Wana Brands Foundation

Welcome to the Wana Brands Foundation home page! The purpose of this page is to share information about the Foundation and its mission as well as to provide regular updates on its activities and partners. I’m Nancy Whiteman and I am the founder of the Wana Brands Foundation. I’d like to give a bit of background on the foundation and how it came to be.  In October of 2021, Wana Brands, the company that I co-founded in 2010, completed a transaction with Canopy Growth Corporation of Canada. The funds from this transaction enabled me to start this foundation. I have always had a strong desire to give back to the industry, to the communities that we serve, and to the world at large. To that end, our company mission of enhancing lives has always been intermeshed with my personal mission of doing my part to make the world a better place.  The transaction with Canopy provided the resources that enabled me to do that on a much larger scale than I ever imagined through the Wana Brands Foundation. Starting a foundation is an interesting and challenging experience. When I founded the Wana Brands Foundation about a year and a half ago, one of the first questions we needed to address was the purpose of the foundation. With so much need in the world, how would we go about choosing where we wanted to put our time and resources? Because of our history as a company, this question was perhaps easier for me than it might be for others. For many years, Wana Brands (the company, not the foundation) has had an active Corporate Social Responsibility program that aligns with our company mission of enhancing lives. We supported a diverse group of organizations including social justice, housing, food security, climate change and sustainability, safety, community and connection, and mental health. These are all issues that speak to our hearts. For me, the most exciting thing about the Canopy transaction was the opportunity it provided to build on this framework but at a much larger level through establishing the Wana Brands Foundation. While we are focusing on a variety of issues that appear to be separate, what we have learned so far is that they are all far more interconnected than we originally understood. I plan to use this blog to share some of our thought process in setting priorities, how we think about the programs we want to support and how we evaluate impact. These are early days for the Foundation and we still have a lot of learning to do about how to be impactful and conscious givers. I hope you will join us on our journey. #EnhancingLives #Philanthropy #intersectionality #innovation #socialjustice

Earlier this month, we celebrated Outdoor Alliance's 10th anniversary in DC, where we met their first Grasstops Collective cohort and advocated for stronger public land protections and climate action. In just one week, the Grasstops Collective held over 80 meetings on the hill! In 2023, the Wana Brands Foundation helped fund this new training program, empowering advocates to engage with lawmakers and drive national conservation efforts. We’re inspired by Outdoor Alliance's approach to public land conservation, recreation and climate change, and we feel lucky to be a small part of this work.

Earlier this month, we celebrated Outdoor Alliance's 10th anniversary in DC, where we met their first Grasstops Collective cohort and advocated for stronger public land protections and climate action. In just one week, the Grasstops Collective held over 80 meetings on the hill! In 2023, the Wana Brands Foundation helped fund this new training program, empowering advocates to engage with lawmakers and drive national conservation efforts. We’re inspired by Outdoor Alliance's approach to public land conservation, recreation and climate change, and we feel lucky to be a small part of this work.

Thank you to our 150+ non-profit partners doing incredible work to enrich the communities we serve. Visit the link below to read the full report and learn about Nancy's philanthropic, trust-based philosophy powering the Wana Brands Foundation's work. https://lnkd.in/gx9YDqqR

We're proud partners of the Coalition for Food and Health Equity (CFHE). CFHE places special fridges in low-income communities with healthy food that people can take for free. The fridges are stocked with items from minority-owned businesses. Check out the article below highlighting their incredibly innovative approach to food access and community development. We're looking forward to watching CFHE expand their reach! https://lnkd.in/gn7HxS2X Leeja Carter, Ph.D.

