We caught up with the brilliant and insightful Jason Sowell a few weeks ago and have shared our conversation below.
Alright, Jason thanks for taking the time to share your stories and insights with us today. Let’s start with the story of your mission. What should we know?
In 2008, after taking a break from my church pastoral career I started a not-for-profit organization called Current Initiatives. Growing up in church I always loved missions work and serving others became my passion. Over time I became frustrated with my church world experience of doing mission trips that often did not tangibly meet physical needs in the countries we went to, and that we were passing local neighborhoods in my city to go serve communities outside the country. We did these things all with good heart, but I wanted to do more to make hope a tangible thing for families that were struggling in my own city. I started working with a small group of friends to identify ways to accomplish this idea with fresh perspectives and a philosophy that charity should bring dignity and empowerment to the people it serves.
As always, we appreciate you sharing your insights and we’ve got a few more questions for you, but before we get to all of that can you take a minute to introduce yourself and give our readers some of your back background and context?
I started Current with the idea of wanting to bring tangible hope to our local neighborhoods by meeting overlooked needs that families were struggling with in my own city.
Our first initiative to accomplish this was the Laundry Project, which assists lower-income individuals and families by taking over a laundromat for a day and covering all expenses associated with and providing the necessary items required to wash and dry clothes and linens. Soap and Hope is our mission with this initiative.
From there, we started the Hopes for Homes Project, which provides complimentary remodeling and improvement work on homes owned by working-class families facing financial challenges with home repairs and maintenance. Contractors and volunteers work to repair damaged roofs and porches, remodel kids’ rooms and bathrooms, update energy-inefficient kitchens, and more.
Our third initiative, called Affordable Christmas, began in 2012, which is a seasonal initiative giving underserved families and parents the opportunity to purchase holiday gifts for their children for no more than $10 an item. Studies show that purchasing gifts, rather than receiving them for free, gives empowerment and dignity to these working parents who need a hand up.
Technically, I’m the Founder and CEO of Current Initiatives, but what I really see my job as is being a Hope Dealer. That applies not only to the families we serve but also to our volunteers and supporters and to our communities at large. Hope is not just an abstract idea, it’s very tangible. We see that tangibility through small acts of kindness in various ways. A simple act of dignifying kindness can bring so much hope and change someone’s world.
I think I’m most proud of this philosophy in our charitable work. We believe how you meet needs is just as important as what needs you meet. We want to help parents and individuals be the hero of their own families/stories rather than us being the hero. We try to create opportunities for them to do that through examples like Affordable Christmas, where parents can purchase new gifts for their kids in a budget-friendly way so they can go home and give their kids a good Christmas rather than strangers giving those toys to their kids for them.
I’m also very proud of this in regards to our Laundry Project initiative which meets a basic, largely overlooked need. Clean laundry brings a lot of dignity, and most people take clean laundry for granted. For many families, clean laundry is a luxury rather than a regularity because they are often choosing between buying groceries or washing their clothes due to being lower-income and other financial struggles.
Can you share a story from your journey that illustrates your resilience?
Every journey has its ups and downs, and my journey with the current has been no different. When I started current, I had no idea how to run a non-profit organization and raise money. In fact, in 2008 during the recession, while putting the legal paperwork together to establish my organization I sat with an attorney to help us get the paperwork done. He said to me, “You picked a terrible time to start a non-profit.”…very encouraging. My response in that moment was, “You’re right. But, if I can make it work when the economy sucks, we’ll be fine when it’s good.”
Since then, we’ve learned to put together fundraising plans and build budgets and lean on the leadership and expertise of some incredible supporters along the way. For the first six years of Current’s existence, I worked part-time at Starbucks to keep my bills paid and spent most of my free time trying to build current into a sustainable organization. 14 years later, here we are. Just in regards to our first initiative, the Laundry Project, to date, we’ve washed over 2 million pounds of laundry for more than 25,000 families in 15 states across the U.S.
There will always be times a person or organization needs to be resilient. It’s the way of life. We’ve had plenty of these moments over the years. 2020 – 2021 was a big one in that regard. In 2016, we lost one of our most beloved Board Members at 44 years old to cancer. It was a gut punch for me personally as well as for the organization. He was the most encouraging person, filled with hope and positivity. In his honor, we adopted our mantra of being “Hope Dealers” and it fuels us to this day.
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Pivot points are inevitable in life and business. As I mentioned in our organizational history a couple of moments that we had to overcome, or “pivot” if you will. One significant time for our organization was in 2020 at the beginning of the pandemic. Many businesses were shutting down, community organizations were pausing their help to communities etc. We sat down virtually with our team and Board Members and adopted our 2020 guiding principle, “Do What You Can.” This principal was inspired by a scene in the movie “Jojo Rabbit.” At one point the main character, Jojo, is walking through the town square with his mother and comes upon bodies hanging from execution for Nazi treason. Jojo asks his mother what they did, and she simply answers, “What they could.”
We decided we didn’t have to do everything in all the ways we normally do, but we could do something. We retooled how we hosted Laundry Projects and worked with local governments to form a plan to continue serving our communities with their needs safely, and according to necessary COVID protocols. In that year we hosted the most Laundry Projects we’ve ever hosted in a single year and has since helped us be more efficient, smart, and creative in how we host project going forward.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.engagecurrent.org
- Instagram: @jasonsowell
- Facebook: facebook.com/engagecurrent
- Linkedin: www.linkedin.com/in/jasonsowell
- Twitter: @engagecurrent
- Youtube: youtube.com/engagecurrent
Image Credits
Current Initiatives, JLat Photography, Jarrett Haas, Micah Pringle, Pep Rally, Inc., Christopher Brickman, and Jake Keck