Episode Transcript
[00:00:01] Speaker A: Welcome to Life Reviewed, a podcast by Hope House Colorado, where we invite you into conversation with teenage moms and the people who champion them. These stories of struggle, overcoming, and perspective shifts will challenge you to review life as you've known it. One story, one person, one conversation at a time.
[00:00:20] Speaker B: Oh, I thought I knew the kind of life that I would need.
[00:00:28] Speaker A: Hey, everybody. I am so excited to be back here with you on our Life reviewed podcast for Hope House Colorado. My name is Lisa Steven. I'm the founder and executive director of Hope House Colorado. And if you want to learn a little bit more about me or about our history and the amazing miracles that have happened here since we started Hope House 20 years ago, you can listen to our episodes one and two of life reviewed. But today I'm joined by our director of development, Lisa Schlarbaum. I'm super excited for us to hear more about how she came to know about Hope House. She is often called one of our miracle workers here at Hope House. Our board of directors has so much fun teasing her about how great she is at her job and just how she's helped build this organization over the last 13 years. Where we were when we started and where we are today. We have a lot of fun joking with each other. So I'm going to just introduce Lisa and have her tell us a little bit about how did you come to find out about Hope House? How'd you get engaged in the first place?
[00:01:30] Speaker B: I kept hearing about Hope House through my church in Broomfield, Broomfield United Methodist Church. The pastor kept talking about Hope House, and I just kept being reintroduced to that, to the organization back then. So I think Jeff and I first, we hosted a dinner. The church would host dinners on Wednesday nights for people. So we hosted a dinner and people would leave an offering, and we dropped off the offering money here at Hope House about that same time.
My son Max was a toddler, and he decided that he was never going to sleep in his toddler bed. He just kept crawling back into our room every night. So finally, Jeff decided that we should get rid of the bed. So we were trying to figure out where to donate the bed that Max never slept in. So I often joke with a lot of our donors and stuff. That's our very first thing we got involved with, was dropping off our toddler bed that Max never used and everything. So we did that. And again, the pastor at the church kept talking about Hope House and everything. And I got a call one day from Katie, who was the director of development at the time, about coming for a tour.
So I had set the time up for like 08:00 in the morning, 830 in the morning. It was like first thing on my way to work and everything. And lo and behold, of course, we had like a late spring snowstorm at Colorado. And oh, my gosh, it took me forever to get over here. Sat out in the parking lot and I debated whether I was going to ring the doorbell or not because I was so late. So I finally felt that nudge where you got to get out of the car and do what you got to do. And I rang the doorbell and you answered the door.
[00:03:05] Speaker A: I don't even remember.
[00:03:06] Speaker B: And you gave me the tour because Katie wasn't even here. She didn't make it in because of the snowstorm and stuff like that. So I was like super impressed with the tour. You showed me all the house, what was going on here, and I think I even met a couple of the moms.
I think Katie kept asking me to go to lunch, so I'd go to lunch with her. And one of the first things she said to me was, well, what would you like to do here? Would you like to volunteer? I thought to myself, well, I just decorated the house for Christmas. So I came in and decorated the whole house for Christmas and put it.
[00:03:37] Speaker A: The Christmas tree, I do remember that.
[00:03:39] Speaker B: Bought a huge, big, I don't even know what's the snowman or what it was.
[00:03:43] Speaker A: Inflatable snowman.
[00:03:45] Speaker B: We still use it every year and put it out front and everything like that.
[00:03:49] Speaker A: And if only you'd have known that that was the beginning. If only our staff had known that was the beginning of the end. People, just so you know, Lisa has forever been in charge of decor. So we're going to talk about our capital campaign later in our conversation. But she, from the beginning, has been in charge of decor at Hope House. So everything goes through her. If you want to change up your decor, you got to go through Lisa. So I guess it all started that first Christmas.
[00:04:14] Speaker B: I remember thinking like, oh, my house looks so good. It could be like in a, you know, magazine or whatever. And I kept thinking, oh, I love to do this, like, professionally. And then like a month later, like, God's tapping me on the finger, like, oh, go decorate over at Hope House.
[00:04:29] Speaker A: That's so awesome.
So how'd you get from decorating to, and I'm sure it was probably me pestering you cause it's one of the things I do well, but how'd you get from decorating the house to being on our board of directors.
[00:04:42] Speaker B: Okay. I will never forget this lunch.
I had lunch with Katie Cassidy after the tour and everything. So we're sitting at lunch and Katie and I are talking, and Katie says, where are you from? Like, where'd you grow up? I said, oh, a little small town in Illinois you've probably never heard of. And she said to me, I'm also from a small town in Illinois.
