Our 2024 Highlights…
2024 has been a year full of exciting milestones and celebrations for Jack’s Basket! As we get ready to ring in 2025, it felt fitting to reflect on some of the highlights from this truly incredible year…
Celebrating 10 Years of Jack’s Basket: In March, Jack’s Basket celebrated its 10th anniversary! I’m still in awe that we have been able to do this work for an entire decade and I am so thankful for all the people who have joined our community and supported us along the way. Seeing our incredible community come together at our 10th Anniversary party was certainly a highlight of the year! We had so much fun celebrating the impact we’ve had, the babies we’ve welcomed, and the connections that have been made. It was a beautiful reminder that it really is so much more than a basket!
Launching the “Communicating Unexpected News” Medical Curriculum: In honor of World Down Syndrome Day on 3/21, we launched our latest tool for medical providers! In collaboration with our incredible medical team, we developed a curriculum for providers to change the way that a diagnosis of Down syndrome, or any unexpected medical news, is communicated. By sharing ways to deliver the diagnosis with compassion and without bias, this curriculum will change the way the story starts for families! We’ve been excited by the response to this tool so far, and look forward to many more providers engaging with it in 2025!
Welcoming the 9,000th Baby: In May, we celebrated the milestone of welcoming our 9,000th baby with a Jack’s Basket! This in-person delivery happened all the way in Alaska, and was such a perfect example of the far-reaching impact that we’ve been able to have!
Onboarding the first International Parent Volunteer: In June, we took another step in expanding our global impact by welcoming our first international Basket Delivery Parent to our team of volunteers! Dorothy has been able to deliver several baskets in Singapore, and we are thrilled that our international families now have the opportunity to have an in-person connection! We look forward to welcoming more international volunteers in the coming year!
Hosting our first Webinar: In August we had an exciting “first” for our Diagnosis Advocacy work! We hosted a webinar for Genetic Counselors on communicating unexpected news with compassion. Nearly 600 providers joined us and hundreds more have engaged with the recorded version since then – we are simply blown away by the response! Medical providers are present in every family’s story, and this webinar means that the story will start differently for so many families!
Raising a record-breaking amount at the Gala: In October we celebrated the 8th Annual ‘You Make Me Better’ Gala! It was a beautiful night celebrating those we love with Down syndrome and all the ways they make us better! Because of the incredible generosity of our community, we were able to surpass our fundraising goal, and ended up raising over 1 million dollars for future babies, families, and providers! Even now, we are still pinching ourselves! Our biggest thanks to everyone who supported the Gala and made the night such a success! By surpassing our fundraising goal, we are prepared to celebrate more babies than ever before in 2025, and invest in exciting new projects to help make that goal a reality!
Celebrating the 10,000th Baby: We ended the year on the best note possible! In November, we welcomed the 10,000th baby with a Jack’s Basket right here in Minnesota! Being able to deliver the 10,000th basket 10 years after delivering the very first one was such a special full-circle moment and one that I will always be grateful for. 10,000 babies welcomed with love and celebration! TOGETHER we have impacted these families and I can’t thank you enough!
These special milestones wouldn’t be possible without each and every one of you. YOU truly are Jack’s Basket, and I am incredibly grateful for your support in all of these endeavors. While we have big goals for 2025, our mission will always be the same – celebrating babies with Down syndrome the way they deserve to be. Thank you for being on this journey with us. I’m excited to see the impact we have, together, in 2025.
You make me better,
Carissa Carroll, Jack’s Basket Founder & CEO
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