Episode 27: Tell Stories to Market Your Mission

00:33
Ashtyn Morris
Welcome to another episode of Marketing Moves. I am your host, Ashton Morris. Today we're diving into the challenges nonprofits face specifically when it comes to balancing mission based work while still needing to operate and function in some capacities like a typical business. Today's special guest, John Litton, is president and CEO of Greater Cleveland's Habitat for Humanity. As one of Cleveland's nonprofit leaders, John is paramount in facilitating Habitat's mission of creating hope by building homes, strengthening neighborhoods, and renewing communities through volunteering opportunities. The nonprofit space can be tricky to navigate, so we appreciate John's insights on how he and his team overcome these challenges. John, welcome to marketing move.

01:16
John Litten
Thank you. Excited to be here.

01:17
Ashtyn Morris
Thank you. So before jumping into some questions, we want our listeners to get to know you a little better. John, where are you from and how did you get your start in the nonprofit sector?

01:27
John Litten
Sure. I'm a lifelong northeast Ohio between Cleveland and Lakewood, and I got my start in this world through summer camp. Actually, I worked at a summer camp growing up through college, high school and college, and they hired me full time right out of school, despite my graphic design degree that I had just received from Ohio University. And I dove deeply into the world of nonprofit. They created kind of an assistant director position after I graduated. For me to work there full time by age 26, and this is really the best stroke of luck, in a way, is that by age 26, I was the director there. So I was in a leadership role at a relatively young age, and that set a trajectory where I've been in leadership roles ever since.

02:15
John Litten
So ran Camp Christopher was the name of the summer camp and then an organization called the St. Vincent de Paul Society. I was the executive director there right out of a master's program, then the Westside Catholic center in Ohio City. I was the executive director there for several years, and that has culminated in what I call the best job in Cleveland as CEO of Greater Cleveland Habitat for Humanity.

02:38
Ashtyn Morris
Wow. Crazy how happy accident really took a life long career.

02:41
John Litten
I love graphic design, don't get me wrong, but I get to do very fulfilling work.

02:47
Ashtyn Morris
You can flex your muscles with graphic design from time to time, but it seems like you found your passion. Can you tell us a little bit more about habitat for humidity and your chapter?

02:55
John Litten
Sure. So our chapter or affiliate is what we call them, is one of the top 25 in the nation from a production standpoint. So we are building and rehabbing homes for up to about 25 households per year. That's primarily focused on the southeast side of Cleveland, but in other neighborhoods as well. And I forget the other part of your question.

03:19
Ashtyn Morris
Oh. So what's habitat's overarching mission in general?

03:23
John Litten
Sure, sure. Our overarching mission is to provide home ownership opportunities to people in need of them. Throughout greater Cleveland, we serve between 30 and 80% of area median income. So that's kind of our guidelines, and that comes down from our national organization in terms of who we're able to serve. Oftentimes it's serving households that are coming from a difficult living situation, an apartment that's not great, a house that's falling apart, or some other challenging situation like that.

03:53
Ashtyn Morris
Wow. It's great work that you guys do. So we're really happy to learn more about it. How did you know Habitat was something that you wanted to be a part of?

04:02
John Litten
Having been in this world a long time and getting to see all these different ways that we can help people in northeast Ohio, so many nonprofit organizations, so many social service organizations doing so much good work, and I've gotten to be exposed to a lot of them. And I had a goal to work for as impactful an organization as I possibly could. Previous ones were great, and they taught me a lot, particularly in the emergency services sort of realm and also into housing. But until someone has a truly stable living environment, it's really hard to better themselves in other aspects of their lives. So the ability, the opportunity to work at Habitat was sort of a godsend. I didn't expect to have something like this so great soon in my career, but I'm sort of blessed that way.

04:47
John Litten
And I knew it had to be in something that had a permanence to it. So the ability to not only give someone a meal or a place to stay for the night, but to give them what could be a lifelong living opportunity for them is perfect.

05:04
Ashtyn Morris
Yeah. Not only an immediate positive impact for them, but their families, it really impacts future generations.

