We recently connected with Tiffany Price and have shared our conversation below.

Tiffany, thanks for taking the time to share your stories with us today Was there a defining moment in your professional career? A moment that changed the trajectory of your career?

In 2018 my oldest son Bryan was a Sophomore at Hogan Prep and I being the parent that I am would volunteer at the school every chance I could. I was invited to a meeting about a new program that was here in Kansas City called PLTI-KC. It stands for Parent Leadership Training Institute-Kansas City. It is a 21 week cohort where PLTI-KC trains and mobilizes parents to be leading advocates for children. I went to the meeting and loved the mission and signed up at that very moment. I was accepted into the program and at that moment started a journey I never knew was possible. While in the cohort each advocate has to do a community project. While planning for my initial project a thought popped in my mind, girls need bras! The room was quiet and I remember someone saying yeah girls do need bras. This is when Hold Em Up 4 Care was born. So starting out I wanted to do a bra drive for the girls in the city. After researching a little more I discovered that no one was doing bra drives for youths, they were only for domestic violence shelters or breast cancer survivors. Yes this is great but my target audience is not collectively either one of these categories. I wanted to do more. I want them to know their size, what bra types work for them, and how to properly care for their bra. I searched all over the internet to see what other organizations were doing this type of work so I could possibly partner with them and I found none. This is when I knew it was for me. I didn’t know how it was going to go, what it would look like, I just knew I had to do 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?

I got into this line of work when I had to do a community project. mind. I started creating my plan for donations, training, and anything I could find about bras. I was thinking about how I could reach the girls through schools, clubs, people I know, and whatever else popped into my head. The mission of Hold Em Up 4 Care (HEU4C) is to support equality for youth and adults by providing perfect-fit clothing, elevating self-esteem, and supporting mental health resiliency with programs that directly improve their health and well-being. HEU4C accomplishes its mission through 5 key programs: 1) Bras, 2) Belts, Boxers & Bowties, 3) BUSTY Youth Entrepreneurship Training, 4) Clothing Closet, 5) Clothes for the Houseless.

Hold Em Up 4 Care’s Bras program is yearlong and provides perfect-fit bras to youth, ages 9-19, who live in the Kansas City, MO urban core. Female breasts consist of fat and tissue and are supported only by weak ligaments and skin. Bras provide the extra support needed for females to engage in daily activities fully and comfortably. Without access to a perfect-fit bra for her specific body shape and size, girls are unable to concentrate and be fully engaged in school or community activities. What sets us apart from anyone else is that we are the only nonprofit organization providing these services in our communities that we serve to attain their full health potential, and no one is disadvantaged from achieving this potential because of their social position or other socially determined circumstance.

I am most proud of the growth that I have seen within myself, the organization as a whole, our board of directors, youth advisory committee, volunteers, the community, and the instant impact on the people that we serve. We always have a space for donations, for community partnerships, for volunteer opportunities, more growth, and more service areas.

How did you put together the initial capital you needed to start?

For our very first event we were able to raise over $300 through a GoFundMe campaign. The rest of the expenses were funded through me personally. We have been blessed and grateful that most of our products have been donated though the public. We’ve had private donors, donations dropped off at Clothes Mentor in Overland Park, KS (donation spot), mailed to us, dropped off on my porch, and mostly the public has collected donations for us. This current year we have been able to secure three grants totaling $12,500. We receive a donation of 600 socks from Hanes that supports our Homeless Program once a year. Microsoft awarded us with $3,000 a month Ads for Social Impact Grant. All of these are helping us a lot and if anyone knows businesses need a tad bit more especially nonprofits to continue their work. These grants are helping us with storage, training, website management, limited events to provide the services, and some back end office needs.

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

During the pandemic the whole world had to pivot. Hold Em Up 4 Care offers measuring as a service. If you don’t know that this consists of face-to-face, touching another person to get them measured as accurately as possible for a bra. Imagine having to do that during this time. We already are performing an uncomfortable service. We didn’t want to jeopardize anyone’s health or ours and families. We came up with a plan to pivot and go virtual. With schools going virtual, jobs, healthcare appointments, some court appearances, and zoom offering the platform for free, it just made sense. The plan was to offer a free consultation to anyone that wanted services. It would be for 30 minutes and consisted of us (the organization) assisting the client in measuring themselves or a minor that was on zoom. If they did not have a measuring tape we were able to mail them one or safely drop it off. After the consultation we would deliver a few different bras varying in different sizes close to what she measured. This is because you may measure one size and are not comfortable with it so adjustments can be made within band and cup sizes. So we would drop-off the bras and it may take one more trip to get it right and that was okay because this is what our mission is. After she found the perfect fit we would pick up the left-over bras, launder them, and put them back into inventory. This practice we have adapted and made a part of our program.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://www.heu4c.org
• Instagram: https://www.intagram.com/holdemup4care
• Facebook: https://facebook.com/holdemup4care
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/heu4c