What's ahead for Birthday Wishes
What’s ahead- We need your support!
As the needs and demands for our programming have increased, we are striving to celebrate even more birthdays each year. Last year, we had a 20% increase and celebrated 5,016 birthdays.
In 2025, we hope to:
Expand services to reach more homeless children and their families. Last year, we were able to successfully expand services in Connecticut, New York, and Los Angeles. This year, we are working to sustain growth and begin to serve more homeless shelters in those areas. In fact, based on the past several months, we are predicting a 20% increase in numbers served by the end of our fiscal year this June 30, 2025.
With feedback from those we serve, we continue to enhance our core Birthday-in-a-Box program with other boxes that celebrate milestones like the Baby BIRTHday Bundle designed for moms with newborn babies. The bundle provides critical items that new moms need to care for their baby. It consists of an infant bathtub, soap, shampoo, lotion, towels, diapers, wipes, onesies, swaddle blankets, and diaper cake.
Continue to work towards meeting the diverse needs of the populations we serve. Many of our families are English learners and have different learning needs. We want to work towards being able to provide party decorations and birthday gifts written in a child’s native language, so language is not a barrier while providing sensory items for those children that need them.
Our Teen Birthday-in-a-Box program, designed for the older teens 14 – 17 years old has been widely popular amongst our shelter partners. Last year, we were able to give $25 gift cards to 904 teens, so they can have more independence and control over selecting and purchasing their own birthday present. We are very thankful to corporate sponsors like The Santana Team who donated 200 gift cards last year.
Develop a more robust infrastructure and build capacity so we can serve families experiencing homelessness for years to come. This includes finding a new office space in Massachusetts that can better meet the operational needs of Birthday Wishes, building sustainability around the delivery of boxes from our Massachusetts and New York offices to local shelters across six states, increasing staff time to manage programs, and the development and implementation of partner shelter and caregiver surveys to better understand the needs. Once these elements are in place, we will be able to expand our partner shelter network from shelters currently on our waitlist.
The shelters in our partner network are extremely grateful we can continue to support their families and social-emotional needs through our programming. Thank you for your commitment to celebrating children experiencing homelessness on their birthday. We can’t do this work without you.