Chapter Four
Inspire Evangelists
Habitat for Humanity International is one of the most successful nonprofits of our time—although not necessarily for the reasons people might think. Founded in the 1970s in rural Georgia, Habitat by 2007 had a total budget of nearly $1 billion, several thousand affiliates, and hundreds of thousands of volunteers worldwide.1 It had built more than two hundred thousand houses in nearly one hundred countries, and its brand name has been rated in the same league as that of Starbucks.2 Habitat is the only nonprofit founded since 1960 to make it onto the top twenty-five of the Chronicle of Philanthropy 400, a ranking by budget size. So it’s no surprise to find Habitat in a book about how leading social sector organizations ...
