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

Geoff, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to have you retell us the story behind how you came up with the idea for your business, I think our audience would really enjoy hearing the backstory.

Friend of mine, Ashley Bierne had a goal – creating 300 period supply kits for her birthday. Ashley was horrified at hearing of women prioritizing food over basic hygienic necessities. So, with a vision in mind and a desire to help her community, she recruited friends to help and Period Kits was (informally) born.

Fast forward to February of 2019, I formally established Period Kits as a nonprofit organization in Colorado. Over the last three years, we’ve grown our distribution sites and increased the number of individuals we serve. We have delivered 1.2 million products to people in need. Thanks to our dedicated donors, team of volunteer Board of Directors and our Executive Director we become advocates for ending the stigma surrounding periods.

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

I have spent the last 20 years working in non profit organizations. I am proud that Period Kits has become a budding non-profit agency with amazing community support.

How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?

COVID-19 caused us to pivot. We had primarily been focusing on supplying nonprofit agencies with three month kits, with a heavy focus on people experiencing homelessness. But with the pandemic we saw more and more public distribution events providing direct support to folks in need. We also saw an increase in individuals in need reaching out to us directly. We started building smaller one month kits with fewer products in them.

Learning and unlearning are both critical parts of growth – can you share a story of a time when you had to unlearn a lesson?

As a 50 yr old man starting a nonprofit that dealt with period poverty, I had a lot of things to learn and unlearn. One of the biggest lessons that our kits cannot be “one size fits all” mentality. When we started buidling three month kits, we didn’t build kits with a constant size of underwear in them, and focused just on six pairs of clean underwear. One of our advisor’s and board members made the point that if you wear a size 11 and get 6 pairs of size six, you might as well get none. We switched our kits so be size specific, it’s about getting the right products to the right people. The same thinking led to us also creating a tampon free one month kit. For many folks that we serve, tampons are not culturally acceptable and not wanted.

Contact Info:

• Website: www.periodkits.org
• Instagram: @periodkitsinc
• Facebook: @periodkits
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/period-kits/