05:09
John Litten
That's right. And I should have pointed this out earlier. We don't give our homes away. It's actually a zero interest mortgage that people pay to us over time, and with that comes some buy in from them, and them having to also keep a job, keep some form of income, so be able to stay in the home. So it's a. It's a perfect give and take, if you ask me.

05:28
Ashtyn Morris
Absolutely. In today's episode, we really want to dive in and discuss some of those challenges nonprofits and mission based organizations like Habitat face. Like any organization, there's always going to need, always going to be hurdles needed to overcome. But nonprofits experience some industry specific challenges. Can you tell us a little bit more about some of the challenges habitat faces when it comes to marketing? For example, since you are a designated 501, are there any certain rules or regulations that you have to abide by when it comes to marketing habitat?

06:00
John Litten
There aren't any specific laws or rules from a marketing perspective. There's things we can't do, like we can't advocate for a specific candidate in an election. You know, things like that. You won't hear us doing that. We could on a specific issue. If there was an issue that impacted habitat, we could advocate there. But from a marketing standpoint, I think our challenges tend to be selling ourselves short. I think our challenges tend to be that we don't devote the resources to marketing that we ought to for fear that it comes across as propaganda or because that dollar could be spent on a service for a family or something like that we devalue marketing from time to time. And I've seen that across my career. But there's solutions to that, too.

06:47
John Litten
I mean, you know, the traditional press release can actually do a lot of good, and it really didn't cost you anything. You can get coverage in a paper that way. The other thing, I think, instead of viewing our work as anything remotely close to propaganda or advertising is to just view it as storytelling. You know, view it as imparting our mission and the good that it does to other people and letting the story carry from there to the extent the media wants to carry.

07:14
Ashtyn Morris
Absolutely. I think your point about not allocating the resources to marketing is something a lot of organizations feel, regardless if they're in the nonprofit space or not, because to your point, you're thinking about where could those dollars be spent? But ultimately, if you're getting your mission out, your story, it connects with people separate from some of the marketing challenges. What challenges does habitat face in general as an organization?

07:37
John Litten
I think our biggest ones tend to be bureaucratic in nature. So working, and we love the city of Cleveland. We will always work in the city of Cleveland. I love Justin Bibb, the new ish mayor of Cleveland. We work well together, but it's still navigating a number of systems in order to get the houses we build done. And there's a lot of rules in place that the city might have to guard itself against. Bad actors in the construction world, developers and things like that who are seeking to make a profit. And because of the work that we do, the track record that we have, and the fact that we don't need to make money on a project, I think lend themselves to maybe having some opportunities to speed things up through the city that don't really take place now, necessarily.

08:21
John Litten
So that's part of, I think my job is to work with the city to find more efficiencies in order to do more of this work, because I know they, and us, of course, want to do more of it, but sometimes there's a lot of red tape.

08:34
Ashtyn Morris
Yeah, absolutely. Before I ask the next question, I want to acknowledge that this maybe a little odd to think, as nonprofits do mission based work, but you're still a business that needs to appeal to an audience. With this in mind, who would you say your customers are?

08:51
John Litten
We have customers on every front because we're many companies in one. We're a construction company. We're a mortgage lender and holder. We're a retail operation because we operate three stores in Greater Cleveland, and we're a social service, nonprofit organization that seeks to help people. And so our customer is the family that we're trying to serve. In a way, one front, our customer is literally a customer walking into one of our stores sometimes who might want new or gently used furniture or whatever the case may be that we're selling. Our customer is the potential donor, the potential volunteer. Someone who wants to give to us in some way that just wants to have confidence and faith in us enough to be able to make that jump into being a donor or a volunteer.

09:38
John Litten
So we have customers on many different fronts and for many different reasons. And because of that, it can be challenging, too, I would say, because one message isn't necessarily universal for all. I do find that being out there in the news. We did a press release on a new program we have for critical home repairs, and it was on Channel five this morning, early in the morning, and I had an a call at 530 in the morning because my office number rings on my cell phone about someone interested in our services. So wonderful to get the word out. In that case, it was multifaceted. I think we touched upon that potential volunteer or that potential donor, but also that potential client, that person that might need our services. So I like when we could get a three for one that way.

10:21
John Litten
In terms of audience.

