Tuesday, December 2nd, 2003

News Updates

NPT Executive of The Year—Millard Fuller

More Than 150,000 Homes Down—The Rest To Go
Millard Fuller's vision shapes and propels Habitat for Humanity

Forget Millard Fuller's many accomplishments -- helping to build more than 150,000 homes worldwide in an attempt to erase the blight and humiliation of poverty housing, a Presidential Medal of Freedom, and his ability to combine compassion with tremendous marketing skills.

Perhaps the most stunning of all the 68-year-old's achievements is fitting them on a one-page resume. Talk about an innate ability to narrow one's focus and deliver the goods.

The co-founder of Americus, Ga.-based Habitat for Humanity International has received so many prominent awards that thesauruses should list his name under “yearly prestigious award recipient.”

Add another line. The NonProfit Times has selected Fuller as its 2003 Executive of the Year.

At a time when charities nationwide are struggling to make ends meet, Fuller's innovation and success with such a vast and necessary movement is noteworthy. His progressive ideas and marketing know-how keep the 27-year-old movement relevant.

“I'm always thinking up creative ways to promote the work,” Fuller said in an interview with The NonProfit Times at a friend's home in White Plains, N.Y., in between speaking engagements.

Doubt his marketing ability? Try selling a ghetto village to your board members as a plausible theme park and destination spot.

Fuller did, and some 6,500 people have visited the Global Village and Discovery Center in Americus since it opened this past June.

The attraction provides visitors a firsthand view of ghettos abroad along with models of homes Habitat builds in those areas. Visitors receive hands-on training in such things as brick and tile making.

“It's proven to be very successful,” Fuller said, adding that the state put a train stop adjacent to the village, which also stops at former President Jimmy Carter's boyhood home in nearby Plains, Ga.

The Discovery Village is the latest in a line of seemingly curious decisions Fuller has made that leave skeptics scratching their heads and him proving them wrong.

The village has already paved the road for at least one lucrative partnership, Fuller said. He explained that he walked a man who was teetering as to whether to enter a $2 million partnership with Habitat through the village. “He was visibly touched,” Fuller said. “He was saying ‘No, no, no, I'm not going to do this partnership and then he walks in and says Yes, yes, yes.' It was part of the equation of selling him.”

A visitor from England was so touched after visiting the village that she agreed to pay for a house in Africa and wrote a check on the spot, Fuller said.

“That's the idea, that you will motivate people” Fuller said. “We bring the slums to the affluent.”

Fuller estimated that the Global Village will average 70,000 visitors a year. That's not a stretch, considering roughly 60,000 people visit the Jimmy Carter National Historic Site each year. Still more arrive to hear former President Carter teach Sunday school at a local church.

Business Know How

Then again, entrepreneurial savvy has been a part of Fuller's life since his dad bought him a pig and set him up with a bookkeeping system.

“He was a terrific salesperson, still is,” said Morris Dees, Fuller's first business partner and founder of the Southern Poverty Law Center in Montgomery, Ala. “He's an exhaustively dedicated and a driven individual.” “I love to promote things,” Fuller said. “I love to make things grow.”

Fuller was a millionaire by age 29 because of the company he founded with Dees. The two college students met at a Young Democrats gathering. After a long talk that finished around 3 a.m., they were business and law partners with a simple mission statement, to “get rich,” Fuller said. “We launched into a whole lot of business ventures -- almost all of which worked,” Fuller said. They sold tractor cushions through Future Farmers of America -- 20 train carloads in three months at one point. They sold cookbooks, rat poison, candy, toothbrushes, and “all of it just made money,” Fuller said.

An early idea of selling mistletoe failed after they couldn't get it down from the trees, even after shooting at it with rifles, Fuller recounted.

“Back then we always tried to come up with a name that quickly said what we were doing,” said Dees. “It's important to sum up what you're doing in a brand name so people can identify with it.”

A knack for promotion never left Fuller.

He still pumps out catchphrases that simplify complex thoughts and give Habitat an immediately recognizable identity. It's well known that Habitat's home-building mission is founded on hard work, (“sweat equity”), and employs the “theology of the hammer” with emphasis on action.

After Fuller's business success nearly wrecked his marriage, he recommitted himself to his wife, and gave his fortune mostly to Christian enterprises.

From there, he said that he followed God's will. “I was looking for a way in my life to please God,” Fuller told a crowd at the Princeton Club in New York City, during yet another stop on his tireless tour of spreading Habitat's mission. “Somebody once said, when the student is ready to learn, the teacher shows up.”

Fuller widely credits Clarence Jordan, who ran Koinonia Farm, a Christian Community near Americus, for giving him the seed for what was to become Habitat.

“My dad was a very successful small businessman, and he did teach me about the basics of business. He always was encouraging to me about business ventures,” Fuller said. “But he was not the deep thinker that Clarence Jordan was about spiritual matters.”

An abandoned chicken barn

Fuller's house building initiative had its philosophical start during the late 1960s. Habitat held its first organizing meeting in an abandoned chicken barn in 1976.

How it's grown.

Habitat's total revenue has nearly doubled since 1996 to $747.9 million in 2002, the latest figures available. Public support sprang from roughly $196.8 million to $416.6 million during the same time.

Habitat's international headquarters anticipates a 7.9 percent increase in total revenue in fiscal year 2004 ($190.2 million), not including affiliates, said Dennis Bender, senior vice president communications, Habitat for Humanity International.

