To Trina Spear, cofounder and CEO of medical apparel brand Figs, change for the healthcare industry has to start with a focus on healthcare workers.
“We believe if you serve the provider, they will be able to better serve the patient,” she says. “And that drives better outcomes. That drives a better healthcare system.”
As part of that focus, Figs gave away hundreds of thousands of scrubs, organized healthcare worker retreats, and donated some $510,000 to healthcare nonprofits in 2024 alone.
Now it’s expanding that work by launching its own nonprofit, the Awesome Humans Foundation, which will provide financial support, training, and resources to healthcare professionals.
“Our mission is to serve those who serve others, so impact has always been ingrained into the center of the company,” Spear says. “The big vision that we’ve always had is, How do we make the experience of being a healthcare professional, no matter where you live around the world, the best it can possibly be?”
How Figs has helped healthcare workers
Figs has long called its customers (and generally every healthcare worker) “awesome humans.” And the company has done more than just sell those workers scrubs and lab coats.
For instance, Figs launched a healthcare advisory board focused on policy solutions around pay, mental health, workplace safety, reduced administrative burdens, and more. The Santa Monica-based company wrote checks to healthcare professionals after the Los Angeles fires to help them get food, support local relief efforts, or get medical essentials for their hospitals.
And it’s donated thousands every year—to nonprofits like the Dr. Lorna Breen Heroes’ Foundation, which focuses on mental well-being for healthcare workers, and the Student National Medical Association, which provides mentorship and training.
With its own foundation, though, Figs hopes to have an even bigger impact. It also now has the ability to fundraise for that work.
“We’re going to be able to donate multiples [of Figs’s annual charitable giving], because we’ll be basically crowdsourcing the world,” Spear says. “If you care like we care, we’re going to be able to do big things together.”
The nonprofit’s focus
The Awesome Humans Foundation will have four main focus areas. The first, dubbed “Rapid Relief for Awesome Humans,” will provide direct financial support to healthcare professionals (who live or study in the U.S. or its territories) who face any sort of monetary hardship.
The way Figs supported L.A.-area healthcare workers after the wildfires would fit into that bucket, for example, but through a nonprofit instead of the company writing checks off its balance sheet.
Next, the foundation will offer “Future Icons” grants of $10,000 to help cover tuition costs and fees for U.S. healthcare students. “Coming out [of school] with a ton of debt is super debilitating and very hard, and how can we relieve that burden?” Spear says.
That burden may soon grow for some healthcare workers, too.
The Trump administration recently removed an array of healthcare titles—including nursing, physical therapy, and dental hygiene—from the Department of Education’s “professional” graduate degree program list, meaning those degrees now face stricter student loan limits.
The nonprofit’s third pillar will be its “Ubuntu Grant,” which will fund other nonprofits—in the U.S. and internationally—that support healthcare workers. (Unbuntu is an African philosophy that has been translated as “I am because we are.”)
Its fourth piece, called the Healthcare Is Human Award, will reward healthcare leadership and advocacy. For that, anyone can nominate a healthcare professional they see making an impact. (Nominations will be open July 1 to August 31, 2026.)
Figs expects the Awesome Human Foundation to make its first grants shortly after its launch on Giving Tuesday, December 2.
To the company, this nonprofit aims to fill a void it saw in the philanthropy space. “There was no organization that was really focused on all healthcare professionals that served all their needs,” Spear says. “So we had to build it ourselves.”