Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank: Making Life a Bit Sweeter for New Parents

By Mary Casey-Sturk

When native Cincinnatian Megan Milstead was pregnant with her second child, she learned that diapers, a large expense for new parents, were not covered by any social services programs. Parents, under economic strain, might use one diaper for days at a time, cleaning them out the best they could or using a plastic bag, and making do. 

As a parent, Milstead could not imagine what it would feel like to not be able to provide such a necessity for her child. She searched for a local diaper bank to donate her time and there were none. This motivated her to create an organization to ensure that every baby in the city she loves had enough clean diapers. Family and friends supported this effort and Cincinnati’s only diaper bank was born in 2015. 

Milstead has grown the organization into one of the largest basic needs banks in the country, and with a team of 5 staff and thousands of volunteers, distributes more than 2.2 million diapers and 550,000 period products annually. Milstead graduated from Miami University and worked in higher-education publishing before leaving the corporate world to run her non-profit full time.   She currently serves as Secretary of the board for Cincinnati-based nonprofit Leadership Council for Nonprofits and is on the Advisory Committee for the National Diaper Bank Network. She was also recently announced as a 2024 winner of The Cincinnati Business Courier’s 40 under 40.

Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank is part of COVERD Greater Cincinnati, which has three programs: Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank, Tidal Babe Period Bank, and Fly & Dry Basic Needs Bank. TB provides period kits to menstruators. F&D provides potty-training toolkits to kids graduating from our SCDB program. At the end of this year, it will expand to adult incontinence supplies as well. 

It is on a mission to promote dignity and health for people in need by increasing awareness of the need for, and access to, essential hygiene products. It envisions a region where people are happy, healthy, and safe because their basic needs are met with dignity. 

A Lack of Diapers Has Long Term Implications

An insufficient number of diapers has many detrimental outcomes for children and families including a lack of physical, mental, emotional, and educational well-being.

Most immediately, an inadequate supply of diapers forces many parents to leave their children in a soiled diaper longer than is appropriate-sometimes for days at a time. This leads to diaper rash, staph, and urinary tract infections. 

When parents run out of diapers, they are forced to withdraw their children from childcare. Without proper childcare, parents cannot work to support their families and cannot attend the schooling that will help them provide a firm economic base for their family. Through a recent Economic Impact Study in partnership with the National Diaper Bank Network, families reported that they would have to work an average of 27 less hours each month if they didn’t have Sweet Cheeks diapers to send to daycare. 

What is Diaper Bank?

Diaper banks provide diapers through partnerships with local social service agencies. This helps SCDB and the agencies take a collaborative approach to help solve a basic need. It avoids unnecessary duplication of services and reduces administrative costs. 

If someone needs diapers, they might have other needs as well. By working with social service agencies, they can help address these other needs as well as provide diapers.  By providing diapers, relationships are built with partner agencies that could keep parents coming back to social programs that can help them break the cycle of poverty. At the end of summer 2024, they are moving operations to Walnut Hills. Milstead states, “We never thought we’d have to move again, but we also didn’t expect to distribute that volume of products we are, expand our programs, and see such an amazing increase in requests for volunteer groups. We need to move to a warehouse that will allow us to grow into our next era, as well as provide the most safe, accessible, and fun experience for all our volunteers and visitors.”

The Bottom Line

Milstead shares, “According to new data from The NDBN (National Diaper Bank Network) Diaper Check 2023: Diaper Insecurity among U.S. Children and Families, 1 in 2 U.S. families cannot afford enough diapers to keep their infant or child clean, dry, and healthy. This is an increase in need from 1 in 3 families just a couple years ago.” Milstead continues, “In 2023 we gave out 2.2 million diapers to Greater Cincinnati families, but I’d be surprised if we met even 20% of the need in our area. We have a list of over 100 organizations that want to partner with us. We were lucky to be awarded one of the first federal grants to participate in a pilot program for diaper distribution programs and are hoping with that increased distribution through our grant partner Hamilton County Community Action Agency that we can get closer to 3 million diapers distributed this year.”

68% of families receiving diapers from Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank work, additionally, 10% of adults are working two + jobs and are still unable to afford an adequate supply of diapers. 63% of families report income under $25,000.

On average, a family spends between $960-$1,200 dollars a year per child on diapers.

1 in 4 families use childcare, 83% of childcare providers require diapers.  Without diapers, families could lose 28 hours of work each month. For an adult making $15/hour, that’s a loss of $4,995 a year.

A recent economic impact study by Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank shares clients’ responses to how getting diapers helped them. This is a sampling: 18.53% allowed them to take their child to daycare, 55.76% reported a reduction in stress, 17.77% shared it allowed them to go to work, 38.9% replied they could buy food, and 25.19% reported that having this assistance made their child healthier.

How You Can Help

Milstead notes that they are grateful to be backed by volunteer and donor support, “We repackage all products that go out into supplement-sized packages based on best practices from the National Diaper Bank Network. Over 4,000 volunteers a year put diapers into bundles and period supplies into kits so we can put together orders for our partner agencies. We couldn’t do what we do without hundreds of hours of volunteer help each month.”

“One of the biggest things people don’t realize is that we purchase 85% of the diapers going out the door each year. Thanks to our membership with The National Diaper Bank Network, we have buying channels that allow us to purchase 2-3x more than someone buying diapers retail at a store. But we’re also buying diapers by the semi-truck. Each semi can cost $35-40k and we need 5-6 a year to maintain our current distribution (not even grow!), so we are constantly fundraising for our next truck of diapers” shares Milstead.

“We also LOVE when the community raises awareness of diaper need and other basic hygiene poverty needs by hosting product drives for us. Every diaper or tampon we don’t have to purchase is a huge win! And finally, we are biased, but we think we have one of the very best volunteer experiences in the area. We need hundreds of volunteer hours a month to make sure our partner agencies get diapers and period supplies to their clients on time. Plus, we can also bring the volunteering off-site for mobile events at companies. It’s a really unique opportunity to give back during a workday and makes for a really equitable, accessible volunteer event”.

For more information, visit www.sweetcheeksdiaperbank.org

Megan Milstead, founder, COVERD Greater Cincinnati, which has three programs: Sweet Cheeks Diaper Bank, Tidal Babe Period Bank, and Fly & Dry Basic Needs Bank.