Public support, however, experienced a roughly $4.8 million drop in 2002 compared with the previous year. Habitat figures for the fiscal year ended June 30, 2003 were not available as of press time.

The group is making adjustments. It's attempting to reduce its reliance on direct marketing -- roughly one-third of the international office's 2004 projected total revenue -- because that area is maturing, Bender said. Projections do not include affiliates.

Fuller said the group, which mails more than 50 million letters a year, isn't moving away from direct marketing, but it will become a smaller percentage of revenue as it increases. Each Habitat mortgage payment goes into the organization as revenue.

While total revenue consistently climbs, the average cost of a Habitat house in the United States does too, swelling to $53,309 this year up from $46,647 in 1999.

Solving Problems, Building Revenue

The group is following advice Fuller gave in a published collection of essays, Building Materials for Life, “don't fight problems -- solve them.” Planned giving, especially bequests, is becoming increasingly important, Fuller said. Habitat has strengthened the planned giving department with additional hires, Bender said.

Habitat also is raising more money overseas, Fuller said.

Corporate sponsorships are a source of potential revenue enhancements, as well. Habitat has been successful in that area and has inked several gifts-in-kind deals. For instance, Whirlpool donates a stove and refrigerator for every Habitat house built in the United States; and Hunter Douglas provides privacy blinds to every domestically built house.

Some 6,000 Citigroup employees have volunteered roughly 64,000 hours in 20 states since 2001. Habitat has ongoing partnerships with Cisco Systems, and Lions Club International Foundation. The latter has committed $12 million since 2000 to a home-building initiative with people living with serious physical and mental disabilities.

Today, Fuller uses the same skill set he developed as a successful businessman.

“When I had the goal of making a lot of money I was a hard-charging, creative, entrepreneurial type person. I'm still that same kind of person, but I've got different goals in life,” Fuller said. “Now, my goal is to build a house for everybody in the world.”

Increasingly, Habitat looks to its Restores to generate revenue. Habitat affiliates run some 118 ReStores in the United States and 26 in Canada, which sell used and surplus building materials at a fraction of retail prices. Virtually everything gets donated, and when sold it's nearly all profit, Fuller said.

Several stores generate income of $1 million a year, Fuller said. ReStore sales along with other revenue such as conference fees, royalties, list rental, merchandise sales, annuities, interest and dividends, accounted for $37.2 million in 2002, according to Habitat's consolidated numbers. Habitat is developing another creative program in Asia called “Build in Stages.”

At times it's difficult collecting payments from some families in developing countries once a house is built, Fuller said. So Habitat is testing a system of building houses one room at a time. When the family pays off the first room, they build another until a full house is done, Fuller explained.

What would we do without you

Fuller, who will turn 69 in January, said he doesn't have plans to retire any time soon. When the time comes, Habitat's chief operating officer will become acting CEO and the 30-member board will appoint a search committee to find a replacement, Fuller said.

They'll be hard-pressed to find such a dedicated and low-priced leader. Fuller earns only $79,500 a year, and takes credit for a 40-hour work week though that seems an underestimate given the time he spends traveling and promoting the group's mission.

Fuller isn't concerned that Habitat's movement would falter without him.

“I wanted to set in motion something that will outlive my lifetime that will become an institution in the world,” Fuller said. Habitat operates in 92 countries.

Despite Fuller's tireless travels, many people still think former President Carter founded Habitat.

Fuller said Habitat's fundraising won't suffer if Carter reduced his high-profile role. As proof, he said Habitat has transitioned away from using Carter's signature on prospect mailings during the past five years. Fuller signs them now.

“I think the name Habitat for Humanity is thought of so well that anybody could sign letters and, I think, we would get a good result,” Fuller said.

Carter wasn't available for comment.

Christine Letts, the Rita E. Hauser Lecturer in the Practice of Philanthropy and Nonprofit Leadership at Harvard University, theorizes that Habitat's success is a result of the strong relationship between Habitat staff, supporters, and clients. The group has a commonality between those three constituencies with the Christian faith mission underlying everything they do, Letts said.

A preacher at heart

Fuller still possesses a lot of the face-to-face salesmanship that his old business partner Dees said was one of his strengths when he first went into business.

He commands the room. It doesn't matter whether he talks at a small gathering, such as a recent Ethical Cultural Society event in White Plains, N.Y., or a Manhattan Institute social entrepreneurship award dinner at the Princeton Club in New York City.

Fuller keeps pumping out challenges, inspiration and energy as dinner hour wears into primetime.

His off-the-cuff style without notes resembles a sermon. He raises his voice as a preacher would and weaves anecdotes and jokes into an inspiring message that pushes his mission to the front of the crowd's minds.

There's the Romanian boy who lived in a house black from mold. Habitat built his family a new home. And then there's Cookie, a young girl who moved into Habitat's first house, who today writes mortgages as a lawyer.

And of course Fuller's standing joke that he travels so much it's like he's on a political campaign without an election always gets a snicker.

Underneath Fuller's disarming style is a simple, but serious, vision: to plant the idea in every nation and every city on earth “that everybody who lives there should have at minimum a simple, decent place to live, so that every child will be able fulfill his or her highest potential.”

Don't underestimate a man on a mission.

Copyright © 2006 The NonProfit Times.