10:23
Ashtyn Morris
Yeah. That's a perfect segue into my next question of what is your strategy in terms of generating more volunteer participation and. And garnering more monetary donations?

10:33
John Litten
I think our approach just simply has to be all of the above. Some people take immediate. People take in media in more different ways now than they ever did before. It was getting in the newspaper or maybe getting on the news or something like that. And today, there are many things that are that newspaper, and we'd be selling ourselves short not to try to be on all of them in every way we possibly can. Knowing that touches on lots of different groups. Now, that said, from a volunteer standpoint, you know, rather than chasing the 2030, 40 somethings who are running around with their own jobs and their own careers that they're working on, it probably behooves us to target recent retirees.

11:11
John Litten
That tends to be the people who can give the most time, are interested in doing so, are looking for something to do, things like that. So targeting that age group that might still watch the traditional evening news, or whatever the case may be, is wise for us to do so. That's why we do the traditional press release where we have a story and we're pitching it to different news outlets and things like that.

11:35
Ashtyn Morris
That's great. How would you say sweat equity factors into growing your volunteer base? And maybe a question before that is, what is sweat equity?

11:44
John Litten
Our international organization defines. Sweat equity is, in my words, the down payment on a home for a family. A family. In order to get a mortgage through us and get into one of our homes. Their down payment is service. So they have to give two to 300 hours of service, 200 if it's a rehabbed home, 300 if it's a new home. And that service can take place in one of our stores. It can take place through workshops. We provide for everything from budgeting and financial literacy to construction, fixing drywall, using power tools, things like that. Those are modes of service they can take advantage of, and the ladder is required. And then they also can work on their own home, so they can do volunteer work with other volunteers and our staff on the home that they're going to live in.

12:30
John Litten
And we find that when they do that, the rate at which they stay in their home over time is higher in families that have helped out on the home that they're going to live in.

12:38
Ashtyn Morris
Wow.

12:39
John Litten
And so I don't know if I've answered your question on sweat equity. I think I have, but how that dovetails into more volunteers and things like that. I think when our traditional volunteers, whether they're in the store or on a construction site or elsewhere, get to come in contact with our clientele, it makes it a more beneficial experience, because that volunteer sees the people that will benefit from all the work that they're putting in, as opposed to it being, yeah, I'm building this house, who knows who's going to live here and all that. Instead, they can see a single mom helping out on the home that day and get to know them and maybe even understand what they would want in their home and things like that.

13:17
Ashtyn Morris
They get to see it through from start to finish. What I feel is a very powerful experience. How would you at Habitat measure this overall success of your efforts? Do you have at the start of the year, goal setting meetings of we want to hit XYZ, or is it a little bit more fluid?

13:33
John Litten
It's fluid, but we do have goals in mind. Generally, my goal is to beat the previous year in terms of number of homes we've put people into over the course of a year. Always want to better that we're measured at the international level based on our production. And so that's an important metric for us. But we also measure everything from the success rate of our families and them keeping their mortgages to retail store numbers, not just gross sales, but also what is the profitability of each store and things like that we have to take into account. We do build goals into that. Like a goal this year is for 90% of our mortgages to be at a full rate of repayment at any given time. So that's one goal, but it also could take the form of income goals, fundraising goals.

14:23
John Litten
There's a lot of numbers out there. We even did some analysis on the families who don't necessarily make it with their homes and what are the commonalities there, and how can we use that data to improve our processes going forward? So I like to think we're a pretty data driven organization by virtue of that, is able to do a lot of goal setting that helps us better.

14:42
Ashtyn Morris
That's great. I think having that data in mind, always helping you strive to do more, is something that's essential for any organization. Can you talk a little bit more about your retail stores? Because I feel like that might be something about habitat. A lot of people don't know that you have.

14:56
John Litten
Sure. Yes. We have three stores in Greater Cleveland, one at our main headquarters in Cleveland on West 110th near Berea Road. We have a store in Amherst and we have a store in north Randall as well. And those are primarily donations coming in terms of construction supplies, furniture, household goods, in a way, almost anything but clothing. And then we also purchase products to sell, believe it or not. Not necessarily because we make a huge profit off of it, but because we figure if you're coming to us for construction equipment, we might as well buy the paint and the brushes and things like that you can also buy with us rather than buying them elsewhere.

