MindfulMarch Fundraiser Spotlight

YogaSix South Hills

Meet Jarrid and Krissy Danburg, owners of YogaSix South Hills, a yoga studio located in Pittsburgh, PA! Jarrid and Krissy watched The Crash Reel, and upon further investigating LoveYourBrain, discovered MindfulMarch. They knew they wanted to get involved!

Jarrid and Krissy leveraged their studio’s one-year anniversary celebration to raise awareness about traumatic brain injury (TBI), share their personal story, and support LoveYourBrain. To date, they’ve raised over $2,500 for MindfulMarch - and we’re incredibly grateful! Krissy sat down with us to share their inspiring story below!

Why did you decide to fundraise for MindfulMarch?

We were celebrating the 1 year anniversary of our yoga studio and wanted to give-back to commemorate this occasion. LoveYourBrain aligns with our line of business in yoga, but also personally, our daughter suffered a TBI when she was 6 months old.

Awareness of the TBI community and those impacted by TBI was something we felt aligned with our philanthropic goals. We feel like this fundraiser is truly just the beginning of how we can help the TBI community. The LoveYourBrain team and technology platform made the whole process easy and seamless.

MindfulMarch fundraisers make a big difference for LoveYourBrain.
What kind of impact do you hope to see for people affected by TBI?

We want the TBI community and those who are caregivers of a loved one with a TBI to know that they don't have to suffer in invisibility. There is a community of people who want to empower, support and offer a way to find resiliance, especially in yoga. For us there is no better community to do that in rather than a yoga studio. We look forward to continuing to grow in our training and offerings at YogaSix for this community.

Tell us about your donation-based classes! What made them successful?

We dedicated an entire day to hosting yoga classes that raised money for LoveYourBrain. In order to participate in 1 of our 8 classes offered on Saturday, March 19th people needed to purchase a $10 class credit.

We welcomed members and non-members of our studio to come in and help participate in this day of classes. We shared our personal story of why we chose LoveYourBrain in an email to our community and promoted our celebration schedule on social media, as well as additional emails leading up to the event.

Finally, every person that signed up to take a LoveYourBrain donation class had their name added to a pledge card that we displayed in our studio on our front desk. We had over 105 participants in our classes and over 10 additional, individual donations to our Team page.

Did you run into any challenges along the way?

Jarrid and I personally struggle with sharing our daughter's TBI history, as we often feel that HER experience is HER story and not ours to tell. So it is often hard to share what she has been through. But what we found in sharing this vulnerable side of our family was other members of our community coming forward to share their appreciation in supporting this organization, as many had a personal experience with TBI. We learned of members who personally suffered a TBI or had a loved one go through a brain injury. We had a teacher who's father had a TBI, a member who's wife had a stroke and another member who suffered numerous TBI's in the past. We felt that learning of these shared experiences strengthened our conviction in partnering with LoveYourBrain. With LoveYouBrain, the inclusion of caregivers of people with TBI really made us feel included in this life experience.

Tell us a little about YogaSix South Hills!
How did you integrate mindfulness and community into your MindfulMarch fundraising?

We are a yoga studio that focuses on creating an accessible yoga practice to all levels. We truly feel that this fundraiser is just the first step in creating awareness around yoga, mindfulness and community to those impacted by TBI. With 8 yoga classes we really tried to emphasize the connection between yoga and healing. We look forward to going deeper as a studio in the future.

What advice would you share with other fundraisers?

We were worried that our members would be upset that they weren't able to practice using their membership the day of our donation classes. However, we never heard a single complaint. Our community understood that we wanted to do something good for others and asking for a small donation was something most were willing to help with. Seeing our members show up in support of our family and this fundraiser was a highlight of the weekend.

We’re grateful to Jarrid, Krissy, the YogaSix community, and all of our fundraisers! Be sure to check out YogaSix’s fundraising page below!