Leading The Way: Leah Miller
I learned never to doubt the power of a community of people who care deeply about something. The way they’ll show up for an organization they believe in, for something bigger than themselves when times are tough and things get difficult. How resilient the human spirit is, and that none of us need to fight alone …
Habitat for Humanity of Greater Sacramento had contingency plans for everything from fires to floods but until recently, not for a global pandemic that could shut the state down. As the virus began to spread, President & CEO Leah Miller realized that COVID-19 was bigger than anything she and her team had ever envisioned in the agency’s disaster preparedness plan ...
When did you realize that you were going to have to start operating very differently?
In the weeks leading up to the shutdown, we were planning a dedication for one of our partner families. Normally, we have 100 people at our home dedications – corporate partners, sponsors, dozens of volunteers who helped build the home and the family, who puts in 500 hours of sweat equity. I began getting calls from corporate partners saying their companies weren’t allowing them to attend gatherings of more than 50 people. That was when I first started thinking, “Are we behind? Are we not thinking enough about this? Are we not taking this seriously enough? Could this pandemic eventually force us to shut down?”
How did you respond?
We began putting preparedness plans in place immediately, getting laptops and IT equipment to staff so they could work at home. Once the shelter-in-place order went into effect, we had to close everything because many of the roles within our organization can’t be done remotely – the ReStore (Habitat’s retail outlet that sells new and used donated building materials, fixtures and home furnishings at a significantly lower price than retail stores), our building sites where we had three homes under construction and our home repairs program that works to keep people in their homes. The ReStore brings in $120,000 a month, revenue that is used to cover Habitat’s operating costs which includes salaries, rent, utilities and more. Without that funding coming in, we had no choice but to furlough all but three staff members.
I had to protect the available cash on hand so that when the shelter-in-place order was lifted, there was an organization for our staff and community to come back to. Once we furloughed the staff, that meant turning over every rock to find the funding to supplement the loss of revenue from the ReStore so that we could sustainably bring them back. We had to ensure that the organization would live on beyond this moment because COVID-19 won’t last forever; it will pass. We will get through it. However, the need for affordable housing in our community is ongoing and tremendous. For those that need a place to call home, we must get through it. We have to go forward, and when we come out on the other side of this, I believe we will be stronger because of it. But, in the interim, we needed to do everything we could to ensure the strength and stability of Habitat for decades and generations to come.
What steps did you take to find funding and reopen Habitat?
At the core of our Habitat for Humanity mission statement, we “Bring people together to build and repair homes, community and hope.” In a time when we couldn’t be together physically to build homes, we sought to find ways to bring the community together to build hope. First, we created a social media campaign called “Home Together” based on the idea that while we’re all home, we’re all in this together and working toward getting back on the job site. We crafted the message around the stimulus checks and asked people to submit a photo of themselves holding a sign with messages like “I give to Habitat because every child deserves a room of their own, and I’m donating $XX from my stimulus check.” Wells Fargo provided a corporate match, and we got a great response, one that exceeded our expectations. The campaign brought people together at a time when everyone was so far apart. Even our partner families and our furloughed staff made donations to support Habitat.
Simultaneously, we started looking for every source of funding we could – PPP loans, the city’s small business loans, SBA loans, etc. We reached out to our corporate partners and others who make the work of Habitat possible to let them know what was happening and see if they might be able to support us. We stayed in regular communication with our supporters and our furloughed staff so that they continued to feel connected to Habitat and knew what was happening. Thanks to River City Bank, we were able to secure a PPP loan and bring our staff back to work.
What happened after you brought the staff back to work?
First, we completely reorganized the ReStore – the displays to bring essential supplies to prominent placement, updated pricing and revamped our internal processes. When we opened to the public, we wanted to be sure we could do our absolute best to function as an essential business while also keeping our staff and the public safe using improved health and safety measures while still covering our operating costs and generating greatly needed revenue.
Then, we sent the construction staff back to our job sites. However, the build sites look a great deal different than they did before COVID. In normal times, we host upwards of 200+ volunteers monthly on our build sites who help us build and repair homes. However, in this COVID environment, we had to reduce the number of people at each site to just staff (no volunteers). Despite the challenge of limited helping hands and being shut down for two months, our team worked hard to catch up and made up a month of that lost time.
In addition to building and repairing homes, we serve as the mortgage lender and mortgage servicer of a majority of our Habitat mortgages which means one of our biggest concerns was (and remains today) that our homeowners might not be able to make their monthly payments due to financial hardships they are experiencing. We are so grateful to have had minimal instances where our homeowners have had to default on their mortgages due to COVID-19. However, the federal unemployment benefits ran out in July, and we will now have to wait and see how that affects our homeowners’ ability to make ongoing mortgage payments.
Is there anything you wish you had done differently?
When faced with incredibly difficult circumstances, I feel good about the decisions we made as a team to preserve the organization. Had we not shut the ReStore, we wouldn’t have any customers so we would have been spending money without bringing in any revenue. I’m grateful for our leadership team at Habitat and the culture we’ve built. At no point have we stopped pushing forward and developing solutions to build back and get through this crisis. From the onset, we have believed that we will get through this, bring our staff back and get back to building the affordable housing our community needs, no matter what it takes. And we work to keep our sense of humor, even on the hardest days.
What have you learned from this experience so far?
How resilient we are. We can make tough decisions and stay the course. We didn’t give up, and we never forgot that the work we do at Habitat isn’t done by one person or even a small group of people. It’s made possible because of our community.
I learned our community will show up for us in large and small ways to help make the work of Habitat possible. They’ll line up to shop at the ReStore, they’ll donate to our fundraisers, and they’ll share their gratitude for our help. Despite the challenging conditions created by COVID, we’re continuing the work by pivoting and adjusting to new virtual ways of engaging the community. Even though we can’t gather in large groups to dedicate our completed Habitat homes, what matters is we’re successfully putting people in homes who need them, and these families now have a safe, decent place to live.
Our experience with the staff working remotely has been positive so going forward, we’ll continue to allow that as an organization and give people the flexibility to work from home as long as it works for their roles. We’ll keep working on maintaining our solution-oriented and team-based culture and insuring that communication is happening effectively when everyone isn’t on the job in the same place.
We aren’t out of the woods yet. As this pandemic continues, I’ve learned to guide our team to make quick strategic pivots in frequently changing conditions. We’re working to activate a variety of virtual fundraising events to recapture lost funding due to a a number of engagement-based fundraising efforts that would typically take place on Habitat job sites such as Women Build, Rock the Block, Team Build and gala initiatives – combined they raise about $500,000 to support our new construction, repair projects and overhead expenses.
I learned never to doubt the power of a community of people who care deeply about something. The way they’ll show up for an organization they believe in, for something bigger than themselves when times are tough and things get difficult. How resilient the human spirit is, and that none of us need to fight alone.
Leah Miller is Habitat for Humanity of Greater Sacramento's first female CEO in its 34 year history. In 2019, Leah received the Interfaith Council of Sacramento's "Power of One" award. She was also named a 2019 Sacramento Business Journal's "Women Who Mean Business" award recipient and one of Sacramento Magazine's top 300 "Most Powerful Business Leaders in Metro Sacramento." A graduate of California State University, Chico, Leah is a long-time Sacramentan and lives in West Sacramento with her husband, Ryan and her two children, Mackenna and Mason.