15:31
John Litten
So it's really just a nice home improvement opportunity that can be more affordable than going to your average hardware store or hardware conglomerate or whatever you want to call it.

15:42
Ashtyn Morris
Yeah, it's a one stop shop. That's great. I also want to talk about some of the challenges you guys face from maybe more of a legal perspective. But by offering mortgages, you are serving and perceived as a bank and have to open an account with your nonprofit status. During the Obama administration, much stricter laws and regulations were rolled out for banking institutions. I know this was before your tenure as president, but how does this, and does it continuously affect your processes at habitat, particularly when it comes to managing your finances and paperwork?

16:17
John Litten
We have staff who've had to become officially loan originators and things like that. But outside of that, I wouldn't say there's that many constraints. I think we know what rules we have to follow from a privacy standpoint. I think that's where we get to know the families. So you have to realize that not everybody's supposed to know who the families are and that there's a level of privacy that we have to uphold with them, especially if they request it on the marketing side as well, to keep things private. So we have to strive to honor that at every turn. Our board of trustees actually helps approve the families. And when we do that approval process, there's no names.

16:59
Ashtyn Morris
Okay.

16:59
John Litten
You know, there's situations, there's how many people in the household, there's maybe credit scores if they have them, things like that we take into account, but never a name. And because there's a lot of biases that can enter into that, too. And unfortunately. And so we just strive to keep people's situations as private as possible while people who need to knowing everything they need to know to make informed decisions.

17:22
Ashtyn Morris
Absolutely. How would you say habitat maintains a good rapport with community members who may be a little less enthusiastic about a habitat house being built in their area?

17:34
John Litten
Sure. I run into this a lot. We call it nimbyism, or Nimby, meaning not in my backyard. And a lot of people love the idea of housing people who are homeless or in difficult situations, and they don't necessarily want it near them. What I point out with habitat, that's, I think, really important for people to understand is that when we sell a home, it's at the appraised value. So even if we've spent, say, $250,000 to build a home, it might appraise at only 150. We build in the fact that we will take that hit financially. We can live with that. We fundraise for that, but it gets appraised at 150. Let's say. My point in all this is that we meet the market exactly where it is. We're not lowering the market.

18:19
John Litten
We're not lowering anyone's home values because when we come in, that house is being sold at market value. So there is an element of meeting the market where it is instead of subsidizing it. So that doesn't bring with it the economic gravity that can happen in other instances. So I like the way that we do it because that family, yes, they're getting a zero interest mortgage, but it's still a mortgage and it's still at the value that home is set at by an independent source. And so that family is not getting a freebie by any means either. And I think when people understand that, they can tend to be pretty okay with our presence in a neighborhood.

19:02
John Litten
We also, we will go to every block club meeting, we will go to the pastors in the neighborhood, we will knock on doors to let people know that we are coming, things like that to help everyone to understand why we are here and how we do it and things like that. We also do little things that I think help a neighborhood to all benefit from habitats presence and not just the new homeowners. We will knock on every door and do a day of service where we will help with landscaping on any home that wants it or help with a new set of stairs or a paint job or something like that. So we try to make it so everybody benefits from our presence. Acknowledging that, too, that when we're doing construction, we're cutting open the street.

19:43
John Litten
We have big trucks on the street where we're a little bit disruptive and we want to be respectful to the.

19:48
Ashtyn Morris
Existing residents on average. How long would you say start to finish? Does it take for a construction new home construction project?

19:55
John Litten
Probably about a year, just from a planning stage all the way to a family moving in, it can sometimes be more than that, sometimes less than that, but roughly a year, especially now that we've got into, like, larger construction projects where we're doing multiple homes one street. Sometimes that can take a little longer. Sometimes that can add efficiencies, too, because we're drywalling on four homes today and not just one. So you could bring the supplies for all four and do it that way. I'm doing everything I can, and I know our staff are too, to speed up how that happens. But you also want to honor volunteers in their time and not make them feel too rushed in a situation.

20:33
Ashtyn Morris
Oh, yeah, things like that.