[00:05:03] Speaker A: Like, literally everywhere Lisa goes, there's someone from a small town in the middle of Illinois. I do not know how it's possible. I think so many people from the middle of Illinois have moved to Colorado, and they all know Lisa.
[00:05:15] Speaker B: So Katie goes, I'm from Metamora. I'm like, oh, my gosh, I'm from Eureka. We're like 7 miles apart. We grew up from each other. So funny. I have relatives, of course, that lived in that little town that she was from. And we just started laughing over that. It was just ironic that we had that in cahomban and everything. And that same lunch, she says to me, well, what would you like to do? And I was telling her about, I was the head of the trustees at my church. And I said, I really have no idea why God has asked me to be the head of the trustees. Like, I don't know anything about facility management. I go, maybe he's trying to get me to get ready to go onto the board of a nonprofit or whatever. And she looks at me and she goes, would you like to be on our board? And I go, could I be on your board? And she goes, I think you could be on our board. I was like, oh, well, okay. I would like to apply to be on your board. So then the next thing I know, I'm filling out the application. I'm asking friends at my church to write letters of recommendation.
[00:06:15] Speaker A: Oh, my gosh.
[00:06:16] Speaker B: And so think about that. That was 1516 years ago that that was going on. So that's crazy. So that's how I ended up on the board. She said I could be on the board.
[00:06:23] Speaker A: I definitely remember that. When Lisa joined the board, one of her strong suits was people. So her, I'll have her tell you about her. Like, what was her job when she joined us on the board? But she is such a people person and just loves people, engages people, draws people in. So one of the first things we asked her to do is be part of a fundraiser for, I think it might have been our maybe second or 3rd, 4th golf tournament. And you were part of this fundraising committee. So I was already getting a taste of how you did with people and how your fundraising worked. But what was your job? What did you do before? Like, when you joined the board, what were you doing?
[00:06:58] Speaker B: I was. I was in sales.
I was in various types of sales, but I think at that time, I was probably selling for Temple Inland, and I was selling empty boxes back then, so I knew lots of people.
[00:07:13] Speaker A: If you can sell empty boxes, you.
[00:07:15] Speaker B: Can sell Hope house.
[00:07:16] Speaker A: Hope House is easy compared to empty boxes.
[00:07:19] Speaker B: That's right.
[00:07:20] Speaker A: And at one point, you sold toilet paper.
[00:07:21] Speaker B: I did tell I had 18 year career in selling toilet paper, so, yeah.
[00:07:25] Speaker A: So much easier than selling toilet paper. So as soon as she got on the board, I figure out that she's got some fundraising skills. Get her on this committee to help with this, like, cocktail party that was related to our golf tournament back in the day. And I think we were driving to somebody's house for this committee meeting, and I was. I was so lost to trying to get to this committee meeting for this golf tournament cocktail party, I could not find where we were supposed to be going. I was on the phone with the gal who we were supposed to be meeting with, and I think she was, like, literally standing on her porch waving. And I was so embarrassed that I was lost that I was telling her, I'm there. I'm sure I'm seeing it, and I drive right by her waving at us, and I'm like, I see you, and Lisa just turns around and goes, liar. At me, and I'm like, oh, my goodness, I'm gonna love this lady. She's hysterical. So we've been, like, laughing at each other ever since. But from that moment on, I started thinking, like, how do I get this woman off the board and onto our staff? I mean, I'm pretty sure she's making, like, really good money selling empty cardboard boxes, and we don't make really good money at Hope House. But, I mean, it's just. It's only money, right? I mean, how bad do you need money? So I started working on you. What, like, maybe a year in?
[00:08:43] Speaker B: Yeah, I don't even. Yeah, probably a year in.
[00:08:45] Speaker A: I always joke it took me, like, two years, three years to talk you off the board and onto staff. And my, like, life goal was that Jeff Schlarbaum would forgive me someday for talking her out of her probably six figure salary into working at a nonprofit. So tell me about that. How did you come to make the decision to come to hope House from, honestly, a really good career?
[00:09:07] Speaker B: I think part of being really good in sales is you. You keep asking somebody, right? I always laugh about, you have to hear no seven times before it's a real no. And I did tell you no a couple of times. I think. Finally, the third time, when you approached me about coming to work at Hope House, I finally said to Jeff, I go, I feel like God's telling me it's time. I need to go do this.
