LavaMaeˣ + The Right To Shower: Bringing Life-Changing Care to 50,000 Unhoused Americans

 

Mobile shower pioneer LavaMaeˣ and Unilever social enterprise brand The Right To Shower have built a partnership that’s given unhoused people dignity, hope and a fresh sense of opportunity

LavaMaeˣ and The Right To Shower backstory

While working as a senior executive on Unilever’s Dove brand, Laura Fruitman saw LavaMaeˣ founder Doniece Sandoval’s TEDx talk “Choosing to See the Invisible” and was reminded of an experience she couldn’t shake from the early 2000s. “In New York City, I regularly chatted with an unhoused man I saw in my neighborhood,” she says. “I was touched—and troubled—when he told me I was the only person who ever talked to him.”

Inspired by the memory and by Doniece’s call to action, she pitched Unilever in 2018 on creating a purpose-built natural soap and body wash brand that would dedicate 30% of its profits to expanding access to showers, with LavaMaeˣ as a key mission partner. Unilever said yes, and Laura became an entrepreneur in residence, launching The Right To Shower in April 2019 with four fragrances, each named for an emotion she wanted to evoke in users: Joy, Strength, Hope and Dignity.

Those emotions resonated with LavaMaeˣ’s Radical Hospitality® approach, which helps restore dignity, rekindle optimism and fuel a sense of opportunity. Or as a former Los Angeles shower guest, now a housed soon-to-be college graduate, put it: “LavaMaeˣ helped me get clean when I was dirty, both inside and out.”

The two organizations’ shared conviction that hygiene is a human right with a powerful effect on resilience anchored a partnership that has become a model of effective cross-sector action to scale grassroots community initiatives.

Spreading showers and care across the country

Over the past three-plus years, LavaMaeˣ and The Right To Shower have funded 28 organizations in 44 U.S. cities with $370,000, giving over 53,000 guests more than 117,500 showers and other care services and engaging over 4,500 community volunteers.

The Right To Shower provides funding and product donations for hygiene initiatives, while LavaMaeˣ identifies, vets and recommends projects for The Right To Shower grants. This seed funding has an outsize impact: With launch costs for mobile showers ranging from $55,000 to $85,000, depending on the size of the trailer, a $10,000 to $20,000 matching grant from The Right To Shower through LavaMaeˣ is often the last piece a provider needs to bring care services to the street.

“This funding was essential to our program,” says Ricka Davis-Sheard, founder of Share Community in Antioch, Calif. “We are a small, grassroots organization; and funding from The Right To Shower springboarded us forward to be able to offer over 100 showers a month to those in need. Much of our support comes from small donors, so this infusion of capital put us on a healthy track.”

Grants in successive years allow providers to expand service to new locations. Streetside Showers is a good example: Founder Lance Olinski launched shower service in McKinney, Texas, in 2017 with training from LavaMaeˣ on trailer management, guest interaction and more. In the years since, he has expanded to nine locations, six in Texas and three in Florida, with last-mile help from two grants totaling $25,000 through the LavaMaeˣ partnership with The Right To Shower.

 

Scaling impact: funding for training and service innovation makes the difference

Seed funding is crucial, but it’s only one element in scaling the partnership’s impact. The Right To Shower has granted LavaMaeˣ $1.275 million in support of seed funding as well as expanded advising and support services, free toolkits, product innovation and impact data collection.

This investment helped support LavaMaeˣ’s intensive one-on-one mentoring program for promising providers; development of LavaMaeˣ Connect, a global community space where community groups and social entrepreneurs access resources for replicating the LavaMaeˣ model; design and deployment of a do-it-yourself handwashing station for communities that lack access to running water; and toolkits for producing Pop-Up Care Villages, where guests can get haircuts, medical care, legal advice, employment assistance and other free services.

Together, these initiatives have contributed to an explosion of grassroots efforts to help people survive the streets and move beyond homelessness and improve the lives of nearly 57,000 unhoused people (including those using LavaMaeˣ’s direct services). And the ability to provide grants over multiple years has significantly extended the partnership’s impact.

Building an effective cross-sector partnership

A successful corporate-nonprofit partnership is not only about money, however; it’s rooted in a deep level of mission alignment, mutual respect, and willingness and ability to contribute to each other’s objectives. This foundation sets up partners to take a one-team approach and build a relationship that is durable enough to produce ongoing impact.

The Right To Shower and LavaMaeˣ have collaborated on both service expansion and marketing opportunities. LavaMaeˣ collects impact data and stories, for example, and The Right To Shower shares them on its communication channels to show the value of a shower in restoring unhoused people’s hope and dignity.

The partners also work together on high-profile campaigns around events such as Homelessness Awareness Month and World Water Day, as well as on crisis response. Early in the COVID-19 pandemic, The Right To Shower led six Unilever brands in donating products that LavaMaeˣ and its provider network incorporated into hygiene kits for unhoused people.

“The Right To Shower truly integrates our work into their strategy not only via their website, but also through stories showcased on their social media channels, an integrated campaign strategy and podcasts that discuss the experiences of unhoused people,” says Kris Kepler, CEO of LavaMaeˣ. “They saw the initial results and have invested in us year over year, which has not only funded our programming but also helped over two dozen providers scale. Because The Right To Shower really believes in our partnership, we’ve been able to achieve amazing impact together.”

 

Partnership impact highlights

  • Seed funding distributed: $370,000

  • Organizations supported: 28 organizations in 44 cities received funding

  • Human impact: 53,000 guests served with more than 117,500 showers

  • More than 4,500 volunteers engaged

  • Marketing impact: 300 impact stories collected

  • Featured in outlets including Forbes, Allure, Sustainable Brands, Yahoo! Life, Business Insider and Fast Company

Radical Innovation

  • LavaMaeˣ consulted with The Right To Shower and its grantee, Brooklyn Community Services, to host a Pop-Up Care Village in Brooklyn’s Brownsville, N.Y., neighborhood, piloting a new model for corporate social impact initiatives.

  • The Right To Shower created its own 12-episode podcast to break down the intricacies of homelessness and cleanliness, inviting nongovernmental organizations, business leaders, politicians, experts, unhoused people and friends to join the conversation.

Colton Coty