Organizations: Thrivent Financial for Lutherans and Habitat for Humanity
Timeframe: 2006, ongoing
It's one thing for a corporation to team up with a philanthropic organization to give back to the community both entities serve. Sometimes a vibrant partnership is created and
becomes a strong contributing factor in a local community, across several states or even around the world. But when you join two faith-based organizations' knowledge, resources
and missions, built over years of selfless devotion to worthy causes - and you fully combine their workings and inspirations for a common cause - a powerful force for good takes
shape that inspires, even as it provides much-needed aid.
About 100 years ago, two grassroots Lutheran groups in Wisconsin and Minneapolis were concerned about the security and well-being of their fellow Lutherans. Both began as
fraternal benefit societies that would help Lutherans protect their families with life insurance. The Aid Association for Lutherans and the Lutheran Brotherhood joined forces in
June 2001, adopting a new name: Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. Today, that organization continues to embrace the traditions that made both the original entities vital resources
in the lives of their communities across the country.
Habitat for Humanity, on the other hand, almost needs no introduction. Since its founding in 1976 by Millard and Linda Fuller, Habitat for Humanity International has built and
rehabilitated more than 150,000 houses for families in need. The nonprofit, ecumenical Christian housing ministry builds about 25,000 houses a year around the world, 5,000 or more
of which are in the U.S.
Several years ago, however, Habitat hit a plateau with its U.S. efforts and was looking for ways to break through that ceiling. An existing (11 years or longer) partnership
with Thrivent Financial began to grow into something larger, culminating in a new program called "Thrivent Builds with Habitat for Humanity."
Building On Success
This unprecedented advocacy and homebuilding alliance was designed to increase Habitat's capacity to build more affordable housing. A four-year, $105 million commitment would
increase Habitat's home production by 6% over the course of a year, working in local communities through two national nonprofit networks of 1,699 Habitat for Humanity affiliates
and 1,362 Thrivent Financial volunteer chapters, as well as the 30 regional offices of Thrivent Financial.
"Thrivent's help has gotten us on a path of getting past the ceiling we had approached," says Chris Clarke, SVP of communications, Habitat for Humanity. "We hope to continue to
grow exponentially each year. Since their partnership drives our affiliates to build incremental houses on top of what we already do, we see this as a key way that we can build
more houses each year.
"If you take the 25,000 houses we build each year, that means essentially we build one every 24 minutes, but it's nowhere near enough to meet the need, either here or around
the world. Partnerships like this push us to serve more families."
The "incremental houses" Clarke refers to are part of the commitment Thrivent and Habitat made. When Habitat affiliates apply for grants, there's a new understanding that if
they were planning to build five houses in their region, the funding from Thrivent will enable them to build another house, or more, on top of that. "This helps Habitat build in
scale through this partnership, which is a 'stretch goal' kind of concept for the organization and has been very successful," says Clarke.
Getting the word out to employees of both organizations, volunteers in the cities involved, and the public was a daunting undertaking. One of the biggest challenges is an
administrative one, says Christine Crane, director of marketing and communications, Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. "We are working through local people - it's a very grassroots
effort," she says. "To get all of them on the same page with consistent messaging, we had to be very deliberate with the tools and training."
An online resource center (http://www.thriventbuilds.com/resources) provides tools for all the various parts of the
philanthropic machine, including fundraising, recruiting volunteers, getting the word out about the good they are doing, how to create advocacy and raising awareness of
substandard housing. The information can be carried in affiliate newsletters, church bulletin inserts or more formal press releases, all incorporating the key messages and talking
points.
But one of the most important moving parts of the campaign is the Thrivent Builds Mobile. This 67-foot-long semi truck "helps people experience, if only for few minutes, what
it is to live in substandard housing," says Crane. "Inside is a replica of substandard housing, as well as video clips and an interactive experience with people talking about what
it's like to live in poverty. You see what it does to their family, to their kids' grades, and to their health and safety. The other half is a Habitat house being built, and it
tells people how they can help."
When local people visit the Thrivent Builds Mobile, they come out saying they didn't realize people lived this way in the U.S., says Crane, and many are motivated to get
involved in the program. "Anyone can give dollars to Habitat to build houses," she notes. "We joined them in their need to build awareness of substandard housing. They need to get
the word out about what this issue is."
The Results
Last year, the Thrivent Builds Mobile visited 20 states, staging 114 events in 71 cities. The tour was far more successful than anticipated: The target average of visitors per
hour was 35, while the true number of visitors per hour averaged 49. In addition, while the PR team originally planned for a total of 23,030 visitors to the Thrivent Builds
Mobile, they in fact hosted 32,420. Of course, being a moving exhibit, the truck makes impressions on the road between stops: An estimated 4,144,245 highway impressions were
recorded.
Media attention was similarly formidable. The team expected to garner 90 media hits per month, but instead doubled that number to 180. The total anticipated number of hits for
the overall campaign was 1,080. The final number of 2,156 staggered both organizations.
