Fuller Center General

By Chris Johnson
Director of communications

As writer, it pains me to admit that, indeed, sometimes a picture is worth a thousand words. A picture can be snapped, edited and posted for the world to see in less than a minute these days. But even with all this newfangled technology, we writers still can't come up with a decent thousand words in less than a half hour.

I ran into this a lot in the newspaper business. As a sportswriter, I'd cover a football game for three hours, get postgame interviews, write a story, take call-in reports, edit other stories and sometimes design pages in hopes of getting out of the office by 1 a.m. Meanwhile, a TV cameraman would show up at the game for a few minutes in the second quarter, air 20 seconds of footage from the game on the news (after calling the paper to find out how the game ended) and get showered with appreciation for their coverage. All we'd get was a call to point out there's a comma splice in the 17^th paragraph and a complaint that we shouldn't have mentioned Jim Bob's three fumbles that cost the game.

But sometimes a visual works best. We've been able to explain our Save a House/Make a Home initiative in plenty of words and a few simple photographs. But even our best photos tell only part of the story. We can easily show a house in a terrible state of disrepair and easily show how we've restored it into a simple, decent house for a good family.

What we haven't really thought about showing, though, is what the house was like long before it got into its terrible state. We haven't thought about it because that's almost impossible to show. Many of these homes are abandoned, sometimes many owners down the line from its glory days.

But we recently got a photo estimated to be 100 years old that took the life of one of our restored homes full circle. It's of a home on St. Paul Street in Indianapolis, home of the 2010 Millard Fuller Legacy Build. One of The Fuller Center's followers on Facebook, Scott Simpson submitted the photo estimated to have been taken in 1910 and showing his grandmother as a little girl sitting on the front porch of a beautiful two-story home that was a duplex in the first half of the 20^th century.

Somewhere along the line, the house fell into such disrepair that it was in danger of being torn down. We had those photos. And The Fuller Center restored it to its long-lost glory, something Scott realized only a couple of months ago after stumbling across our photos of its completed restoration.

Our Save a House/Make a Home initiative is a practical way to address America's foreclosure crisis and the problem of people needing affordable housing. We bring these two issues together in a way that benefits families in need, banks, neighborhoods and the housing market in general. Banks are able to shed properties they consider “toxic”, we fix them up, families move in and take care of the home, and neighborhoods are resurrected and rid of the problems a glut of vacant and unappreciated homes can bring.

Adventurers brave Tropical Storm Debby

By Chris Johnson
Director of communications

I love a good storm. It always takes me back to that old front porch back home, when summer thunderstorms seemed to as regularly scheduled as the 5:15 freight train. If I close my eyes, I can go back in time and smell the rain as it turns to steam upon hitting sun-baked Church Street in my tiny hometown of Oglethorpe, Ga.

But not every storm brings such a sense of peace and tranquility. Indecisive Tropical Storm Debby is pounding most of Florida with torrential rain, high winds, tornadoes and lightning right now. And our Bicycle Adventure has been in the thick of some intense weather. The Sunshine State hasn't lived up to its name here in the final week of the Adventure's East Coast ride.

It's not the most pleasant or safest of biking conditions, but you can bet that our Adventurers will make the most of it and have a great time. Yet, it's a good time to remember what these good-hearted folks are doing out there on the road to Key West (and later from Seattle to San Diego).

Not only are they out there pushing their bodies to the limit in whatever conditions may be, but they're spending their own money to join us on these trips. And they're working even harder to raise funds individually and as a team. They've raised more than $125,000 this year alone for our housing ministry.

Jack Wolters says giving is his blessing

By Chris Johnson
Director of communications

I love colorful characters. Even more so, I love colorful characters who make a difference. I've met plenty since I've joined The Fuller Center for Housing last year, and I've met plenty in a couple of decades in the newspaper business.

Jack Wolters of Tucson, Ariz., fits that definition of a colorful character who makes a real difference. He does so now, he did so in the past and, now 88, he'll do it for decades to come.

While talking with Fuller Center Director of Development and Planned Giving Dianne Fuller and Director of International Field Operations Ryan Iafigliola about featuring people who've made financial commitments to make sure The Fuller Center's fight against poverty housing continues, they both said I needed to talk to Jack. Problem is, I didn't know much about the man. So he got Googled! Interesting guy.

Jack not only goes back to Fuller Center founder Millard Fuller's early days in the affordable housing movement, but he and wife Lois were the driving forces, no pun intended, behind Habitat for Humanity's Care-A-Vanners, once called Habitat Gypsies, who rolled place to place building houses after Jack retired from building skyscrapers in places like New York City.

