We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Zachariah Thompson a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.

Zachariah, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s kick things off with your mission – what is it and what’s the story behind why it’s your mission?

My entire life I have personally always battled mental health issues. I was specifically diagnosed with an anxiety disorder when I was only in 7th grade. Since then, it was always a constant dance with the good and the bad emotions, not knowing how to properly handle some of the trauma in my life.

It hit a peak when I graduated college. I had just finished my collegiate baseball career when I was diagnosed with a life-threatening, incurable heart condition called ARVC. Receiving surgery for a defibrillator and having that device save my life, now 5 times, is and has always been an extremely hard thing for me to navigate emotionally. But those moments have served as a wakeup call and a reminder of my purpose to help people overcome the obstacles in their own lives.

With my experience along with some close friends personal battles with mental health, we started to realize that everyone in the world was connected to mental health struggles in one way or another–especially through the pandemic. We may not have the same stories, but we have all felt similar emotions.

I started dreaming about providing solutions to an overwhelming mental health crisis that is starting to be talked about more. Around the same time, I came across a quote that inspired the name of the organization and our purpose. The quote from Ralph Waldo Emerson is, “There is no beautifier of complexion, or form, or behavior, like the wish to scatter joy and not pain around us.”

We’re trying to create a new kind of community. One that is unified by our brokenness and hunger for hope. One that is focused on helping people jump over the hurdles that get in the way of them getting help and healing. One that fights to make the world a more compassionate, kind, and selfless place.

So, we’re all about creating an ever-growing community that not only raises awareness with our voice, with our apparel store, with our events, but helps people heal with our actions. We want to scatter joy because the world needs it now more than ever.

As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce a little more about the heart behind The Scatter Joy Project?

Through my own personal battle with mental health it created a willingness to speak towards others struggles with the goal to provide so sort of hope, and inspire them to become more vulnerable. I think vulnerability is the biggest key to healing, because it unlocks a level of empathy in others and helps us understand that we aren’t alone in our darkest places. Other people experience pain too and we can rally around shared struggle.

This all inspired the work that we do with The Scatter Joy Project, with everything we do being the answer to the question, “What gets in the way of people getting help and healing?”

We identified 3 areas–the negative stigma, the overwhelming search for mental health care, and the cost of mental health care.

So with that we create conversations about the issues we face with our apparel store with inspiring pieces with an edgy, counter culture type of design. We also have our podcast and host in-person and online events to help bring awareness and combat the stigma.

The profits from our apparel sales combined with donations help us fund our crisis text line that is a nationwide service for people to connect with a free, confidential crisis counselor. Sales and donations also fund our online search engine where people all around the country can search and find free and reduced cost mental health care. But we also understand that mental health isn’t just mental health, there are always contributing factors. On that search engine people are able to find help and programs for those contributing factors as well.

It’s really amazing to see how everything ties together, honestly really intentionally. We hope that people become inspired by how we all need each other, that even the simple act of buying a Scatter Joy t-shirt is tangibly providing hope and help for something that is doing their best to hold on and find joy in their life again.

How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?

We definitely pride ourselves on being a culturally relevant nonprofit and brand. What I mean by that is we are talking about and supporting people with current issues they might be facing, but we also are producing content and apparel that people can see themselves in. As a social impact organization and nonprofit, our reputation has everything to do with how much people are inspired by our message and actions. If we are who we say we are then their act of inspiration turns into a purchase, donation, or willingness to volunteer in someway. Then what we do with people willingness to help is a huge deal. If we aren’t taking action and helping the community get help with mental health care and resources then we’re just a clothing brand or a podcast. The heart of our mission is not just trendy hope, but lasting healing. I think people feel and see that work.

Can you talk to us about how you funded your business?

It was actually wild how we began funding the projects we wanted to put in place, being the crisis text line and the Find Help search engine. We launched our online apparel store and the first 4 collections all sold out within the first 3 weeks of each of them launching. The sales within the first year were our biggest contributing factor to us then putting on our workshops, our community events, and summit.

Now we have released 11 apparel collections that continue to be a large factor in funding our projects, but we know that we need larger capital to do the things we really want to do and magnify the mission on a national level. Right now we are actively applying for additional grants and seeking corporate partners that want to be a part of our fight to make the world a more compassionate, kind, and selfless place.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.thescatterjoyproject.com
• Instagram: www.instagram.com/thescatterjoyproject
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/thescatterjoyproject
• Twitter: https://twitter.com/thescatterjoy
• Other: https://www.instagram.com/zachariah.thompson/