Today is the last day of Mental Health Awareness Month. A 2021 study by the National Institute for Mental Health (NIMH) estimates that 22.8% of all U.S. adults (57.8 million) in the United States with mental health issues and 5% have what would be considered severe mental health challenges.   Our children are also struggling. NIMH also reported that 20% of youth experience depression and approximately 32% of adolescents aged 13-18 in the United States experienced an anxiety disorder including generalized anxiety disorder, social anxiety disorder, and panic disorder. These numbers get dramatically worse for LGBTQ youth. According to the Trevor Project's National Survey on LGBTQ Youth Mental Health 2021, which surveyed over 35,000 LGBTQ youth, 42% of LGBTQ youth seriously considered attempting suicide in the past year and 68% of LGBTQ youth reported symptoms of generalized anxiety disorder.   Mental health can be both the root cause as well as the result of many life challenges. Whatever the genesis, it’s clear that anyone struggling with their mental health has a greatly diminished chance of living a happy, productive life.    The Wana Brands Foundation supports organizations that address mental health from different perspectives from addressing urgent immediate needs to developing long-term solutions. Some focus specifically on mental health while others build mental health services into their services for homelessness, substance abuse, or community building. From immediate and urgent needs such as suicide prevention to therapeutic programs, to supporting research on novel treatments for mental illness, WBF has funded over 40 organizations that aim to improve mental health. We’d like to highlight and thank just a few of them: • Reaching Everyone Preventing Suicide: REPS’s mission is to preserve, protect, and promote life by raising suicide awareness and providing a lifeline of support and healing in our community. • Hope for the Day (H.F.T.D) is a non-profit movement empowering the conversation on proactive suicide prevention and mental health education. • Ardent Grove Foundation: Ardent Grove a non-profit, donor-funded mental health clinic that provides low-cost, culturally sensitive, trauma-informed individualized care. • Stout Street Foundation: Stout Street provides a supportive community with mental health services for addicts and alcoholics to help them return to society as thriving and responsible citizens. • Out Boulder County: Out Boulder’s services and support services help ensure the mental health of LGBTQ+ people, families, and communities. • Johns Hopkin’s Center for Psychedelic and Consciousness Research https://lnkd.in/gKTQ2zAG conducts research on the use of psychedelics to create break-through alternative treatments that have the potential to revolutionize options for people struggling with mental health issues. The WBF is honored to be a part of these efforts to improve mental health in our communities and our world.

April is Autism Awareness month and I wanted to share the amazing work of two of the non-profits The Wana Brands Foundation supports in this important area. When I first began to learn about Autism or, more accurately, Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), I was surprised to learn how prevalent it is. Estimates vary, but it is believed that around 2.2% of adults in the US and 1 in 54 children have some form of ASD. Based on these estimates, ASD affects over 6 million people in the United States and creates challenges for them with social skills, speech, and communication which range in degree and severity.   One of the tenets of the Wana Brands Foundation is that we try to balance our giving between meeting immediate needs and supporting longer-term initiatives. Our giving in the area of ASD reflects this approach. Revel, a Denver based non-profit organization describes its mission as helping neurodiverse teens and adults find their passions, potential, and joy. Their programs include social activities, adventure camps, employment assistance, athletics and much more. Their beautiful motto is to create environments for their clients where “you can be yourself but not by yourself”. On the longer-term front, the Foundation also supports the work of the Johns Hopkins Cannabis Science Lab (CSL). CSL is conducting research on the use of CBD, a non-intoxicating cannabinoid for the treatment of ASD. They are currently recruiting for a clinical trial testing CBD in adults with Autism and are working on obtaining regulatory approval for a similar study to be conducted with children. Dr. Elizabeth Wise, Assistant Professor of Psychiatry and Behavioral Sciences and principal investigator of this study, would welcome hearing from anyone who is interested in study information or participation. Her contact information is ewise11@jhmi.edu. Their website (https://lnkd.in/gwjNUu6z) also is a good resource for general information about the cannabis research at JHU. You can also reach out to Dr. Ryan Vandrey  (rvandrey@JHMI.edu) who is a Professor at the Johns Hopkins University Behavioral Pharmacology Research Unit (BPRU) and helps run the Cannabis Science Lab. Thank you Revel and Johns Hopkins University for your contributions to making the world a better place for people with ASD.  

Dear Friends, When I started The Wana Brands Foundation in 2021, I was new to the world of philanthropy. I quickly learned that we had much to learn about what it means to be a thoughtful, impactful donor. I’m pleased to share our first Annual Report that shares some of that journey with you as we evolve in our understanding of the issues we seek to support in our giving and our personal philosophy of philanthropy. To date, we are honored to work with and learn from an amazing collective of community heroes and changemakers. Since our inception, the Wana Brands Foundation (WBF) has given over 150 non-profits. From mobile food markets and emergency shelter to college scholarships, scientific research, and climate solutions, WBF invests in organizations that people truly rely on today and many that are building long-term solutions for a better world tomorrow. Please take a minute to read our 2023 annual report and learn more about our approach to philanthropy and more importantly, our incredible partners.   For those whose don’t have time to read through the annual report in its entirety, we will be sharing some of the key principles we have developed for the WBF and highlighting some of the incredible organizations we support over the next several months.    Thank you for your interest, Nancy Whiteman Founder

Last month, the Wana Brands Foundation supported a community expungement clinic in partnership with Rowan University's Students for Sensible Drug Policy and Blaze Responsibly™️ in Glassboro, NJ. Our favorite part of this initiative was its multi-faceted approach: providing not only record expungements, but also free haircuts, professional headshots, and job placement support. https://lnkd.in/gBfhR3z7

We're proud to support the incredible work of our friends at Outdoor Alliance. Congratulations on this huge milestone! We are honored to be on this journey with you.