| by Terry Axelrod, Founder and CEO, Benevon
Tales of Passion
Part Six
Many times re-igniting your passion takes simply telling
your story and reconnecting with your mission.
In 1980, Rodney Bivens started a food bank in Oklahoma City.
He had a blue pick-up truck and went around to grocery stores
to pick up excess food, then he delivered the food to churches
to give to needy families. Today, the Regional Food Bank of
Oklahoma is a huge operation, which works in 53 counties and
distributes over 20 million of pounds of food each year to
500 food pantries, soup kitchens, homeless shelters, senior
centers, and other sites. The food bank also runs food programs
for hungry children in school, after school, and even in the
summer.
After 25 years of expanding this food bank, Bivens needed
to re-ignite his passion.
During a Benevon Workshop, an instructor asked him why he
started the food bank.
“It’s kind of personal,” Bivens said.
In reflection, he said, “I didn’t feel I could
tell my story. No one had ever heard it.”
His story not only inspires anyone who hears it, but also
gave him renewed passion.
Bivens was raised on a small farm in southwest Oklahoma.
When the food ran low, his mother many times picked a wild
plant called Poke and made greens.
Then one day his father, hired as a roughneck, was riding
in the back of a car to his job when the driver fell asleep
and the car rolled. Bivens’ father broke his neck and
was paralyzed. The family didn’t have insurance and
relied on food from their church, family, friends, neighbors,
and even strangers for many months.
“When I see families struggling to put food on the
table, I feel their pain and know what they are going through,”
Bivens said.
He now tells this story more freely and invites others to
share their stories, like the man with emphysema who can no
longer work and relied on a food pantry to keep him going.
Every great nonprofit has heartwarming stories like this;
it just takes digging; re-igniting your passion by retelling
that story, and never forgetting the lives changed by your
work.
At International Children’s Care (ICC) in Vancouver,
WA, these amazing stories were often getting lost.
ICC was founded in 1976 by a former missionary who envisioned
a better life for orphans, one where they could grow up in
group homes with a house mother and father. However, few people
knew just what the organization did or how it was different
than other organizations serving orphans.
After fundraising training, the stories just flow. At their
May fundraising event, Liana St. Clair, the assistant development
director, read a thank-you letter from a girl who was abandoned
in Guatemala at age two and raised in one of ICC's homes.
At the time of the event, the girl had just graduated from
a college in Costa Rica and sent photos from her graduation.
"I am so thankful for the unconditional love that you
gave me and all your other children in the world," she
wrote.
Stories like these will inevitably re-ignite your passion.
When you begin telling your own organization’s versions
of these stories, you’ll be well on your way to re-igniting
the passion for your mission.
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