Work record / Development / Habitat for Humanity
Habitat for Humanity: give a chapter what it can use
I ran Tellus Design and Build and picked Habitat for Humanity as our community partner. When the chapters began turning down our material, I changed what we gave instead of giving less.
The seat
I was a construction partner to Habitat chapters in Santa Barbara, Orange County and Los Angeles, through Tellus Design and Build, the firm I ran. We chose Habitat as our community partner in the counties where we already had jobs, and the relationship lasted from February 2007 to November 2016.
| Sector | Nonprofit housing |
|---|---|
| Type of work | Corporate giving program design |
| Where | Santa Barbara, Orange County and Los Angeles, California |
| Years | February 2007 to November 2016 |
| How long | Nine years and nine months |
| Through | Tellus Design and Build |
| Credits | Common Ground Jesse Fowler, Construction partner |
What I was brought in to decide
Habitat chapters build homes at cost, using donated material and donated skilled labor. That is closer to how a general contractor works than most charities are, which means a firm that owns trucks and crews, holds supplier accounts and keeps an estimating desk has ways to give that a check cannot match.
For Tellus Design and Build, which I ran, Habitat became the community partner in the counties where the firm was already building.
What we did
- Starting in February 2007, we sent surplus material off our active jobs to local chapters and kept it out of the dumpster. We bid on Habitat jobs too, sent crews out on build days and offered construction advice a chapter could not otherwise pay for.
- Once chapters got choosy and started passing on material, I took that as information and not as the end of the relationship. A chapter's yard had filled up, but its need for a builder had not. Asking how much the firm could afford to give had measured the wrong side of the table.
- I sorted what Tellus gave into stock and flow. A chapter has to store and sort material, so its room for it runs out. Bid work, labor and consulting get used the day they arrive.
- I set one simple trigger. If a chapter declines a channel twice in one season, that channel is closed with that chapter and a flow takes its place. The commitment does not shrink.
- Before offering what we had spare, we asked each chapter what the coming season needed from a contractor. Where the yard was full, the offer became time from an estimator on a bid, a crew for a build day, or a second opinion on a detail.
- I kept the decision chapter by chapter and priced the flows honestly inside our firm. A crew day or an estimator's afternoon is payroll taken away from billable work.
Results
- The partnership lasted from February 2007 until November 2016, covering Santa Barbara, Orange County and Los Angeles.
- Chapters went on receiving bid work, crews and advice from a builder they knew, even after they no longer needed our material.
- What returned to us was standing. A firm that kept showing up for every bid and every season became a partner the chapters could count on.
- The rule for surplus capacity: label each gift a stock or a flow, ask before you offer, close a channel on the second decline in a season, move to a flow without shrinking the commitment, and keep track of the open channel for each recipient.
The lesson
Treat material as a stock, and labor, bid work and consulting as flows. When a chapter kept declining material, I stopped offering it there and gave the flows.
Questions about Habitat for Humanity, answered
Firm record
Common Ground keeps its own account of this engagement: Habitat for Humanity on the Common Ground wiki.