What should congregations consider when launching a social venture? In this insightful conversation, Jaleesa Hall shares how Raising a Village grew from a college initiative into a thriving nonprofit serving underserved children and families in Washington, D.C. She offers church leaders practical guidance on launching social ventures, emphasizing discernment, sustainable capacity-building, and the power of partnership and pilot programs.
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What should congregations consider when launching a social venture? In this insightful conversation, Jaleesa Hall shares how Raising a Village grew from a college initiative into a thriving nonprofit serving underserved children and families in Washington, D.C. She offers church leaders practical guidance on launching social ventures, emphasizing discernment, sustainable capacity-building, and the power of partnership and pilot programs.
Jessica Anschutz: Welcome to Leading Ideas Talks, a podcast featuring thought leaders and innovative practitioners. I am Jessica Anschutz, the Interim Director of the Lewis Center for Church Leadership, and I am your host for this Leading Ideas talk. Joining me is Jaleesa Hall, the founder and CEO of Raising a Village, a nonprofit organization that provides high quality intervention programs and community resources to underserved children and families. She’s also the co-author of “Nonprofit Venture Development: Starting New Nonprofits and Social Ventures,” a chapter in the Josie Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management. Thank you so much for taking the time today to share with me about new social ventures, Jaleesa.
Jaleesa Hall: Thank you so much for having me. I’m really, really grateful to be here.
Jessica Anschutz: I want to give our listeners an opportunity to get a little bit of your context, and so share with us, how did Raising a Village come to be?
Jaleesa Hall: Oh, that’s a loaded question. How much time do you have? But, for the sake of time, Raising a Village started actually when I was in college. I went to Clark Atlanta University, which is an HBCU in Atlanta, Georgia. I started a student campus-chartered organization by the name of Driven. And I started this organization because as a freshman, or getting out of my freshman year, I got a little tired of doing freshman college things. The partying and just, all of the things. And I was like, “I just, I wanna do something more.” And I was really blessed to have friends, to be like, “Yeah, we just wanna do something else.” And at the time, where the college is located, it – the community – was very blighted. So, a lot of my friends had a passion for community service.
And at the same time, Clark Atlanta had a requirement for freshmen students to have a certain amount of hours as part of their graduation requirement. So, along with me and my friends, we had this innovative idea to create the student organization that freshmen can funnel into to get community service hours for graduation. And what ended up happening was we would do events to food banks or community cleanups or park cleanups. But as the organization grew, we started to create our own community initiatives, and one of our largest initiatives was a mentorship program at the Atlanta Children’s Shelter called ‘The Driven to Succeed Program.’
Really, what ended up happening was, as I continued to matriculate in college, the organization grew from six of my friends to 100 members strong, in fact, and we ended up having corporate sponsorships and all of these things. And so, a mentor said, “Jaleesa, do you realize that though you’re majoring in communications, you’re kind of running a pseudo-nonprofit?” And it’s about my senior year and I’m like, “Yeah, you’re right. I am. And I think I like to do this work better.” And he said, “yeah, you don’t want to break news. You wanna make news.” And that really just, you know, made me crumble in tears because I’m just like, “Yeah, you’re right. I think this is a part of my calling.”
And so basically, what ended up taking place is I ended up deciding to move to Washington, D.C. to get a master’s in public administration and policy at American University. And I did a concentration in nonprofit-management. And while I was in grad school, I worked at nonprofits and government entities to really understand what public service is, how to lead a public service initiative, because of course that’s much different than a student organization, right?
And so then, after my first Master’s, I decided to torture myself and get another one at Wesley Theological Seminary. But actually, it was there that I got the community engagement fellowship that gave me $10,000 to start what ended up becoming Raising A Village Foundation. So, I always tell folks that Wesley Theological Seminary was my first funder, right? It helped me do the startup costs and piloting our initiatives, and now we’re about a $1.4 million organization. And so, that’s a little bit of the story about how we got started.
