The PEPartnership Alliance began in September 2010, under one-year funding from the Madison Community Foundation. Understanding how important personal and household hygiene products are, the Alliance works to make these products more visible as necessities to the community at large and to policy makers, and to improve their availability to people in need. We’re particularly interested in making these products available on a more reliable basis so that that people in poverty can better plan their budget and expenditures to make best use of the resources they have available.

All of the PEPartnership agencies provide products for personal and household hygiene. Guests are invited to use any of the PEPartnership agencies (though guests should check each agency’s website for full eligibility requirements, if any).

Products are distributed based on household composition and product lifespan across all PEPartnership agencies; see Products->The Essentials for more detailed information.

Each time a guest shops at a PEPartnership agency, they receive a shopping list of all available products that they are eligible for. When the guest turns in the list, a pantry staff member fills the request, and later enters the products received into our database. A shopper can return to the next available pantry if an item on their list was out of stock, with the database already knowing what they were given. This way, each individual product can have its own lifespan and container definition, and spans product distribution over all pantries in the area. It also ensures that no agency is double-filling a need.

Information on using the PEPartnership can be found in the guest brochure, in English or in Spanish. If you'd like to become a sponsor of the PEPartnership, please visit our donation page. Sponsor donations are shared proportionately across all agencies in the PEPartnership.