And he goes, why do you think that? And I said, well, when we walked out of church today, there was Hope House table. And he goes, Lisa, there's a hope house table every Sunday after church. So my sign of coming to work here was not the same as his side of me coming to work here. So when I finally convinced him that this was the time, I said, I'm going to go do this for three years, and I'm going to step away from my corporate sales experience, and I'm going to go do a hope house, and I'm going to help them build that resource center. I feel like the timing on that was perfect. And so he agreed that three years would be a good time for me to go do that. And of course, I look back on that and go, that's the biggest lie I've told him in 20 plus years. I mean, yeah, no way of knowing.
[00:10:18] Speaker A: It was a lie at the time. Who knew it was gonna take us.
[00:10:20] Speaker B: What, six years to build that resource.
[00:10:22] Speaker A: Center, which we will talk about that capital campaign.
What was your experience when you first came to hope House and, like, moved from that career into nonprofit? Because it's a different world, different culture. Talk about that a little bit.
[00:10:36] Speaker B: I will never forget the board meeting. Stacey Hoagland was the board president, and she looked at me and she said, can you raise as much money as we raised last year? I was like, Stacy, I don't even know how you raised what you raised this last year. I have no idea if I could do that again. I really didn't understand it, because back then, the budget was around $700,000, and it's all about the coding of the checks and how the gifts are coming in and everything. And half the money was just what you guys called God's money. Like, how am I going to build a strategy around that? Like, I don't know if God's going to do that again or not. So I was like, oh, my gosh. So those first couple months when I got here, I started looking at how the money was coming in and started coding it to whatever category made the most sense. So we had people that gave every single month. So we came up with a strategy around what we were going to call those monthly donors today. They're bedrock builders, and we're keeping track of it. So if you send in a gift every month and it's getting coded to that income stream, money was getting coded to our events and stuff like that back then, but money from, like, you have a corporate match, money that wasn't being coded.
There was so much money that was major donor gifts. Those weren't being coded that way. So after that first year, like, about 10% of our income was not coded, which is about the same as it is today. Like, people just make gifts to hope houses and stuff like that. So that just happens, right? But if you make a gift today, we pick up the phone and call you and find out why you made the gift, right?
Maybe you lost somebody close to you and your family, and it's in memory of someone or in honor of someone. So today we code those gifts that way. So. And then we can build a strategy around that income stream that's really important. I think.
[00:12:28] Speaker A: I don't think I had. I think I knew a little bit from watching you on the board that you were a strategic thinker. Like, thinking through strategy and being analytical and analysis are gifts that lisa has. And I'm not sure I really fully understood that until I was sitting in the little conference room at the residential program with you. This, before the house was, or the resource center was built, and you had the whiteboard, were going. And even then, her handwriting was terrible, people. If you ever see her handwriting, I could barely read it, but she was explaining to me what she was putting on that board. And she's like, okay, where's your pipeline? Like, let's say we don't get to XYZ goal for the event that we're about to have. Who's the pipeline of, like, where is the next donation coming from? And I'm like, I don't have a pipeline.
[00:13:21] Speaker B: I don't know what you're talking about.
[00:13:23] Speaker A: So we had this whole conversation about, you gotta tee these things up. You gotta. You know, she just basically taught me sales strategy right there in that conference room. And I was right. Sales are not incredibly different from fundraising, except for when it comes to the philosophy behind it. And that's what I am super excited to explore with you today. And kind of talking through how, even for me, I. When. When we think about, like, life reviewed and kind of how our lens shifts over the period of time when I first started hope House, I mean, we knew we had to do fundraising, but I just figured we'd write grants. And still today, everybody I talk to who wants to open a nonprofit, the first thing they start talking about is, how do I do grant writing? And I'm always quick to tell them, kind of something I learned a really long time ago is if about 10% of your income comes in through grant writing and 80 or 90% comes in through individual people, whether that's the strategies Lisa's referring to, appeal letters, events, um, major donors, you should only be spending 10% of your time on grants and 80 or 90% of your time with people. And that was, uh, that was new, a new way for me to think. And there's a reason why your brain immediately goes to, I'm going to write grants because if I'm writing a grant, I don't have to sit in front of somebody, look them in the eye, and ask them for money. Because literally no person, little kid, ever grew up saying, someday I want to be a really good fundraiser. I'm going to ask people for money. Like, that is not something I sat around thinking I was going to do someday. So when God called us to start Hope House, I mean, I knew we would have to do fundraising, but I didn't want to have to ask people for money. I was like, oh, I'm going to be that, like, sales lady that people see coming, and they're like, oh, no, here she comes. She's trying to sell cookies or whatever it is, the PTA lady. And so I had this, I don't know, this view in my mind of what fundraising was about. And it was a shift for me to start thinking about fundraising differently. Not like it's not about the dollars, it's about the people. And when you came on board at Hope House, we had just recently started having conversations about, hey, we need a stronger fundraising strategy. We'd heard about this organization that you could basically sign up for training on how to do fundraising. And it was expensive. It was like $12,000, which was a lot of money for us back then. And you had to fly to Dallas to do the training, and you followed this, like, very formulaic way of doing fundraising. And at the same time, we'd heard about this organization called Mission Increase foundation. And if anybody wants to learn more about them, it's m as in Mary, I f as in frank.org, comma mif.org dot. And they do free biblical fundraising training. And I'm like, well, it's free. How good could it be? I mean, free can't equal good, right? So. But I'm like, well, it's free, so I'll go to one seminar and hear what they have to say. So I go to this fundraising seminar, mission increase fundraising training, and I was literally blown away. Like, these were the smartest people I had ever met. They were. I was taking notes so fast, I couldn't write down everything that they were saying. I was so convinced that this was the way that God was calling us to connect with people in a different way than we'd ever done before, because the Bible talks about money so much, and I never even really realized how much. The Bible talks about money and our relationship to money, and that fundraising really is more about people experiencing God through their giving than it is transactional. And their whole philosophy is transformational giving versus transactional giving. So we had just made the decision as an organization to. And I think you were on the board at the time when we were making the decision. Yes, I was. To move to transformational giving.
