How Baby2Baby stepped up as LA wildfires raged

What It Covers

Baby2Baby co-CEOs Kelly Sawyer Patrikoff and Nora Weinstein explain how they scaled from distributing donated diapers in a 600-square-foot space to serving one million children annually, responding to 100 disasters including the 2025 LA wildfires.

Key Questions Answered

• •Partnership distribution model: Baby2Baby serves children through 1,000+ partner organizations like hospitals, schools, and shelters rather than directly to families, enabling rapid scaling from eight-bed shelters to the entire LA Unified School District without complex individual intake processes.
• •Celebrity leverage strategy: The organization negotiated corporate partnerships by pairing celebrity endorsements with escalating donation commitments—starting with 100,000 diapers from Huggies, then 5 million diapers with Jennifer Garner, ultimately reaching an $8 million combined cash and in-kind grant fourteen years later.
• •Disaster response infrastructure: Baby2Baby's existing network of local partners enables immediate disaster response because the team already knows which shelters serve vulnerable populations, which schools have homeless students, and where displaced families will relocate when facilities are destroyed or evacuated.
• •Revenue concentration approach: The annual gala generates 60 percent of Baby2Baby's operating budget in one night, growing from $1.1 million in year one to nearly $18 million currently through chef stations, celebrity participation, and live giving rather than traditional sit-down nonprofit events.