We were lucky to catch up with Ashley Jones recently and have shared our conversation below.
Ashley , appreciate you joining us today. We’d love to hear about a time you helped a customer really get an amazing result through their work with you.
Love Not Lost (soon to be Momento Foundation), helps people heal in grief. One of the ways we do this is by providing free portrait sessions to people facing a terminal diagnosis as a way to celebrate life, preserve memories, and support loved ones in grief. A mom, Beth, applied on behalf of her daughter, Bella, who has a life-limiting condition.
We traveled to their home in Virginia and then went to a beautiful park to capture meaningful memories together. Bella has been defying the odds, and in honor of her 7th Birthday, Beth set up a fundraiser to benefit Love Not Lost because the photos meant so much to them. Here’s a bit of what Beth had to say:
“Thank you for clicking on the link and for considering a donation to Love Not Lost in Bella’s name. I cannot express how wonderful of an organization this is, and how meaningful their work is. Love Not Lost is an organization that provides free grief support tools and photo sessions for families facing a loved one’s serious illness – at no cost to the family. Our family was the recipient of their kindness, and the family photos that were taken during our session will allow us to hold on to Bella long after she has gone. By giving to Love Not Lost, you are helping family memories to be passed down through time for generations to come. You are helping people heal through loss. You are providing tangible, precious memories for families like ours. Please check out the website if you have a moment to see all the wonderful programs and information Love Not Lost provides: www.lovenotlost.org
Ashley, the founder, is an inspiration to me, Bella’s mom, as she shows me that even though life dealt us a pretty tough hand, we can still do good and find a light in our grief and loss. And, that on this roller coaster of emotions, and many, many highs and lows, we can be stronger than we ever thought we could be, and despite the anger and pain we feel, we can turn it into goodness.
I try my best to be Bella’s voice, to share her story, her struggles, and her strength. I believe she would tell you that she is thankful for every stuffed animal, blanket, sensory toy, supportive seating device, medical supply, and piece of clothing that she has. Thank God we are blessed with all that we have and need. Bella is here with us to teach us goodness, appreciation for each day, and the power of love. She would likely prefer to share that love with others by allowing them to have a special moment to cherish forever with their families.
“Nothing is ever really lost to us as long as we remember it.”
Thank you for your gifts.”
Their fundraiser for Bella’s birthday brought in over $1,300 to help us serve more families! It’s an incredible gift to be a recipient of other people’s generosity and find ways to pay it forward. Our team is so grateful for their hearts to support others. You can see their fundraising page, photos, and full story here: https://lovenotlost.funraise.org/fundraiser/beth-papanastasiou
Ashley , before we move on to more of these sorts of questions, can you take some time to bring our readers up to speed on you and what you do?
My daughter, Skylar, was diagnosed with a terminal condition called Spinal Muscular Atrophy at 2 months old. We were told we would be lucky to see her first birthday. But through some divine interventions, we didn’t have to say goodbye until she was 21 months old.
The day we were diagnosed, the 19 months of survival mode, and that first year of raw grief gave me a new perspective of the world. My eyes were opened to the suffering all around and how we, as a society, are ill-equipped to deal with it. There is so much emotional pain in the world – not just from death, but from all kinds of loss – and yet we’re not taught what to do with those big feelings or how to heal those wounds.
Through my own experience, I observed the significant role photos played in supporting me in those raw moments of grief, depression, loneliness, and longing. The tangible prints gave me a way to physically hold my daughter when she wasn’t here to hold. I could look at her photo in the morning and still greet her with “good morning sweet girl!” even though her bed was empty. Sitting with the photos, I could be whatever I needed to be… I could ugly cry without fear or judgement because it was just me and the photos. They allowed me to connect with her when I would tell her how much I missed her and feel like she heard me because she was looking back at me. They allowed me to just be. They allowed me to grieve. They allowed me to feel. They allowed me to heal.
As a photographer, I wanted to gift that to others and started offering free portrait sessions to anyone I heard of facing a terminal diagnosis. My husband asked me to please stop giving everything away because we had bills to pay. And although I knew he was right, I couldn’t charge these families a thing. We knew how hard it is financially to go through a long-term illness and then funeral expenses on top of it all… so I started a nonprofit called Love Not Lost, believing that if I was willing to give it all a way to help people heal in grief, I could find others willing to join me to support people who were hurting.