What was your first experience, like when you started leading us in that direction as the leader in our development and fundraising efforts?
Tell me about what transformational giving meant or looked like to you then and now.
[00:17:35] Speaker B: I think it was a way to experience God today and to see God in action today, and to be able to tell people that were supporting Hope House, what God is doing at Hope House. And to me, that was. That was life changing. I mean, I got the fundraising piece of it from the whole sales background. I knew how to sell somebody something.
But to be able to talk to our champions, which we call our donors, are our champions, to be able to talk to them about what God is doing here, how much he loves our moms and stuff like that, to me, that was life changing, and I think that still is life changing. And mission increase works with nonprofits that are less than a million dollars, which is where we were at, and we were able to apply for grant funding if we would implement some of their practices and stuff like that. And I got to know some of the people at mission increase really well. And to me, that's the game changer. I mean, there's a lot of faith based nonprofits out there, but you want to talk about transformation. So everything we do, from the time somebody makes a gift, picking up the phone, calling them, finding out why they're involved in Hope House, why is it that they made a gift to Hope house?
Doing handwritten thank you notes, like, that's. They're all about appreciation and telling the story. Like, what do you guys need? What's going on at Hope House?
We've had some amazing stories here at Hope House. And I can remember, like, calling my pastor and telling them that I'm, you know, I'm walking away from my job and I'm gonna go work at Hope House. And I want to see God work up close and personal. And I've gotten to see that for the last 13 years, that's been life changing.
[00:19:24] Speaker A: Yeah, that was definitely. I think that that's a perfect example of a lens change and that kind of reviewing things differently than you had before. And I remember, I mean, you have so many stories. I'd love to hear some of yours. But one of my favorite stories for myself, like, figuring out that transformation is what we were after. So Lisa and I often talk when we try to explain what transformational giving means. We talk about the fact that there's kind of this small pot of teen moms that we're ever going to serve just because there are a limited number of teenage moms, but there's this limitless number of champions or donors who can be connected to God through those girls. And the beautiful thing is that makes those girls not the client or the one we're providing a service for. It makes them a part of something that God is doing intentionally. He drew them to hope House not just for their babies and for themselves, but because he's working through them to draw others to himself through them. And that is just such a beautiful circle and example of our community and how our champions and our teen moms and our staff and our volunteers are all one community in kind of one continuous circle. And my personal kind of first experience with that was a woman who now is one of my best friends. Her name's Laurie Scott. She was introduced to Hope House through her friend Terry Eidecker. And she really literally only came for a tour, she told me later, because Terry told her, you have to. She's like, I do not want to do this. I'm not a mom. She wasn't intending to become a mom. She's like, I don't even really like teenagers. Why am I going on this tour? But her friend Terry was insistent she come and see Hope House. So she did. And somehow she got talked into being on this little committee to do a luncheon for fundraising for Hope House. Terry talked her into it, and Lori signed up to be in charge of the food for this luncheon at Judy Lundquist's house in her beautiful garden in the back of her house. And we were going to have, I don't know, 40 people. And I was bringing one of the teen moms to speak. And Lori was signed up for food. And so Lori was like, I got this. No problem. She had a caterer. She and her husband did a lot of entertaining. She figured it was a no brainer for her to do the food. Well, her caterer called literally 48 hours before the event and said they couldn't do it. And she panicked. And Lori was not a believer. She'd been hanging around Terry and had heard Terry talk about prayer and talk about God and kind of who God was in her life, but she had not. In her own mind, she was like, I don't know about this. But when that happened and the food suddenly got canceled, she freaked out. And she was like, all right, I guess I'll try this prayer thing that Terry and Lisa are always talking about, because I don't know what else to do. So she prayed, God, I need help. I don't know how I'm going to come up with the food for this party. And it struck her while she was praying that they had been to this new restaurant called the brushys in Wheat Ridge, and she's like, all right, I'm going to pick up the phone. She picked up the phone, got a hold of the head chef, who was the owner, and immediately in that phone call, he offered to make the food, deliver the food, and plate the food for her for this party. And she couldn't believe it. That was her first experience with, oh, wow, maybe somebody is listening when I'm, like, panicked. And from there, she had additional experiences that just drew her to eventually decide that, hey, I