TOOLS AND TRAINING
By Heather Joslyn
If the head of Habitat for Humanity International hadn’t begun a conversation two years ago with the leader of a small Midwestern Christian school, Karla Amstutz might not be in college today -- and wouldn’t be on her way to a career as a nonprofit leader.
The 22-year-old junior is one of 21 students who enrolled this fall in the Habitat for Humanity Fellows Program at Sterling College in Sterling, Kan. The program, started this year, offers students a full four-year scholarship. In return, it requires them to minor in social entrepreneurship (which teaches the management skills required to run nonprofit organizations), work on Habitat projects during their weekends and semester breaks, and perform a one-year internship with Habitat for Humanity International upon graduation.
Sterling says that its social-entrepreneurship minor is the only program of its kind for undergraduates in the nation, although other institutions do offer some coursework for undergraduate students seeking to learn nonprofit-management skills. For example, American Humanics, a 53-year-old organization in Kansas City, Mo., works with more than 60 colleges and universities to provide courses geared to produce entry-level nonprofit workers. But no institution thus far has offered a bachelor’s degree in the subject, and according to American Humanics President Kirk Alliman, no other charity has lent its name to a four-year fellowship like the one at Sterling.
‘A Hands-On Person’
For Ms. Amstutz, the Sterling program offered her a way to combine academics with her passion for working directly with people in need. She left her studies at Iowa State University in 1999 and went to work as a project director in the South and Southwest for Mennonite Disaster Service, an Akron, Pa., organization that builds homes for people who have lost theirs in natural disasters. Sterling’s Habitat Fellowship lured her back to the classroom.
“If it wasn’t for the program, I don’t think I would have gone back to school at all,” she says. “I didn’t want to go back into a school atmosphere. I’m more of a hands-on person.”
In other words, she’s the kind of person Habitat for Humanity International co-founder Millard Fuller was seeking to cultivate back in 1999, when he began brainstorming about the fellowship program with Sterling College President Edward Johnson.
At the time, says Richard Robl, director of the Social Entrepreneurship Center at Sterling and head of the Habitat Fellows Program, the college was seeking a charity to help it create a program to prepare students to work at nonprofit groups. Meanwhile, the housing organization was seeking a college to help it develop future Habitat leaders.
“I believe Habitat does not have a ‘deep bench’ regarding leadership,” says David Williams, Habitat’s executive vice president and chief operating officer. “There is not a strong cadre of people who have been developed and trained to step right in and take their place without the organization skipping a beat. Leadership development and succession planning are two areas in which we need to improve.”
The fellowship program, Mr. Williams says, meshed with the charity’s plans for a “Habitat University,” which it envisions as a collection of courses offered online and on CD-ROM to teach the public about the organization and to train Habitat staff members and volunteers in management skills. (Habitat intends to start a pilot version of its distance-education project in spring 2002.) The charity is considering collaboration with colleges in addition to Sterling but has no specific plans thus far, Mr. Williams says.
Sterling, a liberal-arts college founded in 1887, already had a strong commitment to preparing students for lives of service before it created its social entrepreneurship program, early in 2000, and announced the Habitat Fellows Program, last fall.
Under the fellows program, Sterling pays for the students’ education with scholarships currently valued at about $48,000 per student, while Habitat promotes the program (by printing brochures about it, for example) and lends its personnel to help teach some individual classes.
Sterling supports the fellows through donations -- in some cases, Mr. Robl says, a church has sponsored an individual student. But the college hopes to create an endowment for the program, he says, with a target of between $15-million and $20-million to be raised over the next four years.
Accounting and Carpentry
The students enrolled in Sterling’s Habitat Fellows program get a combination of field experience and classroom instruction.
“We help them understand the mission of Habitat, while at the same time helping them get a college education,” Mr. Robl says. Habitat Fellows can major in any subject, though they must minor in social entrepreneurship, which grounds them in basic management skills such as accounting and strategic planning and trains them to transfer this business knowledge to nonprofit work.
