Please Don’t Start another Non-Profit

Please Don’t Start another Non-Profit January 16, 2012

Chris Heuertz, who has been faithfully running an anti-trafficking organization for two decades, has some advice for young, social justice-minded Christians who want to start a organization that will do good in the world: Don’t.

Chris Heuertz

About 8-10 times a year I get random calls from sincere 20-somethings asking me for advice about the non-profit organization they want to start. Usually these new, innovative ideas are cause-driven organizations that aim to help victims of human trafficking or women and children caught up in the commercial sex industry.

I don’t want to be a dream-killer, but in nearly every one of these scenarios my advice sounds something like this, “Please do not start another non-profit.”

Seriously.

Here’s why:
1) Most of the women and children who are victims of human trafficking or caught up in the commercial sex industry have already experienced so much trauma, loss and disappointment in their lives that your new, innovative idea for a non-profit will likely end up being another tragic disappoint they can not afford. On behalf of my friends and my co-workers who daily engage these women, do not do this to them, they’ve already suffered enough. Do not set people up to be let down again, they deserve better.

READ reasons 2-5 at Chris’s blog.


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