Bottoms up! Happy Bottoms celebrates 15 years of diaper distribution

By Brad Ziegler

Happy Bottoms, a Waldo-based diaper bank, recently celebrated  15 years of serving low-income families in the metropolitan area. The organization was founded by Jill Gaikowski in her basement in 2009 when she started a 7,000 Diapers in 7 Days drive and ended up collecting 15,000 diapers. Soon she began to put together a list of agencies to  partner with, and began distributing diapers through this new network the following year. 

Gaikowski decided to focus her energy on diapers when she learned about the challenges facing low-income families with young children who were not able to purchase diapers with traditional government safety net programs like food stamps, Medicaid or WIC. A new mother herself at the time, Gaikowski understood both the quantity of diapers that babies needed and their high cost.

The organization later moved into office/warehouse space in Lenexa and then to their current space in Waldo in early 2019. Happy Bottoms now distributes diapers through more than 70 local service agencies who serve families with children under four years old in 16 area counties on both sides of the state line. 

Susan Berger Angulo and Elizabeth Mayer serve as co-executive directors for the organization. According to Angulo, this distribution arrangement is important to their success and to the families they serve. “From the beginning, working with partner agencies has been our model. We always wanted families needing diapers to have the opportunity to access additional wrap-around services that the partner agencies provide.”

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Happy Bottoms regularly provides 75 diapers or 50 pairs of training pants to each of the more than 5,000 children they serve each month. They initially reach many of the families they serve through their Bundles of Joy program, where they partner with seven local hospitals to provide mothers and their newborns with a one-time distribution of 75 diapers along with information about their monthly agency program that gets them access to future distributions and connects them with service providers they may need. Their Potty Training Education Program provides families with information, a potty seat, stepstool, children’s book and sticker chart that helps families close out their cycle of diaper need.

Happy Bottoms acquires their diapers through in-kind donations, partnerships with the National Diaper Bank Network and discounted purchases from national vendors. They are able to dramatically leverage the efforts of their 11-person staff with the support of more than 450 volunteers each month who help with wrapping diapers and fulfilling orders.

Angulo says that diaper needs continue to increase in the area despite their distribution of 39% more diapers in 2023 compared to the previous year. The number of diapers distributed last month was up nearly 100% over the same month in 2023 and the number of children served increased by more than 1,800 over last year. 

“The diaper need gap has grown wider in that families are struggling more to purchase diapers, and are having to make tough decisions between buying food, buying diapers or paying rent,” she explained. “We recently increased the number of diapers we provide each child each month by 50%, with a goal of giving families relief.”

For now the organization’s space in Waldo is big enough to keep up with their increased levels of diaper distribution, but they foresee continuing challenges related to time and money to meet this need.