Millard Fuller has been called one of the great humanitarians of the 20th Century. He was a self-made millionaire from Alabama and gave up his material possessions to pursue a greater purpose in life, to find a way to tangibly express God’s love to others.
That journey led him, along with his wife, Linda, to start Habitat for Humanity in 1976, a non-profit group that builds houses in partnership with those in need. Habitat is not a charity or a hand-out, but a hand-up. Since its beginning, Habitat has built more than 200,000 homes in more than 100 countries, housing more than 1.3 million people.
Millard has been honored for his outstanding public service with numerous awards, including the Presidential Medal of Freedom, which is the highest honor that can be bestowed upon a civilian. He was named as one of the hundred most influential people in housing in the 20th Century.
President Clinton said, “Habitat for Humanity is the most successful, continuous community service project in the history of the United States. It has revolutionized the lives of thousands and Millard Fuller has done as much as any other living person to make the dream of home ownership a reality in our country and throughout the world.”
Millard’s the author of several books and he travels well over 300,000 miles per year, enrolling people in his passion and mission to eliminate poverty housing. In 2006, he left Habitat for Humanity International and started a new non-profit, The Fuller Center for Housing.
Interviewing Millard is Cynthia Kersey, the best selling author of Unstoppable and Unstoppable Women. Cynthia has helped thousands of people around the world connect with their own unstoppable nature and discover their own marching orders. You can learn more about Cynthia’s practical programs for getting your life on an unstoppable track by going to www.Unstoppable.net.
Note: Because of technical difficulties with this recorded call, the transcript will pick up the interview a few minutes into it.
MILLARD FULLER: We thought that the work of Habitat for Humanity would be exclusively in third world countries and in the rural south. And Habitat has grown in third world countries, it’s all over Africa, it’s all over Asia, it’s all over Central and South America. It’s all over the rural south, but Habitat today is in every province in Canada. It’s in a number of European countries. It’s in New Zealand, it’s in Australia.
It is in all of the places we expected it to be, plus a whole lot more. Incidentally, that goal that we wrote about in our minutes of our first meeting was achieved in August of 2005. We dedicated the 200,000th house for the 1,000,000th person in Knoxville, Tennessee in August of 2005.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: How many years is that? Twenty seven years?
MILLARD FULLER: We started in 1976, so just shy of 30 years. Currently, Habitat is building about 30,000 houses a year.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: One of the things that I think is really brilliant about your strategy is you kind of broke it down because you have this huge goal to eliminate poverty housing. Then what you did is you would go into a community and challenge them to eliminate the poverty housing in their neighborhood, in their community, and that felt more doable. Tell us a little bit about that.
MILLARD FULLER: Yes, what we began to do was set up a series of what we call affiliates. The first one was in San Antonio, Texas and it was started by a woman named Faith Lytle. She had the meeting in her kitchen. There was a particular neighborhood in San Antonio called the Devil’s Triangle. It was called that because it was so dangerous and had very derelict housing and just a very bad situation.
These people, with me guiding them from a distance, decided they wanted to tackle the problem of substandard housing in the Devil’s Triangle. That marked the beginning of affiliates in the United States. They would form their own local 501-C39 profit with a board of directors and begin building houses. Typically, those groups, it might take them a year or two years to build the first house.
Then they would gain speed as they went along. Today, there are more that 1,700 cities throughout the United States that have local Habitat affiliates. Some of them build a house a year and some of them a house every two years. Others of them will build 100 or 200 houses a year.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: How many communities took your challenge to eliminate poverty housing in that particular area? As a city wide, not so much just the affiliate, but the city said, “This is what we’re going to do.”
MILLARD FULLER: You mean accept the goal of trying to eliminate poverty housing?
CYNTHIA KERSEY: Yes, exactly.
MILLARD FULLER: That was done here in Americus, Georgia, where we live, with Habitat for Humanities headquarter and where now The Fuller Center for Housing is located. In 1992, I called together a community meeting in Americus; we have a community college here called Georgia Southwestern State University. I called together all of the leaders of this community and I said, “Let’s eliminate poverty housing in this town and in this county, because that’s what we advocate for the whole world, let’s just model it here locally.”
We created an organization called The Sumter County Initiative. We set a goal to end poverty housing by the year 2000. We got organized, we gridded the county. We knew what families lived in each little grid and we wrote all of that down and got a plan in place and systematically, grid by grid, we built every family a house that needed one in each grid, or in some cases renovated houses, or in other cases houses were too bad to be fixed up so they’d just be torn down.