The truck will kick off its tour for 2007 this week, with plans to go to several new states, starting in Phoenix, Arizona, and to make stops in 16 states, as well as
Washington, DC. A three-person crew keeps the 40-week tour rolling around the U.S., including a driver and two other staff members who help train local volunteers. Five to nine
volunteers are needed to run the truck for a four-hour period onsite. Local Thrivent chapters partner with Habitat affiliates to provide the volunteers, who are recruited ahead of
time and trained onsite when the truck arrives. These same volunteers get the word out to draw residents of each community to visit the truck.
Perhaps most extraordinary is the partnership that formed between the two organizations to manage the tasks of operating and publicizing Thrivent Builds with Habitat for
Humanity. While some companies, such as Timberland, push their collaborations with philanthropic organizations (in Timberland's case, City Year) to the point where they actually
house offices of the charity in their corporate headquarters, Thrivent Builds with Habitat for Humanity has kicked the concept up a notch.
"Not only do the people who make the partnership operational represent both organizations and work as a hybrid team dedicated to Thrivent Builds, but also the office that makes
strategic decisions is made up of a blended group of Thrivent and Habitat executives," says Clarke. "Even though Thrivent funds the partnership, they ask us to sit at the table
and share in decisions of where we go with the relationship and how we administer the program. It's a hugely generous relationship financially, on top of their wanting to share
ownership of how we administer and operate."
Crane concurs. "I actually work in an office that was established to live between both organizations," she says. "My boss [Crane works for Thrivent] is a Habitat employee. My
team is made up of both organizations. This office is in charge of managing the Thrivent Builds alliance and figuring out the next great thing the two organizations want to do
together. We have had to create our own processes for human resources and finances."
The collaborative offices became a "Switzerland," says Crane, designed as a "neutral party between the two organizations." Half of these "Swiss" employees are from Thrivent,
half from Habitat. Because both the groups are faith-based organizations, says Crane, they have a common calling and common cause to rally around.
The high level of collaboration between the organizations' teams helps the campaign accomplish one of its most important elements: consistency.
"It starts with consistency across the organizations in a partnership of this kind," says Crane. "You have to start with key messages for both organizations, and decide what
tools people on the local level need to deliver those key messages. How can they best access that information from where they live? We have gathered a lot of feedback and reacted
to their needs."
The results astonished both organizations. "It's amazing how much positive feedback we got from the local volunteers," says Crane. "We were not sure how much support they would
need from us. We help them get press coverage and build partnerships. They got coverage on every single TV station and local news station, and the positive feedback started
rolling for local Habitat affiliates from volunteers and people in the community. We felt it was key to raise awareness of Habitat's mission."
Contacts:
Chris Clarke, (404) 962-3409, [email protected], http://www.habitat.org; Christine Crane, 920-
628-4379, [email protected]. Thrivent Builds with Habitat for Humanity site, http://www.thriventbuilds.com
Training Volunteers, Giving Them Skills For A Lifetime
When working on a philanthropic endeavor of any kind, you are likely to be incorporating a team of volunteers. This raises training issues. At Habitat for Humanity, training
volunteers to hammer a nail in straight or make a mitered cut is as easy as falling off a log (or an "I" beam). But when it came to getting the word out about the Thrivent Builds
with Habitat for Humanity PR tour, both organizations found their local volunteers lacked some basic PR skills.
"We are building PR skills for individuals across the U.S. locally, both with Habitat affiliates and with Thrivent chapters and local offices," says Chris Crane, director of
marketing and communications for Thrivent Financial for Lutherans. "People in the Habitat affiliates and volunteers for Thrivent Financial are assigned to work on getting the word
out, recruiting volunteers and fundraising, but they may not have had experience doing this."
Thrivent Builds has held teleconferences and Webinars to provide tools for their volunteers to talk to the media and to work with local church offices to get the word out. In
addition, an online resource center (http://www.thriventbuilds.com/resources) provides tools for fundraising, recruiting
volunteers, getting the word out about the good they are doing, creating advocacy and raising awareness of substandard housing. Information can be disseminated in the form of
newsletter copy, affiliate newsletters, church bulletin inserts or more formal press releases, all incorporating the key messages and talking points.
The tools the organizations provide can be very basic. In 2006, Thrivent Builds with Habitat for Humanity conducted short "Media Relations 101" training for its local
volunteers and surveyed them on what else they needed to know. Many of them had more basic questions, so the group held another training session to teach them such things as when
to contact media, how to find names of people locally and how to build media lists. The result was better training to help the local teams deliver information and get attention
quickly.
In addition, Crane notes, these are skills they can take into everything else they do. "If this alliance no longer exists in a couple of years, Habitat affiliates will be able
to use these skills for years to come," she says. "It will benefit the affiliates and lead to more homes being built in local areas. The same is true for Thrivent Financial; they
will still have those skills to benefit them in doing good in their local community in other ways."