So I called Jack this week and chatted about why he decided to include The Fuller Center for Housing in his planned giving. Though he said his heart is not doing well, he still has fire and humor. When he thought I might need a photo from him for a publication, he retorted: “You wanna put my picture in there? You'll ruin the dang camera!”

Fortunately, we already had a few pictures of Jack, including the one accompanying this column from the very first Fuller Center Bicycle Adventure in 2008. As Ryan, who founded the Adventure, will tell you, there weren't a lot of places for the cyclists to stay during their run through Arizona that year, so Jack's stepping to the plate to put them up was crucial. Jack was also a veteran of the old fundraising and awareness walks the Fullers and supporters made decades ago, walks inspired Ryan to start the Adventure.

“Millard Fuller was a blessing to Jack Wolters, that's for sure,” he told me. “He was a very, very dear friend, a wonderful person, no doubt about that. I feel very, very strongly about Millard Fuller, doing what he did with his life. I've been involved with him since a year after it started. Through all these years, I support him, I support Linda and the program that's been a blessing in my life to be able to give back to folks who've never, ever dreamed of having a home. I've been so blessed to be able to do this.”

Thoughts on a Fuller year

By Chris Johnson
Director of Communications

Today marks my one-year anniversary as communications director here at The Fuller Center for Housing, a position that a little over a year ago I'd have never imagined having. Having been in the newspaper business continually since 1989, I was ready for a change but felt that journalism was all I'd ever be able to do.

But wanting to get out of the struggling newspaper business, as well as wanting to be closer to my family and my then-girlfriend, and closer to an area of the great state of Georgia that most feels like home, I took a total leap of faith and applied for this job. I was 40 years old, and if I didn't take the leap then, I probably never would.

I came into my interviews with a facade of confidence that I could succeed in growing awareness and building support, but it was a facade indeed. I was terrified that I'd fail miserably and take the entire affordable housing movement down in some kind of communications global apocalypse.

Fortunately for me, President David Snell and the others at The Fuller Center didn't see through my facade. And, fortunately for The Fuller Center, the communications apocalypse I feared never happened. In fact, I'd like to think that word about the great work we do is spreading and that support is building. The numbers do seem to indicate I'm OK in thinking that.

I'm thankful that I've been able to keep my weekly newspaper column, and I believe a good many readers of the Columbus Ledger-Enquirer are fairly thankful, too. There ain't many nonprofit Christian organizations that would hire a Southern humor columnist who preaches the gospel of Jimmy Buffett and Sheriff Andy Taylor, and allow him to keep his toe in those rare waters. It's just a few minutes of my week, after this job is done, and I believe it helps our dealing with the media to have a communications director who actually in a small way is still a member of the media.

My mission here was fairly simple as put to me by David. Sure, it'd be great if I were some master of the gazillion marketing and fundraising tools out there, but I had one primary job, and they thought I could do it despite my quirky Southern humor and always-against-the-grain notions:

“We want you to tell our story.”

Little things mean a lot (Part 4)

By Chris Johnson
Director of communications

Tag, you're it!

Remember those days of running around, playing tag with all your friends? Man, those were the days. Seems like it was just yesterday. Oh, that's right ... that was yesterday! No wonder I didn't get those web pages updated. And no wonder that guy walking down the street looked at me funny when I slapped him on the back and yelled, “Tag you're it!”

(Tag is so much more fun when you play with folks who don't know they're playing. Dangerous, but fun nevertheless.)

Speaking of tags, that's another seemingly small way you can help us spread the message. Any photo you see on our Facebook page is available for you to tag friends who are in it. Why does this matter? Because the people who have already “liked” our page have nearly 1.3 million friends between them who are likely to also “like” The Fuller Center for Housing when they see what we do and know their friends are involved.

One way they can find out their friends are involved is when they see their friends have been tagged in a photo. When you see your friend has been tagged in a photo, you're more likely to look at it.

It's another one of those seemingly tiny things you can do in just a few seconds that could help our mission be seen by many, many more people. And, again, it costs nothing to do it, and any free promotion is immensely valuable.

I've touted some of our successes on Facebook, but getting folks to tag their friends in our photos is not one of those successes. In fact, recently I put a photo on our page, which you can see above, with many people in it during the 2010 Legacy Build in Indianapolis. I figured surely everyone associated with us knows someone in that picture. Alas, it didn't get a lot of attention.

Looks like we'll have to keep pushing that whole tagging thing. Of course, it's not too late for you to click on that photo -- or any of our Facebook photos -- and tag your friends, or yourself. Just click here and then tag away. Then Fuller Center President David Snell can say, “Hey, Chris! Neato idea with that Facebook tagging thing! You are one super groovy dude!”

Primary links