On September 15th of the year 2000, I stood in front of the Thomas family house and we had a big sign out front that said, “Victory House.” I led 400 people singing an old southern gospel song, Victory in Jesus because that house symbolized our victory over substandard housing. We got rid of all of the slums, we got rid of all substandard housing, and we built 35 houses that week. In the last week, we put up the last 35 houses in five days.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: How did that impact the community?
MILLARD FULLER: It had a very, very positive impact, a huge impact. We saw crimes go down, children doing better in school, all of the indicators of what makes for a better community, improved. I might do a fast forward, Cynthia, and I think the people who are on this call would find this very interesting. In December of this past year, I went to the little town that I was raised up in, over in Alabama. It’s the little town of Lanett and Valley, Alabama, two small towns right on the Georgia border and in West Point, Georgia.
Those three towns, West Point, Georgia; Lanett and Valley, Alabama make up what is called the Chattahoochee Valley. Population wise, it’s about the same as here in Americus, Georgia. I was invited over there to meet with a group in December and I challenged them to do there what we did here. They accepted that challenge and they have now created the Chattahoochee Fuller Center Project. On March 16, we will kick off a 500 house build in my little hometown area.
We will kick it off by starting a house on the 16th of March, on the 17th of March we will start the second house, on the 19th of March, we’ll start the third house, on the 20th of March, we’ll start the fourth house. By the end of that week, we will have two of those four houses completed and the other two virtually finished. On Saturday night, we will have a big Up with People musical concert. Sixty young people are coming from 19 different countries and we have a 1,600 seat auditorium that we will fill and all of the proceeds will go to build more houses.
We’ve already raised approximately $300,000 just in the last three months and we have pledges for another $150,000 or so. We have started off this particular initiative with a huge bang and I know it’s going to succeed there just like it has here locally.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: You know what’s interesting, Millard, is as I listen to you, your passion for what you do comes through so loudly. You’ve been doing this what? Thirty five years, over 30 years?
MILLARD FULLER: Over 30 years, that’s right.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: And it’s the same, anytime I ever talk to you, you’re so enthusiastic about what you’re doing despite the challenges that you go through. Where does that passion come from?
MILLARD FULLER: Well, first of all, Cynthia, I’m a firm believer that God loves me. Secondly, I believe that life is more than just eating food and going to sleep, you know, just going through life. I went to a funeral today. The end of life for all of us is a funeral. But what happens between that and the funeral? To me, life is exciting. To me, life is a challenge and the challenge is what makes life worthwhile, what makes life exciting. You embrace that philosophy. You promote the idea that you can be unstoppable.
All of us, I don’t care who you are, you have challenges in life. You have sickness, you have people who disappoint you, you have all kinds of things that come up of a negative nature. But the success of a person is not dependant on what happens to you, it’s how you respond to what happens to you. I recently went through a difficult period and I would tell all my people, my immediate staff, I would say, “You know what? The sun’s going to come up in the morning. There may be clouds and you won’t see the sun, but it’s up there.”
You just have to move ahead believing that things will work out for the best, in the long run, if you have love in your heart and you have pure motivation and you’re desire is to do what’s right and to try to improve the human condition as you go along.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: Millard, you embody that more than anyone I’ve ever met. I’ve never been so inspired by someone. As I’ve known you throughout the years, and in particular what’s happened over the last few years, and we’re going to talk about that regarding Habitat for Humanity. You have experienced what would have stopped 99.9% of the people on the planet.
We might as well go into that right this second because I do want you to share with the people, not only the challenges that you experienced over the last couple of years when you’ve built this huge organization, but the obstacles that you experienced in the process of making your dream and your passion a reality.
MILLARD FULLER: Well, that is certainly true. I don’t mind talking about this at all. It’s just that things happen in life that you don’t invite. You don’t particularly glory in them. But when they happen, you just deal with it. What happened in my situation was, my wife, Linda and I were over in Hong Kong, we had with us the first lady of Indiana, Judy O’Bannon, and we were on a six country tour of our work.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: When was this, Millard? What was the date?
MILLARD FULLER: This was in 2004. This was in February of 2004. The chairman of the Habitat for Humanity board called up and said to me, that a woman, a staff person of Habitat for Humanity; and the staff of Habitat at that time, in Americus had some 500 people on staff. The chairmen called up and said that some woman had said that I touched her on the arm, neck and thigh and told her she had smooth skin, on the way to the airport.
