Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Holli Clark. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.

Alright, Holli thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Alright, so you had your idea and then what happened? Can you walk us through the story of how you went from just an idea to executing on the idea

Jeremiah 1:5 was in the making for years before we officially started the non-profit. Katie, the founder, talked about it back in college. When the pandemic hit, it was just time to actively begin building. Once it was decided, steps just fell into place. We were blessed with a handful of volunteers that helped to get us launched. They helped with the legal matters, the general mission and vision statements, and acted as sounding boards for the plethora of ideas we had for the organization. The next year was a bit up and down, as one would expect. We weren’t able to narrow down what we wanted to do until 9 months after we had started. We had done a handful of projects, but nothing that was our own. In May 2021, we started our “What’s Your Name?” homeless outreached. We have consistently done these in Dallas and Fort Worth since then.
For these events, we initially began to pre-package bags with everything in it (food, water, toothbrush, etc) but we’ve moved away from that a little bit in a way that allows individuals to pick what they are wanting or needing rather than a generic packed sack to just pass out. It’s given us more opportunity to have conversations with people, find out their names and some of their stories. We had to allow ourselves to go in a little unprepared to actually accomplish our goal-to meet their social needs as well as their physical needs.

Holli, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?

Jeremiah 1:5 is a non-profit with the goal of uplifting marginalized communities and positively impacting them in their times of need. We keep our specifics broad in order to accomplish this goal but currently we consistently have a monthly homeless outreach and we work with a foster care agency for a mentoring service. In the past, we’ve also done work with low income communities for holiday events among a few other things. Personally, I’m most proud of our “What’s Your Name?” homeless outreaches. I’ve done plenty of community service projects, but the homeless have always been my favorite. It’s such a tangible event that I can easily witness my efforts impact other people. It’s a bit selfish, but it’s much harder to see my individual contributions when I just donate money or do some other projects. I am a part of every step with the homeless outreached from the purchasing of products, the picking up donations, the set up, and the delivery of items to the people I see. It’s been our most consistent event as well. I’ve loved to see how people can participate in this event because there have been several different types of volunteers. Some people can donate, some can help pass out those donations, some can help collect items and they’re all flexible to those individuals yet it allows them to participate. I think this is part of what makes up different. We’re still a small non-profit that allows us that flexibility to meet our event needs while allowing people to participate in ways they can commit to.

We’d love to hear about how you met your business partner.

Katie and I met in college. She was one of my roommates and is my absolute best friend. College is a crazy time for most people, so I’ll spare you the details but Katie is one of the only people I still talk to from college and definitely the only consistent one. When she first told me she wanted to start a non-profit, we were still in college, so when she mentioned in back in 2020, I was already committed. I knew this wasn’t just a spur-of-the-moment idea, but something I knew Katie had really thought about and planned for.

Let’s talk about resilience next – do you have a story you can share with us?

Throughout the 2 and a half years Jeremiah 1:5 has been around, we have had numerous people on and off of our executive board. I don’t think I can count how many people have committed to work with us and then have fallen off. Personally, I think each of these people have shown us different aspect of management/leadership that neither Katie or I really knew before. We’ve had many conversations about how to get and keep people around, but I think it comes down to finding the right people. I also think we needed to go through each of these experiences to learn. Moving forward, I believe we’ll be stronger in these choices.

Contact Info:

• Website: jeremiahonefive.com
• Instagram: @jeremiahonefive
• Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/jeremiahonefiveorg/
• Linkedin: https://www.linkedin.com/company/jeremiahonefive