20:35
John Litten
We are starting to augment our production using more outside contractors too, to help speed things up. We're even going to be doing modular homes here in the coming year so that we can speed up production while still providing volunteer opportunities for the people that want to do that.

20:51
Ashtyn Morris
What are maybe, and I feel like we've touched on this a bit, but some misconceptions in general about habitat that people may have that you want to clear the air on.

21:01
John Litten
I think I have already touched on it. The big one is that people think we give homes away.

21:05
Ashtyn Morris
Yeah.

21:05
John Litten
I'll never forget a story where we built a home for someone. We did it with a lot of volunteer help, and there was a nice story, and I won't mention the news outlet, but they said the headline was habitat gifts home to a single mother. And then the comments that ensued because were giving it away, she didn't have to earn it all, this kind of thing. They shut off the comments and we took care of it as best we could. But for someone who had worked so hard and does work and is earning their way to keep that home, it was so unfair. So if there's any misconception I have, it's to tell anybody listening out there that we do not give this stuff away. People earn their way into homeownership.

21:48
Ashtyn Morris
Absolutely. Wow. Yeah. That definitely sounds like a pr nightmare.

21:52
John Litten
Yeah. Yeah, it was unfortunate, but thankfully, once we clarified things were taken down and stuff like that.

21:59
Lisa Perry Kovacs
Good.

22:00
Ashtyn Morris
So what are some things you're really excited about happening now for habitat?

22:04
John Litten
Sure. So last year we launched a 400 home initiative. It's the largest habitat initiative, at least in the state of Ohio, and probably further out than that, where we're growing, almost doubling in size as an organization. From a production standpoint, there's sort of four legs to that table. One is 100 new houses we're going to build in the next few years, 50 homes we're going to rehab in the next few years, 100 homes that are going to benefit from that. Critical home repair program. So, like, if it needs a new roof, if it needs a new front porch, major ticket items, again, that's a new program we started last year that is sort of integral to our ability to complete neighborhoods, to really make it so everybody benefits from our presence.

22:46
John Litten
And then at least another 150 homes will benefit from those spruce up days that I mentioned, the minor repairs, things like that. So to be able touch 400 households in the course of three years is something I'm very excited about. Also sort of daunting from every standpoint, from marketing to fundraising to finding the right families for those homes, to everything. But I'm excited and frankly, I'm surrounded by so many people smarter than I am that are going to help us get there that I love coming to work every day.

23:19
Ashtyn Morris
Yeah, I can't believe I didn't ask this question yet. But what's a typical day like for you and your role?

23:25
John Litten
There's probably no such thing. You know, I'm bouncing around quite a bit and there's days when I'm just in the office all day, but there's days when, you know, I move from thing to thing. Today. Today has touched on everything from HR to marketing here to fundraising. Was at a business just before this, trying to raise money, seeing if a business wants to sponsor a home. This morning I met with one of our board members. It's kind of all over the place. Had like this past week, all staff meetings and all volunteer meetings and things like that. But my job is to talk about all the good work that habitat does primarily. And so a lot of what I'm doing is bouncing from thing to thing.

24:06
Ashtyn Morris
Where is your office located, if you don't mind me asking?

24:08
John Litten
Sure. No, it's not top secret. West 110th, where our main restore is also where our headquarters are.

24:17
Ashtyn Morris
How often would you say, do you have boots on the ground and you're helping out with actual construction? Or is that.

24:23
John Litten
Oh, oh. A very, very small percentage. For one. I'm not sure I'm the best person to be swinging a hammer on a work site.

24:31
Ashtyn Morris
You're doing everyone a favor.

24:33
John Litten
Yes. No, I am. I'm addition by subtraction on that? No, very little. We have plenty of people who know how to do that. Now that said, we are starting an initiative where our staff who are not on construction can spend a day a year helping on a construction site. Because we do feel like everybody who's involved with Habitat being a part of the direct work that we do is important to understanding their self in their role and who they work for. You know, no one's getting rich working for Habitat for Humanity, but they can get rich in non monetary ways. And it's incumbent upon us to provide that opportunity for our employees, as well as all the volunteers and everybody else.

25:15
Ashtyn Morris
Absolutely. My dad was involved with his habitat for years, and he was telling me before the podcast episode, he loved it. And he says, very much fulfilling to see things from start to finish. So you guys do a lot of good, and that's why we're so excited to have you on today.

