We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful BJ Rottinghaus. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with BJ below.

BJ, appreciate you joining us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?

The story behind our mission revolves around Halloween night. It was during my elementary school years, either the 3rd or 4th grade, and I was trick or treating all around my neighborhood. I went with my friends, all dressed up as superheroes, ninjas, and vampires, and had some of the most fun I’ve ever had in my life. However, years later I realized that not everyone has that same chance. One day, walking through a Halloween costume section, I noticed the high price tag for every single costume. Due to the pandemic, many families have been unable to provide such a luxury to their kids, and I felt I can change that. I want to spread that joy to everyone across the state, and that is why our mission is to provide Halloween costumes to needy kids. We want to spread the joy of Halloween to everyone.

Awesome – so before we get into the rest of our questions, can you briefly introduce yourself to our readers.

My name is BJ Rottinghaus and I’m the founder of the Houston-based nonprofit Y’alloween. I founded Y’alloween when 3 years ago, when I was a freshman in high school. Since then, we’ve been growing exponentially from under 50 costumes to over 300. We work with shelters and domestic violence organizations to provide their kids and families with costumes on Halloween. In our first year, we partnered with HAWC, the Houston Area Womens Center. In the subsequent years we’ve partnered with AVDA (Aid to Victims of Domestic Abuse), ATO (Assurance Therapeutic outreach), and most recently the Salvation Army in Austin. Our goal is to expand all across Texas and ensure that every kid has the opportunity to celebrate Halloween. We do this by collecting donations through our website or receiving them directly through our Amazon Wishlist. This year will be our biggest year yet, and we need your help to support our growing enterprise. To support us, please check out our website and our Amazon Wishlist. All donations are tax deductible and will benefit kids in definite need.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

We first reached out to our first business partner, HAWC, in early September of 2021. This was, in hindsight, a little later than what we probably should have done, given the time frame in between then and Halloween. Thankfully, they understood and allowed us to become their partners in supporting their fall festival event, which they hold every year. After a few more emails back and forth, it finally got to the point where we met them in person during our first ever drop-off. It went extremely well, and we felt like everyone came together and supported each other in this situation. Thanks to them, we were able to expand out to even more organizations, the most recent of which, the Salvation Army in Austin, will help us to expand even further across Texas. We will forever be thankful to HAWC and all the wonderful things they have done for us, and we are extremely happy that we were able to start with them in our first year.

We’d love to hear the story of how you built up your social media audience?

We were able to build an audience on our social media platforms by promoting our activities and working with a high school student classmate who helps us create high-quality posts that gets loads of interaction. We try to post a lot, especially in October, in order to remind people that Halloween is coming up soon, and we need all the Halloween spirit we can get! Some advice we have is to make it personal with your audience. What we like to do is post things that make people remember their early Halloween days, to make them sympathize with what our kids are going through. Pictures of kids having fun on Halloween, classic candies, and old Halloween movies are all things that we post.

Contact Info:

• Website: yalloween.org
• Instagram: @yalloweentx
• Facebook: @yalloweentx
• Twitter: @yalloweentx
• Other: Our Amazon Wishlist- https://www.amazon.com/hz/wishlist/ls/1T8LBWMGWQU9X?ref_=wl_share