think I want to. I want to know this guy. I want to know Jesus. And she asked Jesus to be a part of her life. And ever since then, she's been following the Lord. And it was such a transformational experience for her to bump into Jesus through Hope House, and it was completely transformational for me for her to bump into Jesus through Hope House, because I didn't know that was possible. I didn't know God had a bigger vision than me. Like, my vision was, we're going to help teen moms. God's vision was, I'm going to draw people to myself, teen moms, not teen moms, whoever they are. His vision always is to draw people to himself and connect people to himself through Jesus. And I got to see that firsthand. And you've gotten to see some of those stories. Like you've talked about the guy who calls whose wife died, and you got to be that call he made.
[00:23:46] Speaker B: Yeah. I feel like sometimes we get those calls where it's. It's really not about me and you, and it's not about Hope House. It's about God's putting somebody knocking on the door or calling us and saying something that my wife just passed away.
I have some donations. Can I bring them over? And stuff like that.
You're being the hands and feet of Jesus in that moment or whatever.
I always think about the story about the widow's mite, right? One morning, we showed up here at the resource center, and there was a $20 bill, clothes pinned to the bush out front of the door. And the little sticky note said, I hope this little bit helps. And it's just like, wow, somebody made the journey over here to drop off $20 and felt like we were a good place to give to dollar 20 due. And then we've gotten crazy, crazy stories where all of a sudden a check shows up in the mail. There was a gift that showed up last week that was completely anonymous, $10,000. And there's like no way to track it down or anything like that. It just showed up and it's just like, well, how does that happen? I'll never forget, at the old building we were in, there was a guy that was a consultant, he was a nonprofit consultant, and he was meeting with me about a couple things. And his comment was, people that don't know you are not going to fund you. You're not going to get big gifts from people that don't know you. And sure enough, as soon as he left, like less than 2 hours after that man left, we received a half a million dollars from somebody we don't know.
[00:25:25] Speaker A: It's like a half a million dollars.
[00:25:28] Speaker B: It's like, what in the world? Like this guy just said, you don't get gifts from people that don't know you. And I tried to argue with him at the moment. I said, well, we got $10,000 last Christmas from a Bronco. He doesn't know us because we're never going to know him. I rattled off a couple other comments to him about that, and he still shook his head at me and said, people that don't know you don't fund you. And then a couple hours later, I'm literally opening up the door of the conference room and I couldn't even talk because we had gotten such a large gift.
[00:26:00] Speaker A: Yeah, it's crazy.
[00:26:01] Speaker B: To finish off our capital campaign. It was crazy.
[00:26:04] Speaker A: It's such a great example of how God moves hearts. Like, he moves the hearts of men and women to make the gifts that they make. And our role then is to draw them in and engage them and make sure that not only do they understand how appreciative we are, whether it's because, frankly, a $10 gift or a $20 gift from somebody who's on a fixed income, and that's all they can afford, is as impactful as a really large gift from somebody who can afford to make that large gift. And I absolutely love when we bring our mamas in and talk to them about how is Hope House funded? Because we're big now. And moms come, our teenage moms come through the door and they see this campus with our residential home and our resource center that looks still brand new, even though it opened in 2019, and this brand new early learning center that's going up right next to the resource center. And I think, they think, oh, it's kind of like school. Like, it just exists. I just, I go to school and it just exists. They don't know how schools are funded, but the government must fund it somehow and to be able to share with them that this place exists because of the champions who fund us, who send us $10 or $20 or $20,000, because they believe in you, not because they believe in me, Lisa, Steven, or you, Lisa Schlarbaum. They send that money because they believe in you. Our teenage moms, they believe you can do it. They believe God's got a plan for your life and a plan for your baby's life. And for them to hear that and to know that there are people out there when sometimes in their own family, the people who were supposed to support them and care for them are not. And to learn that, hey, there are bedrock builders giving every single month for you and your child so you can have enough to eat, so you can have a place to sleep, so you can come and learn, get your GED, move on to college. They know you're going to make it. And so it's so beautiful to get to bring that to our teenage moms and share that with them. So tell me a little bit about. I'd love to hear the Doris story from you, but let's, let's go back to our capital campaign. So you came to hope House thinking, I'm going to be here three years. I'm going to help them build that resource center. So when you came on, we had just kind of started talking about, hey, we had had the house donated.