Jessica Anschutz: What an incredible story, and I love how your educational experiences led to your vocational experience. I want to invite you to share a little bit more about Raising A Village. What do you all, what do you all do? What does a typical… there may not even be a typical day for you. What does your life look like in this role?
Jaleesa Hall: Yeah, so first of all, Raising A Village is a D.C. nonprofit. And you’re right, we do provide, as you said in the intro, high impact, high quality intervention programs and community resources to underserved children and families, and we do that through three core ways. We do that through education programs, health and wellness programs, and arts programs. On the education side, we have a high impact tutoring program, called “The Driven to Succeed” program, that I took from college, where we provide both math and English high impact tutoring, which means that our tutors go into the school during the school day and work with students who are struggling the most. So, we actually do pullout sessions. And so, we actually mirror what is happening in the classroom, but just in a more small, intimate, and controlled setting for those students that are struggling the most. And so, we do that in about 15 schools in D.C. and we hire about 70 to 80 college students to actually serve as our tutors and mentors.
On the health and wellness side, we have a program called “At the Table” that we actually just piloted this year. And the reason why I say that is because I’m just one person. And the organization actually started in crisis, right? We actually fully launched in 2019, and we know what happened in 2020. So, we’ve been doing things strategically. And so, “At the Table” is our family engagement program, and what we do is we provide parental workshops for parents. We do something called an “Open Table Dinner,” where we just bring parents and families together, to be able to know about the resources that are happening in DC over food, and meal, and table. And then, we also, one thing that we’re about to launch next year, is our adult education program. So, a lot of our parents maybe didn’t finish high school, and so they want to get their GED, and so we’re gonna be providing free tutoring for parents to be able to do that.
And then, on the arts side, that is another program that we have not, that is a program that we have not launched at all, we won’t be planning to launch that until 2028, but that’s really about how do we bring cultural capital into neighborhoods that don’t have the opportunity to have it. And the last thing I’ll say, the reason why I focus on like education, health, and wellness, and the arts, is because thriving communities, if you look at those that are thriving, they have those three things in tow, right? They have good schools. They’re not living in food apartheid, and they have some sense of cultural capital and entertainment.
And so, what RAV tries to do (Raising a Village, where we call it RAV, affectionately) is really try to again, go to those communities, journey alongside them in providing resources that are critical to their thriving.
Jessica Anschutz: Thank you so much for this important and transformative work. It’s really exciting to hear about. As you think about what you know now, what do you wish you knew as you were launching RAV?
Jaleesa Hall: My God. Good question, because I started it; I’m 35 now, and I started it in my twenties. And so, I’m… I’m still the same. I haven’t changed entirely, but I am different. I think I’m better now. And so, there are a couple things that I think that I’ve learned, or lessons that I’ve learned from this, is when you’re building a social venture, like capacity building, is so critical to this work, right? Like, in the beginning it’s easy to focus on the programs and the services. But building internal infrastructure—how an organization operates from operations to HR, to financial systems, to even legal, we have a general counsel now—is so essential in order to, for an organization to become sustainable. And I think when I started on, I used that $10,000 from Wesley to pilot the program, and rightfully so, but as I begin to build and grow, and that involved people, I realized that internal systems were important. So, capacity building is critical.
I would also say diversified funding, that’s a big deal. Of course, in the nonprofit space especially, relying too heavily on one revenue stream is risky, and I think quite dangerous. And so, trying to create a balance between fees for service, grants, earned income, even individual donor support, has also been something that I’ve needed to learn—and to learn fast—again with the volatile environment that we’re in now.
And then I’ll say, lastly, I think, if I could just be transparent, leadership matters, you know? I really needed, and I’m glad that I was able to get it quickly, the right people surrounding me that can serve as a sounding board for me as I continue to think, build, and grow with intentionality. That includes my board of directors, for sure, but also, I got some leadership coaching in here. Like I, I continuously find ways to learn from people who know better than me, so that I can try to do this work well and with intention because it is a ministry for me. Though it’s not a formal church, I feel like I do church every day. And so, it includes pastors, businesspeople, public servants. I have a real, just a real village, if you will, of people who help me try to navigate this space as a leader.
