Taylor Keeney never thought she’d start a nonprofit. “I didn’t need a job,” says the former director of strategic communications and advocacy at Hunton-Andrews Kurth law firm. “I was plenty busy with work and two kids. But it’s truly because of motherhood that I got this started.”
Her Little Hands Virginia, which provides essentials to young families in need of support, started as a weekend project in Keeney’s garage. It now boasts a huge warehouse space in Scott’s Addition, five salaried employees and more than 200 volunteers.
“We work with 80 organizations and agencies throughout the region to identify families and children in need of support, and we bundle up needed items and work with the partners to get them to the family,” she explains. “We can provide just about any item a low-income child would need. “
To get to the truly needy, Little Hands Virginia works with local hospitals, city and county health districts, homeless shelters, food banks and schools. It also makes sure area police precincts have diapers, clothing and car seats on hand “so that the officers don’t have to pool their own resources to help families in need.” In its earliest days, the organization was serving about 25 kids a month. “COVID really made our growth happen faster,” the founder says. “This year alone, we’ve served 10,000 children in the community.”
Her nonprofit also operates like a thrift store so that the community can drop off used items, like baby clothes. The native Californian was inspired to start her organization when she was cleaning out son Taliaferro’s closet while pregnant with her daughter Frances. “Going from a boy to a girl, we had all this baby stuff that I knew we wouldn’t use, and I wanted to give it to a mom who needed it. I couldn’t find an organization to take it to.” She remembers thinking, “What would a mom do if she couldn’t go out and buy diapers, or afford the next size up?”
Little Hands Virginia launched in 2019, just before the pandemic. Keeney leveraged her experience working in state government as former Gov. Bob McDonnell’s press secretary. “Through a contact in the governor’s office, I got connected to social services. I learned that there was a gap in the ecosystem of support here in the Richmond region; 40% of the children in Richmond live below poverty thresholds. I couldn’t let the problem go.”
Correction: In the print edition, we misspelled the name of her nonprofit, it is Little Hands Virginia. Style regrets the error.
