This week’s 1 Million Cups at the Kauffman Foundation featured a nonprofit that provides diapers for babies in need and a startup that delivers fresh fruits and vegetables to office workers.

The panel of startup questioners consisted of Shelly Kramer, owner of V3 Integrated Marketing; 1 Million Cups organizer Milton Jeffrey; and Nathan Kurtz, a manager in entrepreneurship for the Kauffman Foundation.

Happy Bottoms at 1 Million Cups

Liz Sutherlin, executive director of area diaper bank Happy Bottoms, began her pitch by explaining the importance of the nonprofit organization that she’s led since 2011. Economically challenged families struggle to afford diapers, she said, because they are not covered by food stamps or any other government-funded social safety net program.

Happy Bottoms steps in to provide clean, disposable diapers to families, including supplying 1.138 million diapers to more than 5,000 children in 2014. Cloth diapers aren’t a practical option, Sutherlin said, because the “families we serve don’t have any way to sanitize cloth diapers.”

Happy Bottoms partners with other local nonprofit groups and hospitals in making diapers available to children in an individualized two-year program, on an emergency basis and for newborns headed home from the hospital. The organization currently distributes 100,000 diapers a month with the capacity to distribute 125,000 to 150,000 a month.

After serving four years as Happy Bottoms’ volunteer executive director, Sutherlin, a former pharmacist, said that she was looking to replace herself this year with a paid executive director. Such a move might also help the organization receive additional funding.

“We’ve actually been turned down on grants, because we don’t have a paid executive director,” she said.

Fresh2DeskKC at 1 Million Cups

Next up was former attorney Frank Tarantino, whose Fresh2DeskKC enterprise delivers fresh produce to business offices as a snack alternative to junk food.

“I believe that if I can provide easy access to delicious, healthy fruits and vegetables, I can improve some of your lives,” Tarantino said. He noted that “eating healthy is not easy” and “incorporating healthy food every day is a challenge, especially at work,” where vending machines can dominate dietary choices.

Although Fresh2DeskKC specializes in office deliveries on a subscription basis, it also delivers to residences. The business’s least expensive option for customers is $9.99 for a weekly delivery of fruits and vegetables or $10.99 every other week.