She Founded a Nonprofit to Help Families Pay Burial Costs After Pregnancy Loss
When a pregnancy ends unexpectedly, families are often required to make decisions about burial or cremation within days. Those decisions can come while parents are still processing the physical and emotional shock of the loss.
“I realized how quickly families are expected to make decisions and cover costs while they are still in shock,” Morgan Goodwin said.
Goodwin, Georgia Contemporary Classic Universe, is the founder of The Goodwin Family Project: Hopeful Heart, a nonprofit initiative that helps families cover burial and cremation expenses following pregnancy loss, infant loss, or stillbirth.
Based in Austin, Texas, where she currently resides with her family, Goodwin created the organization after experiencing multiple pregnancy losses herself, including losses during the second trimester. Those experiences exposed both the emotional realities of pregnancy loss and the financial challenges families often face immediately afterward.
In the United States, funeral expenses can average $6,000 to $8,000, according to industry estimates. Even simplified burial or cremation services associated with infant loss can cost several thousand dollars, often requiring families to make financial decisions within days of a loss.
For Goodwin, that reality became the starting point for building a nonprofit focused on direct assistance.
Identifying the Immediate Gap
Goodwin’s advocacy centers on a recurring challenge families encounter after pregnancy or infant loss. While public awareness around miscarriage and stillbirth has grown in recent years, practical financial support is often limited during the earliest days following a loss.
Families may be navigating hospital discharge, medical recovery, and grief while also being asked to arrange burial or cremation services.
“There is a significant gap in support when it comes to immediate, tangible help,” Goodwin explained. “Many families are navigating emotional devastation alongside financial strain, often in silence.”
Pregnancy loss itself is far more common than many people realize. According to the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists, approximately 10 to 20 percent of known pregnancies end in miscarriage, though the number may be higher because many losses occur before a pregnancy is medically confirmed.
Despite how frequently pregnancy loss occurs, conversations about the practical realities that follow often remain limited.
The Goodwin Family Project was created to help address that gap. The nonprofit focuses on raising funds that can be used to provide financial assistance for burial and cremation expenses, helping families navigate one of the most difficult logistical challenges that can follow pregnancy or infant loss.
Through community support, partnerships, and fundraising initiatives, the organization works to expand the number of families it can assist each year.
Choosing to Speak Publicly
For years, Goodwin carried her pregnancy loss experiences privately. Eventually, she chose to share those experiences publicly in order to help other families navigating similar grief.
She later published Incompetent But Hopeful: Finding God’s Purpose Through Loss and Holding onto Hope, a memoir and faith-centered resource for women navigating pregnancy loss.
“Choosing transparency over silence transformed my pain into purpose,” she said.
The book expanded Goodwin’s advocacy beyond personal reflection into public conversation. Families who encountered her story began sharing their own experiences navigating miscarriage, stillbirth, and infant loss.
Those conversations reinforced the need for both emotional support and practical assistance.
Advocacy Through Community and Pageantry
Goodwin’s work now spans nonprofit leadership, speaking engagements, and pageantry.
She was first introduced to pageantry by another pageant queen, Nichol Pham, who encouraged her to consider competing and believed she would be a strong fit for the pageant community. As Goodwin explored the opportunity, she recognized that pageantry could provide a platform to bring conversations about pregnancy and infant loss into spaces where those topics are rarely discussed.
“I realized pageantry could be a meaningful platform to amplify my voice and advocate for families navigating pregnancy and infant loss,” Goodwin said.
Today, she uses her visibility through pageantry to raise awareness about maternal loss while continuing to expand the work of The Goodwin Family Project.
Through advocacy work, digital outreach, and public appearances, Goodwin highlights families in need, shares educational resources, and encourages communities to support organizations working in pregnancy and infant loss advocacy.
“Purpose turns pain into impact, and visibility into responsibility,” Goodwin said.
From its home base in Austin, Texas, Goodwin plans to expand the reach of The Goodwin Family Project through additional partnerships, fundraising initiatives, and speaking opportunities focused on maternal health and grief support.
Her goal is to ensure families experiencing pregnancy or infant loss are not left navigating the financial realities of that loss alone.
“When we choose authenticity over silence, we create space for healing, hope, and change,” said Morgan Goodwin, Georgia Contemporary Classic Universe.