We’re excited to introduce you to the always interesting and insightful Graham Honeycutt. We hope you’ll enjoy our conversation with Graham below.

Graham, looking forward to hearing all of your stories today. Can you recount a story of an unexpected problem you’ve faced along the way?

The most unexpected problem I have faced as the Executive Director of Tucker’s House was moving the organization forward after our Founder retired. The Founder did an amazing job starting Tucker’s House and many of the processes were built around her skillset.

When she retired in 2022, we experienced many gaps in our team and processes. In order to move forward, we have had to reorganize our team and business model so that it is sustainable without all the institutional knowledge that the Founder possesses.

In the midst of the transition, there were moments of feeling overwhelmed and lack of certainty if the changes we were making would be successful. I realized that as leaders we don’t always know if the decisions we make will work out and to let go of some of the anxiety of making a wrong decision. Being a leader can also feel lonely at times, so I also found it important to involve the team as much as possible to create buy-in and a sense of shared ownership in the outcome.

Great, appreciate you sharing that with us. Before we ask you to share more of your insights, can you take a moment to introduce yourself and how you got to where you are today to our readers.

I am the Executive Director of a non-profit called Tucker’s House. We provide home modifications for families who have children or young adults with disabilities. Our process is completely individualized because each child and home we serve is different. However, the modifications we most often make are widening doorways, accessible bathrooms with a roll-under sink and zero-entry shower, installing solid flooring, and installing durable medical equipment.

I first learned about Tucker’s House when they helped us with some modifications to our home to make it safer and more accessible for my oldest daughter Mikayla who was born with disabilities. Tragically, Mikayla passed away in 2018 but I stayed in touch with the organization to help support its mission. The Founder was looking to retire and asked me to lead the organization in the future.

We recently launched a new video series that gives viewers a behind-the-scenes look at the stories of the families we serve and the home modification process. You can see episodes here: https://tuckershouse.org/house-to-home/.

Any advice for growing your clientele? What’s been most effective for you?

In our business as a non-profit, we have clients who are those that we serve and then we have donors who are giving to help support the needs of our clients.

The most effective growth strategy for us as a non-profit is to focus on serving our mission to the best of our ability. If we serve our clients well then they become partners for us to help spread the word to other clients and provide testimonials for us.

The outcomes that we provide to our clients help us tell effective stories to inspire others to give and become partners with us in our mission.

At Tucker’s House, we all serve the mission. We have even listed our mission at the top of our organizational chart to highlight to everyone where our focus lies.

Do you have any stories of times when you almost missed payroll or any other near death experiences for your business?

I started at Tucker’s House in April of 2020 during the global pandemic. In the first few months that I started, we had 3 months of operational cash on hand. Our funding during those first months of the pandemic was down 30%. By August of 2020, I looked at our books and calculated that if we had 2 more months like the previous 3 months then we would be out of cash. It was difficult to be so new in a business and see that it may not survive. We decided that our mission was too important to stop or furlough staff at that time. We decided to press forward for awhile longer before shutting down or furloughing. We worked hard and did receive some major gifts in the end of 2020 to help sustain us into 2021.

Contact Info:

• Website: https://tuckershouse.org/
• Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/tuckershouse/
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/tuckershouse.org
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/in/graham-honeycutt/
• Youtube: http://www.youtube.com/@tuckershouseTN
• Other: tiktok.com/@tuckershouse2024