We’ve made tremendous progress at MasksOn.org in the past seven days. We are transitioning from the prototyping phase of the project into full-scale production, and we’ve had several important milestones towards the scalable manufacture and distribution of thousands of MasksOn.org’s Reusable Mask Kits.
These include:
- Developing a rigorous test suite mirroring the standard FDA and NIOSH tests for approved PPE respirators
- Updating operations given revised FDA guidance for non-FDA approved masks during COVID-19 emergency shortage conditions
- Forming an approval committee composed of physicians, engineers, and a medical ethicist. The approval committee must unanimously approve deploying Mask Kit versions for potential clinical use
- Readying our assembly facility at Lightspeed Manufacturing in Haverhill, MA, a COVID-ready manufacturing facility where up to 2,000 Mask Kits can be assembled, tested, and shipped per day
- Transporting 20,000 snorkel masks to Lightspeed in preparation for production
- Readying IT systems for manufacturing control and order fulfillment
- Developing an injection molded version of the filter adaptor so that we can dramatically increase the supply of adaptors
- Executing Fiscal Sponsor agreement with the Fab Foundation enabling charitable 501(c)(3) donations
- Raising $1.9m to date
Our goals for this week include:
- Ramp mask production in Haverhill facility to 1,000 Mask Kits per day
- Ship 5,000 masks to clinicians
- Test and and approve injection molded adaptors to replace current 3D printed version
- Launch coordinated PR campaign to raise funds and awareness
- Relaunch website
- Make meaningful progress towards the new fundraising goal of $5m
INCREASING OUR IMPACT
We have deliberately held off on broad press outreach until we had robust testing and strongly positive feedback from our testing physicians and we were in a position to rapidly scale manufacturing and distribution. Now, as both of these critical milestones have been achieved, we have engaged a PR agency (working pro bono) to coordinate a press launch while we simultaneously increase our capital campaign goal to $5 million to grow our national impact. Specifically we are seeking to secure supply of 80,000 high quality snorkel masks earmarked for our project which would bring the total number of Mask Kits we can distribute to over 100,000.
HOW YOU CAN HELP
We are so grateful for your contributions so far, and with your help we hope to offer even more relief to front-line healthcare workers. Please consider sending this message with a note about your own gift to 3-4 friends who you think will help.
Thank you from all the team at MasksOn.org!
P.S. We hope you enjoy the photos of deliveries to a hospital in Boston, and a clinician wearing one of our masks on the front lines in New York City.
