Text “MASKS” to 844-974-2444 to donate PPE via our hotline
At GetUsPPE and Supplies Save Lives, we are excited to announce that we have formed a partnership, combining efforts to get donated personal protective equipment (PPE) to the frontline healthcare workers who desperately need it. Through our joint efforts, we are offering a nationwide text hotline: anyone who has PPE to donate can text “MASKS” to 844-974-2444.
Since the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic, healthcare workers have been facing critical shortages of the PPE they need to stay safe. This includes masks, gowns, face shields, and other equipment. Supplies Save Lives and GetUsPPE were founded to help solve this PPE crisis.
GetUsPPE was born when emergency physicians on the front lines started a movement to get PPE to healthcare workers. Within about a week, they had brought together a team of skilled volunteers and created a centralized national platform for those who have PPE to donate and for healthcare workers who are facing shortages to register their need.
Since then, GetUsPPE has grown to become a leading grassroots effort to distribute life-saving equipment to healthcare facilities across the country. With many medical workers left with no choice but to reuse the same disposable N95s day after day, the demand for PPE has only grown. GetUsPPE has registered over 8,000 requests for PPE to date, and it has built a robust system to equitably match donations with demand. Meanwhile, PPE donations are coming in from people and companies across the country, and in the month of April alone, GetUsPPE helped transfer these generous donations to healthcare workers. It matched over one million units of PPE with those in need.
Similarly, a group of friends started Supplies Save Lives (SSL), to stop talking and start doing something about the lack of reliable PPE. It all began when Dr. Jennifer Lang, a medical doctor specializing in OB/GYN, heard from a local Los Angeles hospital that they were in need of PPE. Rob Kramer, the founder of Purpose Labs, and Raina Kumra, the founder of Juggernaut and Partner at The Fund LA, decided to do something about this. They donated 26 masks to cheering medical staff at the local hospital, and they realized the needed to scale up both donations and deliveries urgently to protect LA’s frontline medical workers.
Soon, Langka Domberger and her daughter Addy became the first to make pick-ups and deliveries of PPE, putting their sprinter van to use. From there, SSL took a hyper-local perspective as they grew a batch of volunteers and drivers. To scale the program, they set up a toll-free number (844-974-2444) for the general public to text, using technology from Twilio, the leading cloud communications platform.Twilio.org, the social impact arm of Twilio that supported the initiative, also made it possible for SSL to respond to donors via SMS.
Through our new partnership, GetUsPPE and SSL are taking the text hotline national. Now, anyone in the United States can text MASKS to the hotline number, and they will be directed to a form to enter information about the PPE they have to give. This information will be kept private. From there, they will be directed through the next steps to make the donation.
Together, GetUsPPE and SSL will deliver PPE to more people like this nurse, in an exchange with SSL, after the organization dropped masks off at her house:
In the fight against COVID-19, healthcare workers on the front lines are not giving up, and neither are the people working to help them stay safe, including all of the people who have searched their kitchens and garages to find PPE to donate. Every mask and every pair of gloves counts. Join our movement and donate life-saving equipment today by texting “MASKS” to 844-974-2444.
