I was very interested in finding a charity that attacks mental health a bit differently.
I took a look at the main website and in all honesty what exactly do you do, simply? You say things like we’re funding 10 lives etc, but how does that translate? I’m very curious and I think a lot of other people will too.
So how does your donations and events actually have a tangible effect?
Content…goal is for our staff through blogs and our band partners through videos to share our struggles first so that people feel comfortable to share their struggles in our:
Community…goal is give people a place to talk about their struggles, receive direct encouragement from others, and walk together to identify their lies and trade them for the truth (many mental health struggles are rooted in one’s beliefs – if I believe I am worthless, hopeless, and alone, I have a hard time deciding I want to continue to live and suicide seems a more attractive option than if I were to believe I am worthy of love, I have hope my life will continue to improve, and I have the support of friends, family, and community). Our community is primarily on this forum and and on our live stream/discord.
Programs…though conversation is the heart of what we do, we also recognized along the way that there are a lot of common patterns in people’s journey to improving their mental health around particular struggles. So in order to help the most amount of people (since we won’t be able to individually tell everyone the process), we build recovery programs through the practical wisdom we’ve uncovered from 30k+ conversations and through the professional expertise of mental health professionals on our board and in our personal networks. We’ve created one program on depression and one program on self-harm, and the live stream fundraiser just funded our next program on anxiety.
Outreach…we go to concerts and talk to fans on-the-ground about their struggles, providing conversational support and our programs for free at venues across the country. For the past 6 summers, we’ve traveled with Vans Warped Tour and talked to ~45k fans, and we just funded the planning of our own Mental Health Festival (an event where bands and fans use music to heal at the event itself). We are planning to launch that festival late 2019 / early 2020.
At its core, we are about mental health ACTION. And the primary actions that we take are:
talking with people through crisis when they reach out on our forum (average of ~5 replies per post with ~5 hours on average from post to first reply)
using our stream community to provide real-time support for fans (because the synchronicity is instantaneous; it’s at its core similar to #1, but a different medium, with faster reply time – talking with people through their struggles, helping them change their beliefs to find deep inner healing and freedom)
getting our programs into the hands of more people (we give away 70% of our programs for free) so they can have practical guidance through their struggles
doing steps 1-3 in person at outreach events
At its core, changing someone’s life isn’t all that sexy. It’s talking to them through their past, uncovering their wounds, helping them heal from those wounds with love and truth, and teaching them to walk out these new beliefs into their lives to change their behaviors/results. Programs are basically just guided conversations. It all comes down to doing life-on-life, connecting with people, and teaching them the steps to walk the path they desire.
The money we’re trying to raise will:
improve our forum experience to help more people, faster, and deeper – costs $15k, projected impact ~2.4k fans
expand our live stream hours to offer almost twice as much support weekly – costs $30k, projected impact ~18k fans
create the anxiety program and three devotionals with artists (centered around mental health struggles through a lens of faith [we are a faith-based non-profit]) – costs $40k, projected impact ~14k fans
create our own mental health festival – costs $20k to plan the festival, but we likely won’t run the festival until 2020, so we didn’t count the projected impact towards our dollar:impact in 2019 ratio
So total desired to raise: $105k, and we’ll be able to take action (in 1 of the 4 ways I mentioned) for 34k fans. The math turns out to be $3 = action to better the mental health for 1 fan.
Hope all of this helps illuminate our intentions – if you have any further questions, I’d love to discuss with you either here, through email ([email protected]), or on a Discord call if you’d like too (@natehilpert in the HS discord).
Thanks for expressing your curiosity and wanting to look more into our cause, man
