Only Human Talks Five Ways to Give Back

We had the opportunity to chat with Crissy Saint-Massey of Only Human and pick her brain about activism, advocacy, and steps each of us can take to support the causes we care about.

Thanks so much for agreeing to speak with me today. To start out, would you mind telling our readers a little bit about yourself and your background?
Absolutely. So, I’m Crissy Saint-Massey. I’m one of the owners of Only Human alongside my best friend and founder of OH, Bree Pear. Only Human really was born out of Bree’s individual story of struggle and how she overcame that. Which was a mix of focusing on her physical health, her mental health, as well as surrounding herself with humans who wanted to give back and give more to their community. I worked with Bree for several years in marketing; she founded Only Human back in 2016, and shortly after, I joined in as a partner.

 You kind of answered on my next question, which is, what is Only Human, and how did it get started? Did you want to touch on that; is there anything else you want to add?
Sure, so Only Human is a global, community organization and platform for good. We’re headquartered here in Pheonix, Arizona and we’re actually opening up a retail location, community space event.

Every month we partner with a nonprofit that impacts humanity in a big way. We design a limited-edition collection of apparel which 10 percent of all sales from goes back into that nonprofit. We help share their mission and help spread brand awareness. We also actively share their resources, recruit volunteers, and host community events around the cause topics as well.

We’re very much rooted in the LGBTQ+ community; that’s one of our core pillars. Bree and I both identify as lesbians. And another core pillar of ours is mental health and suicide awareness. Those two causes are the only two that we actually run campaigns for year long.

Can you tell us about the nonprofit organization you’re working with for October?
Yeah, so for October, we’ve teamed up with the folks over at HeadCount. They’re a nonpartisan, nonprofit organization whose main goal is to engage humans to register to vote and participate in elections. With the U.S. presidential elections coming up, this cycle of elections is super important to the future of humankind, more specifically for oppressed groups such as trans humans, LGBTQ+ humans, people of color. And so, we’ve teamed up with them to try to get people engaged and take part in our country’s democratic system.

That ties in nicely to my next question, which is, given the current political and social climate, what are you guys doing as an organization, to insight change?
So, going back to March, with COVID, we saw a really large spike in mental health crisis and a longing for human connection. Then, in June, we launched our Pride campaign, which was also when everything with the Black Lives Matter movement really rose to the top.

Since then, we’ve actually partnered with the Marsha P. Johnson Institute, which supports trans people of color. And for the first time ever we dedicated one t-shirt, it’s our ‘We Stand With You’ t-shirt, which 100 percent of the profits for the lifetime of Only Human’s existence, will benefit the Marsha P. Johnson Institute. Also in June, we ran a campaign where we matched up to $5,000 in donations to any organizations that were black led. So, accumulatively, since June, we’ve been able to donate over $30,000 to organizations that support black and trans lives.

That’s amazing. So, to get into the meat of the interview; would you like to tell our readers about the five steps they can take to further support the causes they care about?
1.Use your voice: So, one way people could do that is to utilize technology and social media as a platform to expand their voice and share educational resources and causes they care about with their friends, family, and any other followers. I think a lot of times, social media can be viewed as a negative, but if we harness the power of good social media has and we use it to truly move causes forward that it’s a really strong platform for us to utilize. That’s just one quick and low-hanging way for people to amplify and bring awareness to the caused they care about.

2. Donate: Another way to do that is by donating funds. Luckily, Only Human is an organization that was built specifically to do that on a large scale. But, there are certainly other ways to donate funds as well. Something I see our advocate community does all the time is just to use Facebook to start a fundraiser on their birthday. I think what nonprofits usually need is just resources, money, volunteers, and marketing. So, being able to donate funds can really help them set up a system that sustainable for the cause.

3. Volunteer: A third way would be to donate your time. Everything we do at Only Human is based on our impact model, which starts with one individual really working on themselves and defining what they care about, what they value, and what they want to do. Then, linking with others who share those core values of giving back to the community. So, volunteerism is huge with us; we actually have ten cities where we have lead advocates setting up their local community to get involved in volunteerism activities relating to our cause of the month. So, volunteering, whether it’s through us, or any other organization, is really a great way to help the causes you care about.

4. Join Only Human: Another way would be to join our advocacy community, which is both online and, as I mentioned, we have several cities that have hubs of advocates within the community. In Illinois, Florida, Texas, California, all over the country. But, joining into our community gets you right into this really awesome opportunity to link up with other advocates who are local to you and support the same causes. So you can join that at onlyhumanco.com/advocates; it’s a completely free program.

And what I think is cool that we also do is every month our advocates have a challenge related to the cause. So, if they complete that challenge or several other challenges that we have running at any given time, they can actually win impact points and basically score free Only Human merch. And besides that, honestly, the community is just incredible, like we’ve had marriages come out of it and all kinds of stuff. 

5. Take action: I think the last way you could really impact these causes would be to launch your own fundraiser, or if you’re deeply committed to the cause, even start to look into how you could set up your own 501-c3, and really create a lifelong legacy of giving a making an impact. We have a few Only Human advocates who have gotten so into the habit of giving back and thinking about more than just themselves, that they’ve actually gone out and created their own nonprofits. Which just, blows me away every time.

That’s incredible. My last question is, where can our readers find you online?
So, we’re on Instagram at OnlyHuman and on Facebook at Only Human Co; our website is onlyhumanco.com and we also have a YouTube channel. We’re not on Twitter, but everywhere else, you can find us and support a good cause, get involved with other good humans doing good things.