In Kind Boxes

Because every mom deserves quality postpartum care.

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Earth Day Oregon Fundraiser

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We’re so excited to be participating in this state wide fundraiser for a third time.

We are actively fundraising to be able to move into our very own space!

Why? Because we want to be able to have our local friends come and volunteer and pack gift boxes with us. And, we would love more storage space. We bulk order our supplies, and with more space we can order larger quantities at a time at more reduced rates.

We love participating in Earth Day Oregon because it highlights so many local nonprofits, while bringing the community together. This event is also great because it focuses on the United Nations’ 17 Sustainable Development Goals.

At In Kind Boxes, we focus on:

  • Promoting good health and well being
  • Reducing inequalities
  • Partnerships for the goals

Maternal health, and the health of our children is directly impacted by our environment. We look forward to sharing more about this event with you via Instagram, and email.

We also want to say thank you to the following local businesses for supporting us during the event:

Business partners will be helping us fundraise by helping us shine a light on our work, and amplifying the message of Earth Day. Stay tuned for local events that you can participate in, in support of In Kind Boxes.

Local Events to watch for:

  • Cupcake Fundraiser at The Hungry Hero in Old Town Sherwood on April 22. Proceeds from the sale of the special “Earth Day” cupcake will be donated to In Kind Boxes.
  • Dine out for a cause at Fat Milos Family Kitchen in Old Town Sherwood. The dinner takes place on May 1, and includes a 5 course meal made from locally sourced, high quality ingredients. Get your tickets here.

Thank you for supporting our work, and donating to In Kind Boxes!

We couldn’t do what we do without you.

~Maria Berglund, In Kind Boxes Founder

March Update

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We were on NATIONAL Television!!

On March 17th, we had the honor of being on Good Morning America‘s GMA3 What You Need to Know. Click here to watch.

That day was a busy one, with orders, donations, emails and messages coming in.

Thank you to everyone who reached out to congratulate us on such a big milestone! It led to our biggest day of sales for the year!! We are so grateful to GMA3 for the opportunity to shine a light on our work.

  • Total March Impact: 52 boxes donated
  • Total impact to date: 1,301 boxes donated

Locally, we donated 20 postpartum boxes to Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center’s Women’s Clinic in Hillsboro, and 10 to Washington County’s Health and Human Services where they distribute boxes through a few of their programs serving new families in need.

We also have monthly commitments to donate boxes to families across the United States. These are through:

  • Miry’s List (California) supporting refugee families.
  • Bright Spot Network (California) supporting families going through cancer.
  • Colette Louise Tisdahl Foundation (Nationwide) supporting NICU families in need.
  • Rowan Midwifery (California) via our gift box sponsorship program, supporting Black Mothers in need through the care of Angie Miller.

Activity:

We love being able to highlight moms making a positive impact on the world through out Instagram Live series “Mamas Making an Impact“. We had the pleasure of chatting with Delisa Wood, and learning more about her journey to starting 3 Moms Tribe.

We also got to connect with life coach Dr. Krystal Conner. If you haven’t heard of her, please go and check out Krystal’s podcast. We’ve shared in our Instagram stories about how much we enjoy it, and know you’ll find a lot of value in it too.

Watch the IG Lives here.

March 16th was Maternal Mental Health Advocacy Day. We partnered with 2020 Mom, Shade of Blue Project, and the Maternal Mental Health Leadership Alliance to be a social media amplifier for the day.

We brought awareness to the lack of resources and support available for new moms, and how that needs to change. See our post here.

It was one of our most shared posts ever! Thank you to everyone who helped us get the word out about such an important issue.

Thank you:

Upcoming:

  • We have new merchandise coming to our shop page!
    • New stickers
    • Hoodies & crew neck sweatshirts
    • Stay tuned for updates about these new products arriving in our shop. Thank you for helping us fundraise by ordering from our online store.

Earth Day Oregon, a state wide fundraiser, is happening in April!

We are so grateful for your support. We couldn’t do what we do without you!!

~Maria

February Update

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  • Total impact this month: 49 boxes donated
  • Total impact to date: 1,249 boxes donated

We donate an average of 50 postpartum boxes a month, depending on the need of our local partners. Locally, we provided gift boxes to the Domestic Violence Resource Center and the Mother and Child Education Center.

For the second year in a row we helped our local school district celebrate staff appreciation week. We provided gift boxes to expecting and newly postpartum staff. We are so grateful for teachers, and how hard they work to make school special.

Outside of Oregon, boxes are shipped monthly through the following partnerships:

Activity:

Mapel Boutique hosted a Shop For a Cause fundraiser for us on February 10! 20% of full priced sales were donated back to In Kind. We’re grateful to everyone who shopped during the event.

