If you aren’t too connected to the nonprofit world, it may be unbeknownst to you that today is Georgia Gives Day. A common recipe for successful social causes is collaboration across all sectors (government, nonprofit, and for-profit) – creating meaningful resources for the greater good.
This month Friendly Human, the Atlanta-based video storyteller who produces work for companies like The Home Depot and MailChimp, has moved out of their space in Atlanta Tech Village a month early to use their November rent to support New Story. New Story is a nonprofit funding “life-saving homes, turning tent slums into sustainable communities for families living in danger around the world.”
In honor of GA Gives Day, we connected with Daniel Roberts, CEO of Friendly Human, to hear how the team is making an impact on the nonprofit community, and campaigning to raise $60,031 to build 10 homes in Haiti through their campaign NoHomeNovember (You can help, too! Donate here).
What is NoHomeNovember and how is it affecting your operations (including working from Daniel’s living room)?
NoHomeNovember is the realization that one month of Friendly Human’s studio rent here in Atlanta means a home for the next hundred plus years for a family in Haiti. We were already moving to our new studio, so we asked ourselves if we could temporarily eliminate that cost for one month and send the money to Haiti instead. It’s grown way past that now with other people like ChooseATL and random, awesome individuals getting involved, but that’s essentially how it started. Now our focus is on building at least 10 homes together, so we can build a whole Peachtree Street of homes in Haiti.
It’s honestly been fun having the whole team working out of my house. I would say the current design look of my house is a combination of LAN-Party Nuevo and Disaster Relief Chic. We’re running a 10 gigabit network from a card table, but we haven’t had too many interruptions after the first couple days. It’s been a little more work logistically, but it’s certainly brought us all closer together.
How is Friendly Human committed to creating funds for Haiti?
The commitment runs deep at Friendly Human. I met my now COO, Justin Walker, a few days after the Haiti earthquake. He was headed down there to deliver water filters. Brett, one of the New Story co-founders, has really been a good friend and mentor to me even before he left me for Y Combinator (not that I’m jealous). When we went down there this past summer, Game Over. It totally captured the rest of the team’s hearts as well.
Why is it important to the Friendly Human team to do something like this?
It’s just kind of who we are. When I first brought it up to one of my team members, his response was “Yeah, we need to do that.” That’s really it. We just got lucky with the timing of the new studio buildout. Personally, I believe that success can either be leveraged to help yourself or help others. I pray that we always base our decisions on the latter.
At the end of the day, the need in Haiti is huge, and New Story’s model really does work better than anything else I’ve ever seen in the nonprofit world. But that’s not why we do it. We do it because we’ve found that when we participate in restoring others, we become the kind of people, company, and city that we want to be.
While building 10 homes by the end of the month is an achievable goal, Friendly Human needs help from the Atlanta community to succeed. And if you’re feeling extra generous be sure to donate to other worthy causes creating change throughout the world – today is the perfect day to do so (and it’s tax free)!