He told the name of the person, and I said, “Well, I remember this lady taking me to the airport, but it was so long ago, I couldn’t remember when it was.” I told him, “I can assure you nothing inappropriate happened on the way to the airport.” I said, “Whatever the problem is, we’ll be home in three weeks and you can come down and we’ll talk it over and I’m sure it will get settled within 15 minutes.”
To make a long story short, that’s not the way they handled it. The board treated it as if maybe I’d killed the woman on the way to the airport. It was turned into a huge deal and that started a downward spiral in terms of a relationship between me and the board, which was already strained. I’m sure people who don’t even know me, who’ve just heard this interview, can tell I am passionate about what I do. I had been on a relentless quest for close to 30 years to put Habitat for Humanity into every country on earth and I’ve put it into 100 countries.
I have about 90 to go. I was relentlessly getting up every morning trying to take it into more and more countries and some of the board members did not like that kind of living on the edge. They wanted to be more conservative and have bigger reserve funds and so forth. There was already tension between us and they used this woman’s accusation against me as a way to get at dealing with me because they couldn’t take me on in a direct way.
Jimmy Carter, who has been Habitats most famous volunteer for many years, I recruited him back in 1984, he got involved and very forcefully said that he was positive that I was guilty of no wrong doing. The board would not go along with that. Eventually, though, as the thing unfolded, they had to admit, and did so in writing, that there was insufficient proof of wrong doing on my part.
It ended up, on January 31st, 2005, fired me and my wife Linda. The official reason for firing was a pattern of divisive and disruptive comments. That was the official reason for dismissing us.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: So, basically, what happened was they asked you both not to talk about this. Your reputation is being dragged through the mud, but you weren’t allowed to say anything.
MILLARD FULLER: That’s right. Not wanting to hurt Habitat, which I had no desire to hurt Habitat, and don’t have any desire now to hurt Habitat. But because I was so concerned not to hurt what I had spent nearly 30 years of my life building, my wife and I signed an agreement where they were going to give us a life time guaranteed pay with full coverage of insurance and all we had to do to get all that money was to be quiet, to agree not to say anything.
After a period of time, it just hurt my conscious so much to have given up my freedom of speech, that Linda and I both agreed, and the agreement itself provided for a way to revoke it. So very meticulously, I followed the procedure of the agreement and revoked it.
I told them when I did so that I would rather live in a broken down mobile home with a clear conscious, than to give up my freedom of speech. The board was very upset when we revoked the agreement and it was just a few weeks after that that they fired us.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: Honestly, first off, this could be a huge long conversation in and of itself. What I want to get from you, first off, this was your life’s work. You give all of your money away, you’re one of the lowest paid CEO’s of a non-profit of that size, you and your wife are dedicated to this work, you traveled 300,000 miles a year.
All of the money that you got paid for your speaking went directly to Habitat for Humanity. You have this amazing reputation and somebody comes out and says something which was not proven, and the board, essentially, forced you out. How do you deal with something like that?
MILLARD FULLER: Well, here’s how I deal with it philosophically. People often ask me, “How do you feel about the board stealing Habitat for Humanity from you?” I’d say, “Well, first of all, they didn’t steal it because I didn’t own it.” I’ve always considered Habitat as Gods work. So I said, “They didn’t steal it, they did what they did legally.”
There was nothing illegal about what they did. They had the legal authority to fire me, but whether what they did was moral or not would be for somebody else to decide. I just decided that I was in good health; as I told people jokingly that I was not only not dead, but I wasn’t even feeling bad.
I just formed another organization to continue my work under another umbrella. I formed an organization called Building Habitat and they promptly sued me in federal court, claiming that I was violating their trade mark and brand name, all of which I created.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: Can I clarify this? So, building Habitat, you were essentially going out there and raising money again for the affiliates at Habitat for Humanity, and they sued you.
MILLARD FULLER: Yes, they sued me. I’ve never been in this for egotistical purposes, but I said hey, you know, I’m just going to have to name the thing after myself. They can’t keep me from naming something after myself. So I changed the name to The Fuller Center for Housing just to stop the legal wrangling. Since then, we have just gone gang busters. It’s just been unbelievable the outpouring of support.
You, Cynthia, have been so supportive and so many other wonderful people have come forward and been supportive. We’ve been able to start work in Shreveport, Louisiana and on the Texas Gulf coast and Mississippi Gulf coast for hurricane victim families. I mentioned my project in my home area of Lanett and Valley, Alabama and West Point, Georgia.
