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

Natalie, thanks for joining us, excited to have you contributing your stories and insights. We’d love to hear the backstory of how you established your own practice.

There are over 1.8 million non-profits registered in the U.S., so deciding to start another was a big leap of faith and was a call of the heart. I did some research online and spoke to some founders of other organizations. I ran the idea by a friend, who I had produced a play and documentary with many years ago. He had recently received his M.B.A. from USC and specialized in branding and marketing. I told him about the huge void in support for families with children facing medical crisis. He loved my idea to start a non-profit to bring critical support for urgent basic needs to families to help them heal their children, and he joined me as a founding member. He was invaluable. Once, I’d decided on our name, HoldYou Foundation, he provided a lot of expertise with our launch, helping to create our logo, website, and creating some press.
Filing all of the legal documents and paperwork can be daunting, so I decided to enlist a company to file our paperwork with the IRS and that process went pretty quickly. A few months later, we were a registered 501(c)3 non-profit!
Like many non-profit founders, I may have reached out to too many friends to serve on our initial board. What I know now, is that it would have been most effective to reach out beyond my own network to include board members with diverse backgrounds and fields. I’m still working on that! Building a board is an ongoing process in non-profit.
The advice I have for someone just starting out is to make sure that you have real passion for the mission that you’re serving. Non-profit is a labor of love and is filled with challenges. That’s why the development positions have a high turnover rate, but when you’re making a difference that changes people’s lives, it’s worth it!

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 yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?

As a teenager, I became very ill and was hospitalized in the pediatric oncology wing of CHOP for a week. It was a pivotal and very scary moment in my life. I was fortunate ultimately not to have been diagnosed with cancer, but for years I dealt with autoimmune issues that left me ill. While at the hospital, I noticed many children were there by themselves without a parent and that left a lasting impression on me.
Throughout my adult life, I’ve been involved as a volunteer or fundraiser in many areas – working with the elderly, an orphanage in Tijuana, at hospitals and with children with disabilities. For many years, I held a position as a corporate foundation director and had the opportunity to work on fundraisers, working with boards, and distributing funds to hundreds of non-profit organizations in Southern California. I was so moved by the site visits to many of these organizations and got a chance to see how they operated and reviewed all of their applications for funding.
Founding a non-profit to help sick children was always something that I wanted to do and when a tragic accident happened to a young relative in my husband’s family, it renewed my spirit to take on this challenge. Once again, I saw the difficulties faced when caring for a sick child. I realized that while all families are overwhelmed and devastated by their child’s critical health diagnosis, there were many families who experience a dual crisis – their child’s illness and financial hardship. For families who have to take unpaid leaves to care for their child, leave their jobs, don’t have savings to rely on or quickly exhaust it, or are a single parent family, the financial strain that ensues after a diagnosis can cause such overwhelming hardship that it’s difficult to continue to provide for their family’s most basic needs and to provide the best possible care for their sick child.
I created HoldYou to provide supportive care for families who are trying to provide their beloved child with the care, love and advocacy that every child deserves. I’m most proud to say that we’ve provided immediate support for housing, food, gas, transportation costs, utilities and more to over 600 families, impacting over 2,568 family members. And over the years, we’ve “adopted’ hundreds of family members through our Hold-A-Family Holiday Adoption Program, which has provided gifts that bring comfort and joy.
What sets HoldYou apart is that we help children with all life-threatening diagnoses, giving families with children with rare diseases an umbrella of support that they might not otherwise have, and we turn our assistance around fast to lift the stress parents feel and we work to provide tailored support for each family needs. We have kept many families from being evicted, kept lights and power on, provided urgent transportation assistance, hot meals at the hospitals, critical equipment and so much more.
For our donors, who make all of this work entirely possible to do, I am extremely grateful! I try to keep donors updated about the many ways their gifts are making a life-changing difference for families who are facing their most difficult days. They are helping a family to heal their sick child! I am profoundly grateful to match generous people with families who, by no fault of their own, are finding themselves in need of a helping hand. And the families who receive this support are so grateful that there are people who see their struggle and care enough to help.

Can you tell us about a time you’ve had to pivot?

The pandemic, of course, was a huge pivot! I had just signed a lease on an office space, so that volunteers could come in to provide much needed support to help us grow and suddenly, that plan was fell through at a time when the families we served needed more support than ever. We were planning our 5th Annual Spin Cycling Fundraiser, which was of course indoors and that had to be cancelled. So, we created our 1st Annual “June Jam” Fundraiser an event that allowed supporters to reach their sponsorship goal by choosing their favorite exercise “jam” and doing “any exercise, anytime, anywhere.”, which worked out really well for a time. I think a lot of good came from the pandemic pivots that taught me lessons in not being afraid to move on from something that is no longer working. It forced me to re-think ways of doing things.

Can you talk to us about how your funded your firm or practice?

Initially, to raise funds, we relied on solely on fundraisers. Coming out of a corporate world, I knew that many grant making organizations like to see a proven ROI and know that your organization has staying power before investing. The first fundraiser, was a pie smash challenge which was certainly fun and didn’t cost more than a can of whipped cream! It raised 10k and helped to spread the word about our mission. The next fundraiser was an art auction at a local gallery, The Loft at Liz’s Gallery. The gallery was generous enough to curate all of the art and half of the sales were donated to HoldYou. The event also included an auction of non-art items and also helped us gather more supporters. The art auction is coming up on it’s 9th year! And our best initial event was a peer to peer fundraising campaign that raised over 20k. Volunteers set a fundraising goal and raised money by riding in an spin cycling event. These were great first fundraisers with really low overhead and a high impact of increasing our network of supporters. They gave us the chance to help families who needed help right away!

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.holdyou.org
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/holdyoufoundation/?hl=en
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/holdyoufoundation
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/holdyou-inc-580208157/
• Twitter: https://x.com/HoldYouFoundn