We had finished building the house. We're now grown to the point where we've started a mentoring program and a GED program. And we're running those classes over there at the church next door to our house. And we were dreaming about this field that sat in front of our. Our residential program. Like, there's this huge field that the church owns, and it had gone up for sale. There was a for sale sign. It was, like, 2011, but we couldn't afford it. But we were dreaming about what would happen if we could actually have that field and maybe build a resource center there. So that's about the time that you came on board. So talk to me about. I think it was just prior to the feasibility study for that capital campaign. What did that feasibility study tell us?
[00:29:04] Speaker B: Oh, my gosh. The feasibility study for the capital campaign, quote, that sticks out to me after all these years is one that. Where they wrote in one, they're gonna be lucky to raise a million dollars. The second quote had to do with.
[00:29:21] Speaker A: And we needed $5 million.
[00:29:23] Speaker B: Yeah. We needed.
[00:29:24] Speaker A: At the time, that's what we thought.
[00:29:25] Speaker B: Yeah. Yeah. And then the quote was, we have a muddy poster child. I just was like, what's a muddy poster child? Like, what does that mean? And basically, the consultant explained it that people didn't understand what we did. Like, understood the residential program. They understand that girls needed a safe place to live here at Hope House, but they didn't understand all the other stuff. So they didn't understand, you know, the health relationship classes. They didn't understand the financial literacy. They didn't understand all the soft skills that we're trying to teach to the moms and stuff like that. They barely understood the GED. That's when we were doing GED out of the church next door and stuff like that. They just didn't understand that all the self sufficiency pieces that we did.
[00:30:09] Speaker A: Right. And that was because we had not communicated those things well. We had, you know, left it to them. Like, we would tell these beautiful stories about our moms, but we didn't realize how much communication and honestly, a communications team is a part of telling this story.
[00:30:27] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:28] Speaker A: And we were not telling the story in a way that described the complete and utter chaos that existed in the lives of our moms and how many different pieces are critical for self sufficiency. And that's when you really led us on that journey of, how do we tell this story differently? And in a way, something so complex can be made simple enough for people to understand why it's necessary.
[00:30:52] Speaker B: Yeah.
[00:30:53] Speaker A: So talk a little bit about what we did from there.
[00:30:56] Speaker B: So I think what we did from there is that feasibility study was a roadmap for us. So it outlined numerous things that we needed to fix. So communications and documenting everything that we're doing with the moms and telling those stories.
I think even back then, we were doing a good job with photos of our moms and who they were and everything. And being authentic, like, that's so important, to be authentic. There's a number of nonprofits out there that don't use the actual people they're serving. They use stock photos, or they play the same commercial every year, and it's the same kids. They've never grown up or anything like that. That's not hope house. We want you to actually see the moms, see their kids, see the progress, see the growth. Like, you're impacting real people doing real, meaningful work.
I think I look back on our gala that we did two years ago, and it was, here's the mom from 20 years ago. Here's her daughter going off to college. Now, today, like, this is possible. And every year, we kind of track, oh, my gosh, like, three or four moms bought houses. So to think about the impact that we're having, like, that's amazing to me. Like, there's moms that have, uh, working on staff today that went. That lived in the house. Like, that's incredible, in my opinion. I'll never forget once that board asked me, um, what's your long term plan for donors? I'm like, we're. We're growing our own, so. And they laughed at me. But we do have girls that are giving monthly to hope house or working here, or they're on the board today.
[00:32:31] Speaker A: That's right. That's amazing. That's working for us. I mean, we really, truly are growing our own. It might have been funny when you said it, but it. I mean, it's true. We're growing our own donors. That's what we're doing. Our moms moved to middle class, and they love giving back, which I love seeing. So we talked in our second podcast a little bit about the resource center and that capital campaign and how we actually, we had misstated it a minute ago. Our initial goal was to raise $3.5 million for two buildings. It was supposed to be the resource center that we now have built and the early learning center, which we are just now beginning to build. And as we moved into that capital campaign, that number just kept going up, right? Construction costs were going up at the time. It was this crazy.
[00:33:15] Speaker B: Like, it was a crazy time in Denver.