In addition, they are required to take courses designed to help them specifically with Habitat-related work, instructing them in a range of issues, including the organization’s history and carpentry techniques. And the fellows are also asked to spend part of their weekends in Habitat-related activities. Saturdays during the school year have been spent cleaning yards around town to raise funds, or setting off in a caravan of cars early in the morning to help build houses in Wichita, more than an hour away.
The academic training the students receive, Mr. Williams says, will bolster what they learn on the job. Specifically, he says, management practices and the case studies of other charities are two areas that nonprofit managers rarely have the time to research.
“Being grounded in good management and leadership skills before taking on a position should be the rule rather than the exception,” he says. “We would never consider putting someone in a position of policeman, fireman, or teacher without considerable training. Yet we believe that people can simply learn on the job how to manage or lead a nonprofit organization or group of people.”
Learning to Lead
For the students, coupling Habitat’s mission with Sterling’s commitment to nurturing nonprofit leaders is a powerful draw.
Jenny Ernst, a 19-year-old freshman, learned about the Habitat program at a college fair. She says she was struck by Sterling’s slogan: “If you want to change the world, apply here.” She is already looking ahead to a career in service after college. With another freshman Habitat fellow, Lisa Stenberg, she’s working to create a mentor program to help the children of families aided by Habitat
“Through the social-entrepreneur program you develop your own nonprofit organization,” Ms. Ernst says, “so when you graduate, you’re good to go.”
Ms. Amstutz, now a business major at Sterling, says she learned about the Habitat Fellows Program through a regional director at Mennonite Disaster Service. She says the weekends she’s spent this year raising money and hammering nails on behalf of Habitat have been instructive. “It helps you get a handle on things, to see how you would run it,” she says. Though she is uncertain about her post-graduation plans, she’s looking forward to spending spring break in Jackson, Miss., helping to build houses with a group from Sterling.
Like Ms. Amstutz, 18-year-old freshman Isabel Levisté also had experience building houses for a charitable organization. Her father serves on the board of a Habitat affiliate in their native Manila. She had been volunteering for about a year -- and had even started a Habitat “club” in her high school -- when she saw a brochure advertising the Sterling fellowship.
“It was one of my mom’s dreams, to have one of her children go to college in the States,” says Ms. Levisté, who is the middle of three siblings. “None of us really wanted to study in the States. We were afraid of the change, being away from home.”
Once she moved in to her Sterling dorm this fall, she says, “I was so happy, I didn’t even notice that my parents were leaving.” A business major who expresses enthusiasm for all aspects of Habitat work, she is considering going to Africa this summer for a “blitz build” of 1,900 Habitat houses led by former President Jimmy Carter. After graduation, she says, she wants to work for one of the charity’s international affiliates.
“I’d like to have a position where I go to different offices,” she says. “I love to travel.”
Interpersonal Skills
Sterling is now accepting applications for its next class of 25 fellows, with five of the slots reserved for international students. The ideal candidate, Mr. Robl says, is someone with demonstrated leadership, a passion to serve, and a knack for working well with others: “I asked Habitat, ‘What’s the number-one quality you need in the field? ' and they said, ‘interpersonal skills.’”
Even if the Sterling fellows don’t make their careers with Habitat, they are likely to become involved with the group on some level in their post-college lives, says Mr. Williams, who points out that three-quarters of his group’s 2,000 affiliates worldwide are run entirely by volunteers. “Whether they come to work for Habitat is secondary,” he says. “We want to engage as many people as we can. We don’t just want to fill some staff positions.
“Here we have a group of students who, regardless of what their major is, they already have an interest in the social types of entrepreneurship. The fact is that after they graduate, they’ll have the opportunity to do things with Habitat. It’s good for the students, the school, and of course the organization -- it gets a first, hard look at the students.”
To learn more about Sterling College’s Habitat for Humanity Fellows Program, go to http://www.sterling.edu. Applications can be downloaded at the site and mailed to: Sterling College, Habitat for Humanity Fellows Scholarship, P.O. Box 98, 125 West Cooper Avenue, Sterling, Kan., 67579-0098. Applications for the next class of fellows must be postmarked no later than January 31, 2002.