Our Mamas Making an Impact series continued on Instagram. We met with Jenn Wirth from @momsmaternal health. She opened up and shared with us about her own journey with postpartum mental health. Jenn states the importance of asking for help when you need it. She also goes into a lot of detail about postpartum mood disorders. Click here to watch!

For Black History Month, we highlighted Black moms and women in history who made a positive impact on the world through reels on Instagram. We shared about Dr. Rebecca Lee Crumpler, Dr. Mayme Clayton, and Katherine Johnson. Find @inkindboxes on Instagram to learn more about these amazing women in Black history.

Upcoming:

We’re looking forward to participating in the Earth Day Oregon statewide fundraiser in April. We are excited to have 2 of our 3 partners confirmed- The Hungry Hero Dessert Co, and Fat Milo’s Family Kitchen. Oregon based businesses, we need your help! We need one more partner with us for this event. If you can help us, send an email to: info@inkindboxes.org

Thank you!

We couldn’t do what we do without you. Thank you for showing up for moms in need.

January Update

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We started off the New Year with a bang, having our partnership with the Washington County District Attorney’s office featured in the Sherwood Gazette! Click the link to read the story, or go to the “Media Mentions” section of our website to find out when we’ve made the news!

We have big plans for 2022:

  • Move into our own space (increased storage, and capability to have volunteers come and help pack boxes).
  • Get Sponsorships and grants (to help cover costs for our new space, and donation of even MORE postpartum boxes to moms in need this year).
  • More press coverage (shining a light on our work increases the support we receive to then help more moms in need).

If you know of someone who could help us reach these goals, please reach out! We couldn’t do what we do without your support.

Upcoming fundraiser

We are looking forward to participating in the statewide fundraiser Earth Day Oregon again this year. We had our first meeting with the EDO Director this month. We’re excited to share more about what we do, and how it relates to Earth Day, and the United Nations’ 17 sustainable development goals.

If you are an Oregon based business, who is interested in partnering with us for the event, please reach out. We need 3 business partners is order to qualify for the event.

Donations

We donated 49 postpartum boxes in January to moms in need all across the United States including: 20 donated to the Virginia Garcia Memorial Health Center Women’s Clinic, 19 donated to NICU families in need through the Colette Louise Tisdahl Foundation, 5 to refugee families in California through Miry’s List, and 5 to refugee families in New York through New Neighbors Partnership.

If you would like to provide postpartum essentials to a mom in need, please donate today. We would love to meet or beat our goal of donating 700 boxes this year!

What else we’ve been up to:

In continuation with our “Mamas Making an Impact” Instagram Live series, we had on Miry’s List Founder, Miry Whitehill. Miry shared about how she got started with her nonprofit work supporting refugee families in California, and about her new book set to come out in March titled: “Our World is a Family”.

Maria also had the pleasure of chatting with Dr. Carlene Link. They had an honest discussion of what it can be like for postpartum moms to return to the workplace. Carlene explains why she decided to make some changes in her career as a result of her own experience. And, why she started a business to help others do the same. Go to our Instagram page to watch!

Stay connected with us on Instagram (@inkindboxes) where we share all about postpartum, our work, and more. We’re grateful to have an amazing community of support over there.

Thank you

As each new year passes, we strive to help more and more families. The need for our boxes is great. Thank for donating to In Kind Boxes, and showing moms in need the love and support they deserve. We couldn’t do what we do without you.

Special thanks to Juna for offering 1 year free membership to their app- “the only app you need for motherhood”. 100 donated gift boxes have special inserts which include a code for moms to login to the app for free.

Your 2021 Impact

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Because of your kindness and generosity, In Kind Boxes was able to not only meet our goal of 600 donated boxes in 2021, but BEAT it!!! We donated 651 postpartum boxes to families in need all across the United States.

The majority of those were donated locally, to families in need in the greater Portland Metro area. We partner with organizations that offer support services to new and expecting moms- our postpartum gift boxes supplement the care they receive.

We were excited to reach more families across the US by continuing to grow our nationwide partnerships! Click here to see who we are currently helping. If you have suggestions of organizations you’d like to see us donate boxes to, please feel free to reach out to us at: info@inkindboxes.org.

We couldn’t do what we do without you. Please continue to donate, and share about our nonprofit mission. Together we are making an impact by showing moms in need that they matter, and that they’re not alone.

To become part of our online village, connect with us on social media @inkindboxes.