We’ve started building in Sri Lanka and Nepal and Nigeria. My vice president of programs is headed to El Salvador this weekend to get work under way in that Central American country. There are a number of other cities, Spartanburg, South Carolina; Bloomsburg, Illinois and other cities as far west as Arizona and throughout this country that are starting work. We’re just building houses and renovating houses and just going full speed ahead.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: Let me just recap this. Clearly, you had to have moments that you felt a little discouraged about what was happening, right?
MILLARD FULLER: There’s no such thing as a person who has no discouraging moments. You think about it and you say, yes, this was a real negative thing, but I just don’t dwell on it. Because if you dwell on it, you can convince yourself that the sky is falling.
I just thank God for all of the positive things that are happening and all of the people who are coming forward to offer support in terms of volunteers and money. We had, in Shreveport, Louisiana last September, the first ever what we called the Millard and Linda Fuller build. We had 400 people come from all over the United States and Canada and we put up 10 houses in five days.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: You know, Millard, it reminds me of this verse in the Bible, I learned this in college, it says, “For such is the will of God, that in your well doing, the ignorance of foolish men will be silent.”
MILLARD FULLER: That’s a great scripture.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: I’ve always thought about that. What I see in you, when I was devastated by what happened to you and Linda, I really was, it felt so unfair. You were such an example of your passion. You’re here, this is God’s work. You can do it through Habitat, you can start your own Fuller Center, it didn’t matter. You’re still doing what you love to do. People see who you are. You only have to be around you for two seconds and people get your credibility.
MILLARD FULLER: The people who are on the call, let me encourage them to go to our website at www.FullerCenter.org and look at the pictures there and read the articles about what we’re doing and go to the guest book. There are thousands, I’m not kidding, thousands of entries on our guestbook. You can be the most down person in the world and you start reading those entries in the guestbook and that would lift the spirits of anybody.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: You know, that’s a good point. What did you do when you felt down or you were discouraged? What’s your strategy or what do you recommend other people do? I already know how you’re going to answer this, but what do you recommend that they do?
MILLARD FULLER: Well, I would say first of all, realize that any glass that is half empty is half full. You look on the positive side of things. You don’t bemoan the negative things in your life; you thank God for the positive things. One of the things that I do is talk to people in whom I have confidence; friends, people who I know love me and care for me. I call them up and talk to them.
I love to talk, I’m a conversationalist. I love to talk and I love to talk to people and I love to have people talk to me. Just interacting with people and having your spirits lifted by people who are going to encourage you and love you and affirm you, you know, spend time with such people.
I know that’s the philosophy you aspire, Cynthia. If somebody is a negative naysayer, just spend a minimum of time with them because they’ll pull you down.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: So in other words, surround yourself with people who will lift you higher.
MILLARD FULLER: Absolutely. You know, I believe in quiet time where you meditate and reflect. Whatever a person’s religious orientation might be, I think almost everybody believes there is something beyond our human condition. You can reach out and try to connect with that source of spiritual power which is there for anybody who seeks it.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: Absolutely. I can’t acknowledge you enough. The truth is, for me, is you have this amazing story what you and Linda have done over the past 30 years or 40 years, as far as when you left your work, how you’ve lived your life, what you’ve built, the challenges, and then how you dealt with the challenges. I never heard bitterness. What about forgiveness? Speak a little bit to me about your point of view on forgiveness.
MILLARD FULLER: Well, I think that’s a very interesting topic, I’m glad you brought that up. I think the attitude of any thinking, spiritual person should always have an attitude of forgiveness. But forgiveness can not be completed until the person who has wronged you, or who you feel has wronged you, desires forgiveness.
It’s sort of like a live wire. You can have what electricians call a hot wire, but it does not make electricity until the circuit is complete. It is not until that hot wire touches another hot wire that the circuit is complete and it makes electricity. It’s that way with forgiveness. You need to have an attitude of forgiveness, but forgiveness never becomes complete until the person on the other side desires your forgiveness.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: But what about within yourself?
MILLARD FULLER: Oh, yes, of course, within yourself it can be completed in the sense that you have a total attitude of giving up bitterness, of giving up hostility, that your desire is to be reunited with the person from who you are now estranged. Forgiveness is never totally complete until the other side connects with you.
CYNTHIA KERSEY: How does that feel for you?
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