Jessica Anschutz: That’s really wonderful, and I appreciate your vulnerability in sharing and your acknowledging of those mentors and others who have come along the way to, to support you in, in this important work.
You referenced social venture, and you use this term throughout your chapter also, and I want to invite you to share with our listeners who are primarily church leaders, clergy, and laity: What do you mean by social venture?
Jaleesa Hall: It’s just a cute little word that was created… No, I’m just kidding! A new social venture is basically, it’s just an initiative or organization that is designed to address a societal need. That’s really it. It’s mission focused. It is—and that venture can take many forms, which includes nonprofits, social enterprises, even hybrid models like B Corp that blends business practices and social impact. But that’s really what a new social venture is. It’s just an initiative, an organization that is addressing a societal need in a sustainable and mission-driven way.
Jessica Anschutz: So, a number of churches may be interested in starting a social venture. What options are available for church leaders who are looking into starting one?
Jaleesa Hall: Yeah. And let me just be clear: There are so many options. And, in fact, when the sector really began it was the church leading the way with schools and hospitals. And churches, really think back to its history; they know how to do this work. But there are several pathways that a church can explore. They can, for example, start a 501(c)(3) nonprofit, separate from the church. The church that I attend, Emory Fellowship United Methodist Church, under Joseph Daniels, did just that with the Emory Beacon of Light. Churches can also create a fiscally sponsored project. Basically, they can create an initiative, but that is fiscally sponsored by another organization, so that they don’t have to worry about the tax implications. They can also launch a social enterprise; basically they can launch a B corporation, a for-profit corporation, that generates revenue while also fulfilling a mission, right? So that can be a soup kitchen, even an ice cream shop, right? But that the revenue does go to some sort of social impact work. And then there’s also expanding and an existing ministry. A new social venture can also be a ministry that is also taking place in the church, led by volunteers, without having to be formally incorporated, but just maybe thinking about how to make it a more structured program model with partners and the right people in place. So, there are so many options, both large and small, that a church can do to start a new social venture.
The new book Healing Fractured Communities is written by alumni of the Lewis Center Community Leadership Fellows program who are pastoral leaders engaged in the work of renewal, resilience, and resistance in congregations, on college campuses, and in communities. Each chapter paints a picture of the work of healing fractures like racism, education inequality, and/or poverty. Each chapter includes takeaways to inspire healing in your community, and questions for reflection. Proceeds from the sale of the book support the Dr. Lovett H. Weems Jr. Scholarship Fund. Learn more and order now at churchleadership.com/books.
Jessica Anschutz: Thank you for highlighting some of those. I know a number of congregations are weighing whether or not to begin, or to become, or to launch, a 501(c)(3) organization. What are some of the advantages or disadvantages of doing so?
Jaleesa Hall: There are tradeoffs in this work. I mean, just going back to your question about what lessons I’ve learned, I learned that there are tradeoffs to starting a nonprofit versus the for profit, et cetera. There’s tradeoffs with any decision that you make. But let me talk about the advantages first. I think that’s important.
One, doing a nonprofit, for example, there’s certain tax exemption status that you get, which is really, really important, because grants, for example, are really given to nonprofit entities, right? And so, when you’re a tax-exempt organization—now you’re in the grant game; you’re in the foundation grant game, which is really important. So, you’re eligible for grants. You are eligible for tax-exempt donations, right? So even, and of course the church knows this very well with tithes and offering, but if you have a 501(c)(3) where maybe there… there’s another population that doesn’t attend your church. So, they don’t give to your church, but they will give to your nonprofit.
So, there’s an advantage there. Also, there’s a particular public trust and credibility when you are formed as a 501(c)(3). And I think public trust, credibility, goodwill, is so important when you’re trying to expand the folks that you reach. And then lastly, the ability to build partnerships with government and other nonprofits in a way that restricts the formal church structure, right? So, in a nonprofit, you have more ability to kind of build bridges of partnership with other entities, which I think is important.