Love Not Lost started in Atlanta, GA, and is scaling to a national level to bring free portrait sessions to people facing a terminal diagnosis across the country (and eventually, the globe). We also have education, tools, and resources to help people heal in grief and support others in their own communities. Next year, we will be launching our new name, Momento Foundation, to be more inclusive of our global vision and community. We can’t wait for all of the great things to come!
How do you keep in touch with clients and foster brand loyalty?
As a nonprofit, we actually have multiple “clients” with families served, photographer volunteers, donors, and referral partners. The driving question of our organization is “How can we love people better?” We ask that of each and every person/group we interact with.
Brand loyalty is simple, yet complex. Customers want to give you something (usually money) and have a good experience that makes them want to do it again. That’s the simple part of it. The complex part of that is there are many parts in a customer’s journey that you must be intentional about in order to have that level of customer experience. It takes planning, care, investment, and mindfulness.
With every hire, I make sure I am adding incredible humans with a heart to love and serve. Skills can be learned, but it’s much harder to get people to care. I started this by myself, but as I’ve added new team members, I’ve been able to improve every experience.
Here are a few examples of how that plays out in our organization:
Sionnie was my first full-time hire and is a fun, experience-minded creative who made things better when she joined our team. She added confetti and personalized touches to the welcome gifts for new Heartbeat Members (our monthly giving membership: http://lovenotlost.org/heartbeat). She made the photographer training way more fun and digestible when we had to convert it to virtual training vs in-person. She helped me set up the first systems to make sure people didn’t fall through the cracks. She really loves people well and it translates into everything she does.
Carol is our Key Relations Manager. She is bereavement certified and has over 10 years of experience in grief work in a hospital setting. She’s the main point of contact for our referral partners (usually hospitals and hospices) and does a wonderful job touching base with them, building meaningful relationships, and finding ways to love them well. We do our best to support their team and the families they send us. We also look for ways to support their community too. For example, our largest partner is Northside Hospital in Atlanta, GA and we join them at their community fairs (general health evens, cancer-specific events, etc.) to bring education and support from our organization.
Annabelle is our Donor Care Coordinator, who sends every person who donates to our organization a handwritten thank you note (no matter the amount). We want each donor to know that we are grateful for their generosity. We wouldn’t be here without the people who give $10 and those who give $10,000. It truly takes everyone giving to make this possible! She also sends out impact gifts to every giver who has signed up for The Heartbeat on their annual givingversary. We have a lot of fun showing donors we love and care for them.
John is our Community Leader, so anytime a family applies for a portrait session, he makes sure they are welcomed, sent our family Q&A guide, and have expectations of what’s next. He helps set things up for photographers and is an incredible tech guy who has helped our entire team be more efficient and effective. He has continued Sionnie’s efforts to make sure nothing falls through the cracks as we grow and expand.
I can’t stress this enough: getting people on your team who care is critical.
What do you think is the goal or mission that drives your creative journey?
Our mission is to help people heal in grief. We see the pain and suffering in the world, and we know the lack of love being shown to people who are hurting makes it worse.
Our driving question is “How can we love people better?” because we believe love brings healing. And by love, we don’t mean the romantic kind of love, but the genuine human need to feel loved and connected to ourselves and each other.
We believe hurt people, hurt people. But we also believe that healed people, heal people. So how do we stop the cycle of pain and get people to heal? The answer is to meet that pain with love.
We have to be the ones to show up for ourselves when no one else does. When we meet our own pain with love, we stop our pain from spilling out into the world around us and furthering the cycle of hurt.
We envision a world where we can meet pain with love, first in ourselves, then with others around us, to transform cycles of hurt into cycles of healing for generations to come.
Contact Info:
- Website: http://lovenotlost.org
- Instagram: @lovenotlostorg
- Facebook: @lovenotlostorg
- Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/10694539
- Twitter: @lovenotlostorg
- Other: Online Community: http://lovenotlost.org/lovewell
Image Credits
Love Not Lost