Bridges & Balm 2024 Year End Wrap
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Thank you to everyone who made 2024 such a remarkable first year for us! Your generosity as donors, the trust placed in us by survivors and former workers, and the steadfast support of our broader community have been instrumental in our success. We're deeply grateful for the countless ways you've encouraged and strengthened our mission throughout this foundational year.
Below is an overview of our 2024 financial, operational, and assistance metrics. It documents where our funds came from, where we spent them, and our 2024 worker and survivor fund status at the end of 2024. Our intent is to provide transparency in our finances and operations to validate the trust you put in us in 2024 and earn your confidence and trust anew each day in 2025.
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2024 Donation Summary
The table below summarizes our preliminary YE 2024 financials. We will post our official 2024 financials from the Bridges & Balm 2024 tax statement once it is available.
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As you can see above, our donations totaled almost $127,500 in 2024. This total includes the funds from the additional inpatient collaborative outreach drive, but does not include the roughly $14,000 in matching funds from the holiday funding initiative (2025 credit). That's an amazing amount of support from you, our donors and supporters, and we are extremely thankful for your generosity and compassion!
From an “available funds” perspective, we ended 2024 with a balance of almost $45,000 which we will carry over into 2025, However, after we distribute the $13,255 dedicated for the inpatient collaborative initiative, we will be back down to two months funding on hand (even after we add in the $14,000 donation match funds) that we strive to continuously maintain. The Assistance & Expenditures Summary below details our monthly spend rate as we go into 2025.
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2024 Assistance & Expenditures Summary
At the end of 2024, we had 25 former workers and survivors receiving assistance. The bar chart below displays the growth in our assistance community over the last 3 months of 2024. We expect survivor assistance requests to grow dramatically in early 2025 because of the AFTT shutdown, and worker assistance requests to grow at an accelerated pace in 2025 due to increased awareness and the addition of our ability to provide assistance internationally.
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We ended 2024 disbursing a total of almost $78,000 in assistance across 25 former workers and survivors. Seventy-seven percent of our funding went to former worker assistance, 17% went to survivor support, and the remaining 5% went for operations. Our operations percentage was actually 3.67% when measured against 2024 donations (rather than expenditures), which is a better indicator since the operations totals include donation credit card fees.
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As detailed in the chart above, our Q4 2024 monthly assistance totals averaged $11,300/mo, and as expected, they have almost doubled as of early Feb 2025. Over the next few months, we expect the monthly assistance requests to grow beyond our capability to deliver so we will need to increase our sources of funding and our outreach.
The bar chart below details our monthly assistance expenditures over the last half of 2024. Since 2024 assistance went mostly to former workers, the chart shows requests steadily increasing as those workers with urgent needs reached out, and then requests leveled off in the last few months of the year as financial situations improved.
We expect our Survivor Fund expenditures and percentages to increase dramatically over the first half of 2025 as survivors who were previously funded by AFTT are transferred to Bridges & Balm. We are already seeing this as we have funded 12 AFTT survivor transfers in January 2025, and we expect this steep demand trendline to continue for at least the next 3-4 months.
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The Bridges & Balm website displays the latest donation and assistance information and is updated daily Please visit the Funds Overview & Activity page often to see the latest information.
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2024 Operational Enhancements
Exciting things happened in 2024 on the operational side as well. As many of these enhancements were rolled out late in 2024, we are still providing updates and scaling our operations in early 2025. Please visit the Bridges & Balm website and our blog page for more information.
Survivor Assistance Improvements - Bridges & Balm partnered with Pathways to Healing Network (P2HN) to onboard survivors and help the survivor find a qualified therapist. P2HN features familiar faces from AFTT, including Natalie Bolin & Donna Atkinson Smith, and others from AFTT are also assisting them. More details are available on the “Survivors Referred From AFTT” link on the Bridges & Balm CSA/SA Survivor Assistance Fund page.
Following AFTT’s dissolution, Bridges & Balm and other fellowship survivor charities are continuing to accept referrals from AFTT to continue therapy funding for survivors they were assisting. As mentioned above, we expect a significant increase in survivor therapy assistance requests over the next few months.
International Assistance Support - In December 2024, Bridges & Balm extended assistance to survivors and resting / transitioning workers internationally. This has been a huge gap in the past and we are excited to extend our coverage. We have added an approval checkbox to the Bridges & Balm donate page so that you can enable your contributions to be used internationally.
Blog Posts - We are increasing the frequency of our blog posts so check back on our website often! We have started a series of posts that provide help and information for those in need or transitioning to a new lifestyle. We are also initiating a series of monthly mental health posts. Please read and share widely.
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Thank You for a Very Successful 2024
Your generous support has given us the resources to expand our impact. We will keep you informed of both our successes and challenges along the way. Thank you so much for your financial and emotional support!
With the increased referrals from AFTT and growing inquiries from resting and transitioning workers, we will need to scale our operations and fundraising outreach appropriately. We are working to extend our donor base and tap corporate grants and corporate funds to avoid donor burnout. As our spend rate increases to meet our growing needs,we encourage you to check back on our status often and donate when you can.
And join us! If anyone has time and energy and wants to join the Bridges & Balm team please contact us! We would love help with outreach, grant-writing, and social media, although we warmly welcome anyone who wants to make a difference, whatever your background. You can make a difference. We can guarantee you that it will be a very fulfilling and rewarding experience.
Thank you again for your compassion, care, and continued support. You are truly amazing!
