The Ruby Love Community: How 1% Can Make a Difference

From the get-go, Crystal Etienne's line of sight was clear. The successful founder and CEO of the period apparel company Ruby Love always knew that she wanted to create something that would empower women. By focusing the conversation on feminine hygiene and health through her company, she is showing the world that these important topics can be amazing opportunities for celebration and self-love. Today, Ruby Love is a leader within the teen feminine care demographic and operates worldwide. Among its largest markets are the US, Canada, and the UK. 

With the overflow from her success, Etienne felt it was high time for Ruby Love to give back to the community. Simultaneously, she wanted her beloved Ruby Love customers to have the option to create real change with their purchases by donating to causes that the femtech company is passionate about.

Thus, in partnership with Beam, a social tech company, Ruby Love has enabled its customers to turn their spending power into direct funding for high-impact charitable organizations. Upon checkout, customers now have the opportunity to donate 1% of their purchases. These donations will go directly to their nonprofit of choice among the available options on the site. 

But with so many worthy causes to support, how did Ruby Love narrow down the list? According to Etienne, they wanted the organizations to match the key values of the Ruby Love brand and fit in with the period apparel category. Thus, they strategically focused on charities specific to feminine health, women's entrepreneurship, menstrual equity, and racial justice. 

Here are the organizations that Ruby Love is partnering with, to push its advocacy of empowering women:

1. Solar Sister: Solar Sister is a unique social entity that works toward more equitable energy access, climate justice, and women's rights movements by investing in local women's enterprises in off-grid communities. They see the immense significance of reaching those beyond business-as-usual energy models. The nonprofit strongly believes that empowering "local women in the clean energy sector is critical to wiping out poverty and bringing about sustainable solutions to climate change and other critical development issues."

2. Lipstick Angels: Lipstick Angels aims to restore dignity, strengthen hope, and boost the self-esteem of individuals with cancer or other chronic illnesses. The nonprofit makes these possible by providing clean-beauty and wellness programs that are "complementary, personalized, and oncology-sensitive." These beauty and skin care services are offered by a compassionate team of professional make-up artists and estheticians in hospitals, at patients' bedsides, or while treatments are ongoing. 

3. Center for Black Women's Wellness: Rooted in community, the Center for Black Women's Wellness (CBWW) is a leading family service center committed to enhancing the health and overall well-being of underserved Black women and their loved ones. From its initial beginnings as a self-help group to develop resiliency among low-income women, CBWW now provides an extensive range of programs and services for optimizing health, strengthening families and communities, and advancing health equity in Metropolitan Atlanta. 

4. Days for Girls: The crystalline mission of the nonprofit Days for Girls is to "turn periods into pathways." Their primary goal is to increase access to menstrual care and education to shatter period stigma and eventually demolish the limitations holding back women and girls. This is the driving force behind their relentless efforts in developing global partnerships, cultivating social entrepreneurs, mobilizing volunteers, and innovating sustainable solutions.