Some of the disadvantages or just, I would say the considerations that a church should keep in mind, or even a lay person that wants to start a new social venture, would be that there are compliance requirements, which means IRS filings, filings with your state or district. That can be tedious. Also, depending on the kinds of venture you’d need to do, you might have to do some financial compliance requirements too, like an audit—and audits are long and expensive.
I wish I can raise both hands and feet to show you how much I mean that, right? Audits are serious business. But there are also limitations in terms of political and lobbying activities. And so, we have to be mindful of that, and especially as our nation becomes more involved and more politically engaged. I think it’s important for the church to be thinking about that in terms of its limitations.
And then lastly, again, nonprofits have to depend on external funding, which can fluctuate. And so, though even for Raising A Village, we have these diverse revenue streams. Year to year, one revenue stream is stronger than the other. So, with that comes capacity and ongoing strategy to keep your venture sustainable. So, those are the advantages and disadvantages that I would… I think are important to share off the top.
Jesica Anschutz: Thank you so much for highlighting those. In the chapter you wrote, the focus of this chapter is to help guide the successful development of new social ventures with the recognition that sometimes it is better to not start one at all. How can church leaders discern if it is time to start one, or perhaps if it is not time.
Jaleesa Hall: Yeah. And I wrote, me and Louis Faulk, who is a professor at American University, when we were coming up with this chapter, when we put that in mind, because it’s okay to not start one. Again, that’s why we try to provide other avenues for people to engage. We’re not trying to stop people from engaging in the sector, but we—what we are trying to say is everyone doesn’t need to start something in the sector. And I was hoping that would take a little pressure off folks to think that everybody needs to be an entrepreneur, right? That’s a lot of language happening now. But I would say things that a church leader, or even lay leader, lay person, needs to discern is: Okay, number one, is there a genuine community need for this that is not being done somewhere else? That’s a question. And one of the things that I actually learned while I was a student at Wesley was this tool called asset mapping, right? So, it was a tool to be able to think about where the gifts and graces are that are already happening in that community in order to make sure that whatever I feel called to is not tampering, but just adding to what is happening there. So, is there a genuine community need? And am I duplicating existing efforts or is this unique? Do we have the resources and capacity to sustain what we are feeling called to?
And another question is: What partnerships can we form instead of starting from scratch? So, the part of the discernment process, again is, is this a genuine need for the community? Am I duplicating efforts or is what I am feeling pushed to do unique? And do I have the resources and capacity to sustain this? And then again, what partners can I form to really journey alongside us in doing this work? Because community work should never be done in silos. It should always be done together. So, those are the kind of the key questions I would tell folks to chew on.
Jessica Anschutz: I think those are great places to start in the discernment process. You acknowledge in the chapter also that new organizations are more vulnerable to failure than more established organizations. So, how would you advise church leaders to work so that their efforts have the best possible opportunity for success?
Jaleesa Hall: Oh my God, yeah. That’s just a part of business, no matter if it’s a social impact venture or not, right? – is we’re all susceptible to failure. And I was, and I have to speak from experience here. It’s important to start safe and small. You don’t have to tackle the whole problem in one fell swoop. So, I tell people that wanna start ventures of any kind: pilot, pilot, pilot. This is just like how we learn in, in experiments in schools, right? You create a hypothesis, you test, you test, you see what the results are, and then you retool to make the experiment better. And so, one of the ways in which you sustain yourself is to pilot, and see what the community is saying back to you, and use that information to serve as a, what I call, an ongoing feedback loop to be able to know the direction and when you where you need to go. The pilots will tell you the areas you may need to strengthen, particularly around capacity, people, power, funding, et cetera. So, pilot. Pilot.
And then, the other P (I like alliterations) here is partner. Again, I wanna go back to that. You don’t have to do this work alone. And I think churches particularly have this opportunity to create a network of impact because we should be talking to each other as churches. We’ve seen it even in the DMV area, that they’re like five churches on one street, right? And so, what does it look like to pilot and then partner, right? That is how you create sustainability, because we could be sharing resources instead of hoarding it. And so, I think by doing, kind of starting safe and starting small, piloting, and then partnering, and then using those kinds of signals as ongoing feedback loops will then help you create kind of a path to growth. And that’s what happened with RAV. I piloted. I partnered. And I got to see the next step of the road, then more, more money, more people, more abilities, and I just end up growing from there.
