatherings, and a digital community group, helping grantees learn branding and communications skills, build lasting relationships, and connect with one another.
What Makes This Work Unique?
The Kindness in Community Fund is more than a grant—it’s a movement. By combining financial support with storytelling, community-building, and digital amplification, we created a model that not only funds change but inspires it. This initiative ensured grassroots organizations received needed resources and were also being seen, celebrated, and connected to a global network of kindness.
Through these efforts, we turned financial grants into stories of hope, amplified stories that deserve to be heard, and proved kindness—when supported, shared, and scaled—has the power to change the world.
Our primary objectives were to increase awareness of the grantees and their impact on a global scale, connect them with sustainable storytelling resources and each other, and help them inspire even more kindness while amplifying their critical resources. Key results include:
We consider this initiative a success because it not only provided essential funding but also created a lasting ecosystem of support, visibility, and connection. By amplifying kindness, we turned financial aid into a global movement—ensuring young people receive the care, resources, and encouragement they need to thrive.