[00:33:17] Speaker A: Doubled the amount. So tell me about Doris. Tell me about what it meant that we had this amazing donor step forward at the end of that capital campaign, when we thought we couldn't go a step further. We had already raised as much as we could raise. We'd ask everybody that we could ask, developed all the communications tools we'd done, all the things on the roadmap we'd raised, like, I don't know. I think we were at 4.5 million, and we needed another 500,000 somewhere around there. And we had no idea where that was going to come from. No one left to ask. Tell me what happened next.
[00:33:52] Speaker B: So we got a call from an organization called excellence in giving, and they had a donor that we didn't know, that didn't know us, that didn't even live here in Colorado. And at the very end, they asked us to put together a packet like, what do you have left to do? So we had $300,000 left so we wouldn't have a loan on the building, and we needed another $250,000 for the furniture and fixtures and the building. Otherwise, we're going to take all of our donations from the house and from the resource center.
[00:34:24] Speaker A: Our old furniture. Our old furniture from, like, three prior places before that was falling apart.
[00:34:29] Speaker B: Yes. So we would have moved into a brand new building with duct taped furniture. With duct taped furniture, basically. So at the end, I guess I was told that she listened to one of our girls speak at the golf tournament or at the gatela.
[00:34:45] Speaker A: Yeah. They shared a video. That's right.
[00:34:46] Speaker B: Yeah. And at the end of the video, apparently she watched it and said, that could have been me. And she finished off the Capitol campaign, and they made a phone call.
It's kind of funny. They had toured our building. They had seen the little gong that we had.
[00:35:02] Speaker A: Yeah.
[00:35:03] Speaker B: And we ring just for everybody out.
[00:35:06] Speaker A: There, whenever we celebrate something at Hope House, we ring this little gong. We had this kind of baby desktop sized gong. And every time a girl would get her Ged or get her driver's license, we'd ring the gong.
[00:35:17] Speaker B: Yeah. So they basically said, you're gonna need the gong for this. And I said, okay. All right, well, tell me. And then they broke it down. They said, you're getting $550,000 to finish off your capital campaign and to have new furniture and fixtures. And that's when I interrupted the meeting, and I couldn't even speak. I just couldn't believe that someone we didn't even know would, like, do that for us.
[00:35:42] Speaker A: And we didn't even. I mean, we had a beautiful experience getting to meet Doris, probably, I don't know, five years after that. It was a while.
[00:35:48] Speaker B: It was a long time.
[00:35:49] Speaker A: And we mostly communicate with her through excellence in giving, who do her advising, her wealth advising and excellence in giving. I mean, they came alongside us and believed in us and made this recommendation to someone who we now get to turn around to our teen moms and say, every time you walk in this building and you see this incredible environment with brand new furniture, and it's so beautiful, and it's for you, because Doris loves you, because Doris believes in you. And, I mean, all the mamas know who Doris is because. And we didn't even meet her for a number of years, but everybody knew her name, because Doris believed in our moms enough to make sure that they had something beautiful to walk through the doors to.
And all that brand new furniture just wasn't a significant investment. Meant so much. So that was our first capital campaign. Tell me what happened. So we built that resource center, and thank goodness God knows what he's doing, because if we had built the early learning center at the same time, it would have killed us. I mean, this early learning center, it's no joke. People like licensed childcare is no joke. I think the regulation manual is, like, four inches thick. Thank goodness we have amazing people in place on our staff. We'll have a. Just a tremendous director, Lisa Kirk Plowman, who has been our early learning manager and will be the director of the new center. But there's so much to it. So God knew what he was doing that we couldn't do that first Capitol campaign and build both buildings at the same time. We only could afford to do the one. And then, of course, COVID hit. And so we thought our second capital campaign to build the early learning center would get pushed off till at least 2025.
But I guess God had other plans. Tell me what happened that second capital campaign.
[00:37:36] Speaker B: Gosh, I'm going to go start at the beginning. From what I remember, we had somebody post on the next door app, hey, where's a good place to donate clothing? And somebody up in evergreen posted back, check out Hope House. And so a woman came down and donated some clothing. So we got on this woman's radar, right? And then we wrote a thank you note. We wrote a thank you note like we always do. And the next thing I heard is that our grant writer got a call saying, hey, toward the end of the year, would you guys like to apply for a grant? And so our grant writer writes a grant, and we get $60,000 for our GED program, and they came for a visit. So you should tell that part, because you did the visit and the tour.
[00:38:24] Speaker A: Oh, yeah. So I'm giving them a tour, and I'm still, like, shocked at the fact that they called us and invited us to apply for a grant, because that never happens. And so we thought it was, like, a scam or something, and then we actually got a grant, and I'm like, oh, cool. I get to give these folks a tour. Meet this woman, Marie, who just sounds lovely. So we're doing the tour, and what had happened is that she was the.
