The Accunet Ambassadors | Meagan Johnson | Milwaukee Diaper Mission

From Two-Car Garage to Milwaukee’s Lifeline: The Story Behind Milwaukee Diaper Mission

In 2020, Meagan Johnson was a stay-at-home mom teaching cloth diaper classes at a local community center. She had no business background, no nonprofit experience, and no grand plans to change Milwaukee. What she had was curiosity about the diaper industry and a few hours of free time to research.

That research changed everything.

“I came across the statistic that one in three families struggle to afford diapers,” Johnson recalls.

These discoveries stopped her cold. As someone who had used cloth diapers to save money, she hadn’t personally struggled to afford them. The realization that so many families faced this burden was jarring.

“I can’t stop thinking about this issue. I can’t sleep at night. Like I need to do something about this. And I just became incredibly passionate.”

The Gap That Shouldn’t Exist

Milwaukee, despite having more nonprofits per capita than nearly any city in America, lacked something fundamental: a diaper bank.

“The last thing I wanted to do was start a nonprofit and duplicate services that already existed in our community. So that was step number one for me, was to make sure there was no organization doing this specific mission.”

Once she confirmed the gap, Johnson reached out to diaper banks across the country to learn their models. The timeline was compressed by necessity—the pandemic had intensified family struggles, and this resource needed to exist immediately.

“The research and development phase was expedited. It was about, you know, three or four months, and then we launched in September of 2020.”

Starting Small, Thinking Big

Milwaukee Diaper Mission began exactly where you’d expect a grassroots nonprofit to start: Johnson’s garage.

“I started in my two-car garage. So in September of 2020, I hosted a supply drive and filled my two-car garage with diapers. And then I was like, okay, now what? Okay, we gotta figure out how to distribute these.”

Five years later, that garage operation has evolved into something remarkable. The organization is about to exceed distributing one million diapers in a single calendar year. But Johnson maintains perspective about both the milestone and what it represents.

“The milestones never get dull. They’re always exciting. There’s always something to celebrate. But there’s also a balance you have to strike with celebrating these incredible milestones and the impact we’ve made, but recognizing the fact that the reason we have to do this is because families don’t have what they need and our community is truly struggling.”

A Network Approach

Rather than operating traditional distribution sites, Milwaukee Diaper Mission functions more like a supply chain hub. They partner with existing organizations—food pantries, domestic violence shelters, home visiting agencies, doulas, and midwives—that already serve families in need.

“We strategically partner with nonprofits and government agencies that are already working with families in need that are already providing supportive services to those families. And we provide this reliable source of products to them so that they can provide them for the families they work with.”

This approach serves multiple purposes. It meets families where they already receive services, reduces barriers to access, and leverages existing trust relationships in communities.

Johnson is particular about which organizations they partner with, prioritizing those with minimal barriers and choice-based models.

“We love to work with food pantries that don’t require you to physically bring your child to prove that you have a child and you need diapers. That’s a real thing that some organizations do. We like to work with organizations that take your word for it, that you need support and they give you that support on the spot.”

Currently, Milwaukee Diaper Mission works with 28 distribution partners, with about 20 more on a waiting list.

Beyond Diapers

Despite the name, Milwaukee Diaper Mission provides more than baby diapers. From day one, they’ve distributed period supplies and adult incontinence products. The name stuck before Johnson could fully incorporate all services into the branding.

“At a certain point it was too late. We started to get, you know, some brand recognition and kind of became more of a household name, and at this point it feels kind of ridiculous to change our name. So we’re constantly educating folks on the fact that we also provide period supplies and adult incontinence supplies in addition to those baby diapers.”

The mission clarity, however, remains powerful in its simplicity.

“You can’t argue with babies. I mean, we’re supporting babies.”

Sustainable Growth

Johnson approaches expansion with deliberate caution. Other diaper banks distribute millions of items monthly, but Milwaukee Diaper Mission prioritizes sustainable, responsible scaling over rapid growth.

“I’ve always been adamant that we scale incredibly responsibly because the last thing I wanna do is over promise and under deliver and let down our community.”

This philosophy extends to their mission statement, which intentionally includes the word “reliable.”

“We don’t want to just burnout and disappear and leave everyone hanging. We wanna be reliable, not just to families, but also to those small nonprofits we partner with.”

The organization operates with practical constraints that reflect this measured approach. They don’t provide delivery services to partner organizations, requiring pickups instead. They use pallet jacks rather than forklifts to manage costs and liability. Their electric pallet jack even has a name—Kathy—reflecting the personal, community-focused culture Johnson has built.

The Bigger Picture

Johnson sees potential for expansion into postpartum support, recognizing the connection between basic needs and maternal mental health.

“Diapers are crucial for postpartum maternal mental health. If mothers have access to diapers, they worry less and stress less about their baby being clean and dry.”

But that expansion waits for the organization to fully serve Milwaukee’s current need.

“We have a huge gap in our community and a huge mountain to climb as far as reaching every family to be able to provide these items to them. Milwaukee’s a big city. We have a lot of zip codes to get into and a lot of partnerships to perform so that we’re reaching every corner of our city before we can add on more programming.”

The BIG Give Back

Each September, Milwaukee Diaper Mission runs their biggest fundraiser: the BIG Give Back. The two-week campaign aims to raise $50,000 while building community awareness. This year runs from September 7-21, coinciding with National Diaper Need Awareness Week and ending on the organization’s fifth birthday on September 21^st.

Cue the Earth, Wind, & Fire references!

The campaign emphasizes fundraising over supply drives because bulk purchasing power matters.

“We can purchase about twice the amount of diapers that you can at the store with our bulk buying. So when we buy diapers, we buy tens of pallets. Like we buy half a truckload, we buy a semi full of the sizes that we actually need in that moment that we can then distribute.”

What began as one person’s sleepless nights about an aching problem has become Milwaukee’s answer to a need that affects one in three families. Johnson’s story illustrates how community solutions often emerge not from grand plans, but from individuals who simply cannot ignore what they’ve learned.

The warehouse that now stores pallets of diapers taller than most people started as curiosity in a two-car garage. The network of 28 partner organizations began with phone calls asking why this resource didn’t exist. The million diapers they’ll distribute this year started with one person who couldn’t sleep until she did something about what she’d discovered.

Sometimes the most important community infrastructure starts with someone who just can’t let go of a problem that needs solving.