Impact reports and growth metrics tell powerful stories about an organization's journey. Beyond numbers, they reveal how communities come together and how changes are created.
This is especially true at Our Wave, where we create online space for survivors of sexual assault to tell their story and connect with others going through similar healing journeys. Through our data-driven platform we can measure survivor healing in unique ways, helping us continuously adapt our tools to better serve our community’s needs.
These measurements revealed an extraordinary picture in 2024, with our data points increasing across nearly every growth metric we track. This article explores how our community grew and evolved in 2024, the challenges we overcame, and our ambitious plans for the future.
Celebrating Key Accomplishments
2024 marked a transformative year for our community of survivors, staff members, and partnerships. Our community more than tripled, expanding from approximately 41,500 users in 2023 to over 158,000 by the end of 2024. While these numbers reflect significant growth, they also represent thousands of survivors finding spaces to connect, share, and support one another on their healing journeys.
This growth extends to how survivors engage with our platform. When we measure content views (meaningful interactions with stories, questions, artwork, or resources), we saw a 217% increase, reaching more than 408,00 views in 2024 alone. To put this in perspective: since our first impact report in 2019, we’ve accumulated 639,879 total views, with the majority occurring this year.
At the heart of our mission is storytelling as a way for survivors to heal from their past experiences and connect with others going through a similar journey. In 2024, survivors shared 527 personal stories, a 55% increase from the previous year. All together, our survivor stories have come from 64 different countries.
Additionally, our Q&A feature, launched in 2023, has become a vital space for connection, with questions tripling in 2024. We’ve seen particularly strong engagement from survivors across the United States, Kuwait, the United Kingdom, Brazil, and South Africa.
“We are deeply appreciative that survivors from across the globe feel comfortable sharing and exploring their healing together with us,” said Kyle Linton, Executive Director of Our Wave. “We hope to repay this trust by improving our platform and working to create the most supportive and healing-enabled community for survivors of all backgrounds, identities, and experiences.”
The year also brought several milestone achievements, including partnerships with NO MORE and Speak Your Truth Today to provide resources for the movie It Ends With Us and the publication of our first research paper in Frontiers in Public Health. We also partnered with SHINE Collective, Alaska Children’s Trust, and me too. International to create their story-sharing sites.
Significantly, 2024 also marked our transition from a volunteer organization to a fully staffed team. As Brendan Michaelsen, Chief Technology Officer notes: “2024 is the year that changed everything for our team. Thanks to the hard work of our fundraising team and generous support from foundations across the U.S., the Our Wave team officially made the transition from a volunteer team to a full-time team for the first time since our founding in 2019.”
Storytelling and Community Impact
As previously mentioned, storytelling lies at the heart of our community’s healing journey. Throughout 2024, we witnessed an increase in how survivors engage with content in our platform, both through messages of hope and reflections on healing. Both types of engagement grew by over 50%. Below are some examples of these exchanges, illustrating the power of connection in our community.
Message of Hope: “To anyone who’s going through something like this, or just something traumatizing in general: I promise you’re not alone, and no matter what you’ll find someone who will listen and hold your hand through all the pain you feel.”
Message of Healing: “Healing to me is being able to live a life doing what I want without my trauma holding me back. Not forgetting, not forcing myself not to feel or think about it, but to not let it limit me. I’m not quite there yet, but I’m trying.”
The support within our community continues to grow stronger. Through our pre-written support messages, survivors can also react to others’ stories. This feature saw a 44% increase in usage from the previous year. The message “You are not alone” resonated most deeply, becoming our community’s most frequently used reaction of support.
“2024 was our biggest year yet by almost all metrics,” said Linton. “Through this growth we are starting to get a better picture of what survivors find the most valuable in our platform, which is then informing what we are building next.”
Our Q&A feature also provided valuable insights into survivors’ needs and concerns. Of the 283 questions submitted in 2024, the majority (158 questions) focused on “Understanding Trauma and Violence.” This has allowed us to provide more targeted and personalized support to survivors who are navigating their healing journey.
“We saw massive upticks in story reads, questions asked, and users actively engaging in the community,” said Michaelsen. “This surge in support of survivor experiences is so powerful and speaks clearly to all survivors: you are not alone.”
Challenges and Lessons Learned
As you can see from these metrics, our community is growing and it’s growing fast. That means our tools, procedures, and mechanisms also need to grow in order to support our community of survivors.
The surge in questions asked from survivors demands expert care, empathy, and evidence-based responses. The operational bandwidth to do this becomes more difficult as our community continues to grow at an exponential rate. We addressed this challenge strategically by:
Prioritizing the development of new tools and refinement of existing ones
Expanding our staff
Securing additional funding to support our growth
We've also observed how global events and social changes directly impact our community of survivors and their engagement with our platform. As Laura Sinko, Director of Research and Survivor Support, explains: "We recognize that major events and public discourses can intensify trauma responses and anxiety among survivors."
In response, our team expanded the capabilities of our Q&A platform and developed additional resources focused on emotional safety and wellbeing. This adaptive approach helps us better serve our community during challenging times.
Furthermore, our international growth brought new opportunities along with its own set of challenges. We’re seeing an increasing diversity of experiences, cultural perspectives, and languages among our users.
“Ensuring that we provide earnest support to such a diverse audience will become a bigger challenge as we continue to grow internationally,” said Linton.
Looking Ahead: Future Goals
Our growth in 2024 has already set a strong foundation for an ambitious 2025. We have many priorities and plans in place including platform innovations, research initiatives, and strategic partnerships.
“Since our platform is online, we have the opportunity to understand healing in a way that is different from many other organizations in our space,” said Linton.
This unique position drives our upcoming platform enhancements, including:
An updated Q&A tagging system
Revamped anonymous user metrics
A comprehensive platform update (2.0)
As part of our platform update, we plan to support our growing international community by incorporating several new languages (Japanese, French, Hindi, Portuguese, Chinese, and Dutch). All of these developments, along with other planned initiatives, prioritize survivors’ healing journeys through interactive community building.
“I'm excited for so many things to come. Particularly, the launch of our 2.0 platform which will create a more dynamic space where survivors can connect directly with each other and find support that's truly personalized to their needs,” said Sinko. “This deeper level of community interaction is something we've dreamt about for so long, and seeing it become reality is amazing.”
Throughout these innovations, we remain anchored to continue supporting survivors through storytelling. We strive to reach 2,000 stories on our platform this year, along with establishing new partnerships, bringing on more board members to guide our growth, and raising $1 million in funds to expand our work.
“By being data-informed, I am excited to find new ways to measure healing (in partnership with research colleagues) and to help survivors find healing through engagement in our online community,” said Linton. “All of this with the intention of sharing our learnings with other organizations along the way.”
Continuing Our Journey Together
As we reflect on 2024’s remarkable achievements, from showcasing more than 500 survivor stories to transitioning to a full-time team, we’re filled with gratitude and hope for what’s to come. This extraordinary year has laid the groundwork for even greater impact in 2025.
None of this would be possible without our dedicated supporters, donors, and partners. We are extremely grateful for the online community that we’ve been able to grow and nurture. Together we can continue to create a world where every survivor has access to empathetic support throughout their healing journeys.
“After seeing everything we accomplished this year,” said Sinko, “I honestly believe we're just getting started and the possibilities are limitless.”
Read our full 2024 Impact Report and join our journey through donating, volunteering, or simply sharing our mission. Your support helps us create a more supportive world for survivors, ensuring that no one walks their healing journey alone.