Photo by Alex Gagne

Jeff Feingold (MBA 1997) launched Hope and Comfort out of his Boston-area garage in 2011 to address the issue of hygiene insecurity in Massachusetts. "If you don't have basic hygiene products, it's very hard to stay clean, healthy, and confident," he explains. "No one should have to wake up in the morning and go through the day worried about how they look, smell, or feel because they can't afford a bar of soap or a tube of toothpaste."

Between 2011 and 2015, Feingold estimates, the nonprofit supplied 100,000 items to social-service organizations for distribution to those who lacked access to hygiene products. In 2016, the organization moved to a larger space and hired its first employee. A few years later, it moved to a still-larger location.

In the early days of Hope and Comfort, Feingold sometimes struggled to explain the concept of hygiene insecurity to the public and potential funders, most of whom had difficulty understanding that hygiene products are as fundamental to health and well-being as food. But the pandemic changed that: Suddenly, everyone understood the importance of a bar of soap; the organization distributed 1.5 million in the first year of the pandemic.

The bigger challenge today is sourcing these vital products in the face of inflation and snags in the supply chain. Today, Hope and Comfort is still one of the few nonprofits distributing hygiene products, says Feingold, who retired from his full-time position at Fidelity in 2019 and is now a full-time volunteer with the organization. In 2021, the organization gave away 2 million items to more than 225 other nonprofits. He estimates that staggering number will meet less than 10 percent of the true need in Massachusetts.

"A solution isn't a solution unless it's the solution at the scale of the problem," Feingold says, paraphrasing a lesson he learned while at HBS. Over the next five years, Feingold hopes to expand the size and reach of the organization, distributing 10 million products annually, with Hope and Comfort leading the charge for transformative solutions through technological innovation in distribution, state and federal legislation, and corporate commitments to ending hygiene insecurity nationwide.

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