Jessica Anschutz: I noticed as you were answering the question, how your earlier answer about RAV and the story there, and how what you’re doing now, and what you anticipate doing in the future, is modeling that. Starting small, getting something launched, and then taking on the next piece. In thinking about the importance of partnerships, partnerships are critical. How would you advise congregations, church leaders, so pastors and laity, to go about cultivating those partnerships?
Jaleesa Hall: Yeah. Yeah. That’s in incredibly important. I think—I think what I would say is you start what I call “in and out,” right? With Raising a Village, before I formed it as a 501(c)(3), I used the partnerships that I had internally. The university, my friends that became then the members that grew. And because everybody—people know people, right? And part of it is, I think, as a leader especially, that wants to leave something, it’s important when we talk about discernment, you have to look at the gifts, graces, and assets that’s already in your hand that you’re connected to.
And then again, starting in and then out from there. So, for example, I used… I worked with the college students, right? And then when I moved to D.C., I was able to pull on their knowledge to figure out how to pilot this in D.C. Then, once I got into a D.C. public school, I became friends with teachers and principals, who then helped me begin to grow it from there. And to me, that’s the organic way to do it. So, for example, now, particularly with our education program, we started the bottom up. We started from school to school to school, which means I talked from principal to principal to principal to principal. I didn’t go to the district office and say, “Put me in 15 schools.” I started school to school to school. Now the district says, “RAV, we need you in more.” Now, the district is thinking more top down; but we created such a base of support and community trust, right? So, if you start “in and out,” instead of top down, or out and in, that allows you the ability to be able to start authentically, right? To be able to create buy-in in a way that is important. So, what’s in your hand, and then, cultivate those gifts and graces, and then go out from there. And trust me, it, you know, usually pops off like wildfire, I think, when you start that organically grassroots.
Jessica Anschutz: I appreciate that very much, Jaleesa. I am so enjoying our conversation, and I can hardly believe that the time is quickly passing us. I want to highlight, again, that your chapter is in the Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management. We will link to that on the podcast page, and I want to invite you to share some words of hope for church leaders who may be thinking about starting new social ventures.
Jaleesa Hall: Absolutely. Here’s the piece. Launching a new social venture, I’m not gonna be… I’m not gonna sugarcoat it. It is both—it is challenging, but it is also rewarding. But you don’t have to figure it all out from day one. The key I would want to invite folks to, to think about is to start with a strong foundation, but also to be willing to adapt. Be willing to be contextually nimble. And then, as you’re doing that, find mentorship and collaboration along the way, you know? Because it is through that, that your efforts can create lasting change. I know that as a society, we like things fast, we like things quick; but community work, it’s for the long haul. It’s a marathon. MLK said the arc bend towards justice, right? Like, it takes a minute, but it will get there. So, you know, by doing those kinds of things, strong foundation, being contextually nimble, collaborating in a way that is authentic, and just keep your hand at the plow and tilling the soil. You’ll see the fruits that God has placed in your life.
Jessica Anschutz: Thank you so much, Jaleesa, for joining us today.
Jaleesa Hall: Thank you so much for having me. I appreciate it.
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“Nonprofit Venture Development: Starting New Nonprofits and Social Ventures,” a chapter in the Jossey Bass Handbook of Nonprofit Leadership and Management (Jossey-Bass, 2024). The book is available through the publisher and Amazon.
Related Resources
- Community Partnerships: Moving from a Mindset of Scarcity to Abundance featuring Mahogany Thomas — Watch the Leading Ideas Talks podcast video | Listen to the podcast audio version | Read the in-depth interview
- Creatively Engaging Your Community While Remaining True to Who You Are by Paul Nixon
- 5 Steps to Church Vitality and Turnaround by Tony Hunt
- Doing Good Well, a video tool kit resource from the Lewis Center
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