November Update

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What a month! We are still waiting on some final fundraising numbers from social media channels, but from what we know so far, you helped us raise $2,945 this month!!!! That is postpartum gift boxes for approximately 54 families in need! This time of the year is especially hard for families. You really showed up for them!

Thank you for being part of our village. We are SO grateful for you.

How We’ve Helped:

This month we made donations of twenty gift boxes to both of the following local organizations- Ronald McDonald House Charities of Oregon & SW Washington, and Washington County’s Maternal, Child & Family Program. Through our nationwide gift box donation program, in partnership with the Colette Louise Tisdahl Foundation, we shipped out 28 gift boxes to families in need all across the United States including several to North Carolina, Illinois, Kentucky, Iowa and New York.

This month we reviewed applications for our Doula/Midwife gift box sponsorship program, and are excited to be working with both Angelica Miller of Rowan Midwifery, and Community Doula Alliance– a fellow Portland area nonprofit. These applicants were chosen based on the kindness they choose to spread to families in need within their communities. We are so grateful for birth workers. They do amazing work, and we are happy to be able to support them, and the families in their care, with monthly shipments of our postpartum box for 2022.

In Other News:

If you haven’t already heard, we’ve opened an Etsy shop! This is another way for us to fundraise. We have put together a kindness calendar as a fun tool to help you teach your children about kindness and empathy. The calendar is available as a digital download. Proceeds from the $3 sale are donated to In Kind Boxes, which we put towards purchasing the natural and organic essentials we fill our gift boxes with.

As Seen In:

We are so grateful to have been included in Holiday Gift Guides by:

–Working Momkind, Stroller in the City, First Time Parents Magazine and Fourth Trimester Foundations.

Our founder Maria Berglund was also a guest on The Limitless Pregnancy podcast, and The Nonprofit Jenni Show podcast this month, as they too were highlighting their favorite gifts to give.

We are always so grateful when we’re given the opportunity to share about our work. The more awareness we can bring to our mission, the better. As In Kind’s village of support grows, so does the number of families we can help.

21 Days of Kindness with In Kind Boxes

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In partnership with the Born This Way Foundation #BeKind21

#BeKind21 is an invitation for you to practice kindness toward yourself and others each day from September 1 to September 21 to build kinder, more connected communities that foster mental wellness. This a movement of over 200 partners, 7 million participants, and 160 million pledged acts of kindness on a mission to build a kinder, braver world that affirms and celebrates everyone for who they are. 

See our list of 21 acts of kindness below.

Follow along with us on Instagram to hear about why this event is so important to us.

We hope you’ll participate during the event, and tag @inkindboxes using the hashtag #BeKind21 when you do.

To learn more about #BeKind21, and sign up for yourself, please click here.

July Blog

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This month we celebrated our 2 year anniversary!! We thought it would be fun to spread some extra love in July by showering a bunch of mamas with love. To do that, we enlisted your help- thank you to everyone who donated to our fundraiser!!

We held a Pop Up Baby Shower to help local families in need, in collaboration with two of our local nonprofit partners, Baby Blues Connection & Mother and Child Education Center. Families were welcomed to join us in North East Portland, to pick up their postpartum gift boxes, mini bouquets of flowers, have their portraits taken, and take home goodies, books, handmade blankets, and other supplies donated to our organizations. It was amazing to finally meet families in person! And to shower them with the love and support they deserve. We hope this is the first of many Pop Up Baby Showers to come for Portland families.

Our “Mamas Making an Impact” Instagram Live series had some amazing guests this month. Maria had the opportunity to chat with Linda Fruits @fruitsofmotherhood on the 9th. Linda is hilarious, and so fun to chat with. She has a way of making us all feel less alone on our motherhood journey. Be sure to follow her on Instagram if you don’t already. Linda also has a podcast to check out too!

Other wonderful guests we had on were Camille Joy of @momentsofjoypodcast, Chelsea Skaggs of Postpartum Together, Eissa Love of @eizzybaby, and Molly Kranovich of M.K. Namaste. All four of them share their amazing stories of postpartum, motherhood, and offer tips and support for new moms. We love doing this series where we can highlight moms making a positive change in the world. We hope you have a chance to watch!

Other gift box donations were made since our last blog post to Clackamas Women’s Services, Military Moms Collective, It Takes a Village Foundation, Virginia Garcia Women’s Health Center, Hiya Baby, BeLoved Black Birth Centering, and Bottoms Up Diaper Bank. We are helping postpartum moms in need all across the United States!! Thank you for helping us make that happen. We have donated more than a gift box a day in 2021 so far!

To stay up to date on what’s happening, be sure to follow us on Instagram @inkindboxes.

~Maria