ABWK in the Twin Cities has always structured our program around the needs of our families. Our focus is on who we serve and meeting the needs of those families so they can continue living in a safe, decent home.
We could not be as successful as we have been over the years without structuring our program based on family need rather than the work to be done or based on our home buyer program. Had we structured ourselves based on the work to be done, we would have relied heavily on our home building based model.
However, we began by building our structure around relationships with struggling homeowner families, potential volunteers and donors. As we came to understand the needs of our families we were able to market these opportunities to potential volunteers and donors.
Therefore, we have combined family services, volunteer supervision and construction management into a very tight knit position and then supported that position(s) with staff to coordinate these services and relationships with our Habitat Volunteer, Development departments and ReStore. This has worked extremely well and has allowed us to grow in the number of families served and in the depth of the work scope we provide.
If we were to change our model that has been successful with homeowner families and integrate into our model that provides services to our home buying families, our growth and scope of program would have been very limited.
Affiliates need to be aware that the needs of home buying families and homeowner families are very different.
If affiliates are to reach their potential with ABWK, they need to take two different approaches in certain programmatic area's. Take advantage of the area's where there is natural synergy (volunteer recruitment and fund raising) with home building but for the sake of effectively serving families, efficiency, coordination and growth there must be individuals dedicated to tasks that are ABWK specific. abwk habitat for humanity
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