25:32
John Litten
Thank you.

25:33
Ashtyn Morris
Before I put you in the rapid fire question seat, don't worry. It's going to be painless. What advice would you give to other nonprofit organizations when it comes to spreading their mission effectively?

25:46
John Litten
Find stories to tell. I talked about numbers, and people do like hearing numbers sometimes. How many houses, how many? This is how many. That's. But if you focus on storytelling, you'll. You'll always win. People want to know about the person involved behind things, who is getting help or assistance or whatever you want to call it, more so than they want to hear numbers. And so I would just urge everybody to tell. Tell stories. And I might add, you know, habitat stories, as an example, can be a little formulaic. Like, we can't make it. So every story is about how the story ends with someone getting a home, and that's the happy ending.

26:26
John Litten
Sometimes we can seek to tell the story of someone who's been in their home for five years and how they moved up in life, or how they were able to sell their habitat home and move into something better, or all the work that they did leading up to getting the home, things like that. I think we could vary our storytelling better as well. So I would encourage, find the story that you have to tell and to diversify it as much as you can.

26:49
Ashtyn Morris
Stories are always evolving, so I think that's great advice. Before we wrap up today's episode, I want to ask you a few quick questions.

26:57
John Litten
Sure.

26:58
Ashtyn Morris
Are you ready?

26:59
John Litten
I'm ready. Silverby.

27:01
Ashtyn Morris
All righty. Besides habitat, what is your favorite nonprofit organization?

27:07
John Litten
Well, I have to say Westside Catholic center, where I worked previously, I used to say there, I had the best job in Cleveland, and then I found this. And it's in our organization. It's like a social service powerhouse, helping people with food, clothing, rent, utilities, workforce development. We even started a restaurant there that employs people coming through their workforce program. So having been a part of it, seen it, and then since I've left, seeing the good work that mike, the executive director there is doing it just makes my day.

27:39
Ashtyn Morris
Oh, that's fantastic. What is pivoting a little bit? What is your favorite restaurant in Cleveland?

27:46
John Litten
Ooh, I don't know. I don't know that answer. I live pretty close to Johnny Mango. I like it there.

27:54
Ashtyn Morris
That's really good.

27:55
John Litten
I love hex cafe, too. All of the Ohio city stuff. And I imagine you know those. Well, also in Lakewood, you know. Yes. Angelo's pizza and stuff like that. Everybody knows. I'm sorry, I'm not helping.

28:08
Ashtyn Morris
No, it's not.

28:09
John Litten
I love a good barbecue place. A woodstock over there, landmark. There's a lot of good barbecue places by our headquarters. So I get to test the waters there.

28:18
Ashtyn Morris
That's great.

28:18
John Litten
Good company. I'm not helping.

28:20
Ashtyn Morris
No, it's okay. These, it's always funny, d all of the above. All these rapid fire questions are never rapid fire because there's so many good options in Cleveland.

28:28
John Litten
That's right.

28:29
Ashtyn Morris
I don't think this is going to be any easier to answer, but favorite coffee shop in Cleveland?

28:35
John Litten
I'd have to say rising star.

28:36
Ashtyn Morris
Rising star is great.

28:37
John Litten
Yeah. Just because I had one close to me in Lakewood when I was there and they wanted Ohio City or hinge town's nice too and had a lot of meetings there. I used to be a councilman in Lakewood and I would have a lot of coffee meetings at rising star, so that was my usual stop.

28:52
Ashtyn Morris
Awesome. Well, that about wraps things up for us. John, thank you so much for joining us today. You and your team are doing amazing things at Habitat, and we really appreciate the time. Where can listeners find you if they want to connect? And how can they get involved with Habitat?

29:08
John Litten
One stop shopping on our website, clevelandhabitat.org. That said, social media, there's also every way to get ahold of us as well. They can call my cell phone if they want to. Anyway, we put ourselves out there in so many places, it's hard not to find us. But the website's a good place to start.

29:26
Ashtyn Morris
Great. Well, thank you so much and we appreciate the time.

29:29
John Litten
Thank you.