She was put in charge of the estate of Bill Ackerman, who was a barber up in Evergreen. And I have no idea what Bill did as a barber that caused him to get to the point where he had so much money to give away when he passed. But Marie was the executor of his estate. And at the time, I knew that, obviously, they had given us a $60,000 grant. They had some money, but I didn't know. She asked me, hey, is there something bigger you guys are doing that we could give toward? Just the first thing that popped into my head was we were going to do this capital campaign. And I'm like, be bold. Be really bold. So I'm like, okay, well, if we had a $300,000 gift for a lead gift for our capital campaign for this early learning center that we are planning to build, that would be so tremendous. And I'm, like, kind of shaking because I'm like, oh, geez, I just asked for $300,000. That's, like, so much money. And literally, they called back, like, six months later and said, hey, we're going to give you $1 million for your capital campaign. Nobody's ever given us a million dollars. I literally was probably stunned into speechlessness. But there was a caveat. So Marie doesn't want to have to be the executor of this estate for forever. She wants it all done. She wants it closed out by the end of the year. So she tells us we have to raise the rest of the funds for this capital campaign by the end of. At the time, it was 2022. So we had to raise another. What?
[00:40:10] Speaker B: Oh, gosh.
[00:40:11] Speaker A: 4 million.
[00:40:11] Speaker B: 4 million. Just under 4 million, I think.
[00:40:14] Speaker A: Yeah. So talk to me about that. What happened next?
[00:40:17] Speaker B: Well, that's not best practice to give yourself ten months to raise that kind of money. So. But it was a great story, right, to be able to say, hey, we got a million dollars, but we got to finish this capital campaign.
We had to go find another $4 billion, call it. And we were able to. We were able to do that, which is crazy when I think about that, especially when I think about how long the first capital campaign took, and then to be able to wrap that all up by the end of the year, in ten months, that was amazing. Amazing.
[00:40:51] Speaker A: I mean, kind of as we move toward a close for our conversation today, I guess when I look at how we started from just a group of people who, I guess, just had the courage to say yes to God when he called them to do something crazy to you. Having the courage to say yes to God when he called you to do something crazy, because walking away from a really well paying, high paid career that you had no intentions of walking away from with kids, to still put through college, saying yes, that was a big deal to us. Sitting in front of people and asking them for six figure gifts over three years for not one capital campaign, but two, that takes a lot of courage for those people to say yes. I mean, they're committing to giving these funds to today. Being in a position where we literally have probably a $15 million campus between the three buildings that are on this campus, and it's completely debt free. And that just.
I just don't even know what to say that is. And I'm so incredibly proud of that.
Not prideful, but so proud of the number of people, from me to you, to all those donors, to the moms who come to Hope House, who have the courage to say yes. I'm gonna walk through the doors of this building that I've never been in before and hope these people don't judge me and look at me like everywhere else I go in life, which is facing so much shame and so much stigma, I'm gonna take my chances and go to Hope House because somebody recommended it, usually one of their friends, and see if it's really true that they're really. They're actually kind of nice or they truly, actually love me and love my child.
When you think about, like, if you had maybe just one last thing to share about transformational giving and why people should be engaged in Hope House, what would you say to them? How would you invite them to be a part?
[00:42:56] Speaker B: I think if you want to see what God is doing today, like, there's all the miracles that are in the Bible, but to be able to see what's going on here at Hope House and see all the miracles, like, I always feel like I'm a pretty good storyteller. But the stories that come out of here are amazing. Like, God is definitely moving today here at Hope House.
[00:43:19] Speaker A: That's so true and such a great.
Just kind of pulling it full circle to, like, how we view things and we view miracles as maybe something that was in the past and something that happens in other countries or happens on mission trips. We don't think about miracles happening in our own backyard. But honestly, come visit. I mean, if you're within a location where you can come visit our campus in Arvada, Colorado, go to our website, hopehousecolorado.org, and sign up for a tour. Like, come. Come see what God does at Hope House. Just like Lisa says, you will be amazed at how you get to experience who God is and how he works. And I always say it's because it's not. Again, it's not because of a building's just a building. A building is just brick and mortar. It's what happens inside that building through the people that God calls to work in the lives of our teenage moms. So we invite you, come be one of those people. Come see what it's like to actually watch God do what he does. It's pretty incredible. Thank you guys so much for joining us today on Life reviewed. We love y'all, and we will see you next time.
[00:44:48] Speaker B: The things I didn't know the things I didn't know about you, about.
