During our previous episode, Shared Humanity Project (SHP), co-founders Dr. Mark Bergel and Dr. Katherin Phillips were in the Starting Up phase: solidifying their mission, gathering information, and garnering support from their colleagues at A Wider Circle. The team has made important progress since we last touched base. SHP understands in a deeper way the urgency of their mission and enormity of their goals. They are rising to challenges that crop up along the way. And they have launched  The National Plan to End Poverty! Here’s what we learned when PIR recently sat down with Mark Bergel.

The Key to Moving Forward

As a new mission-based organization rolls out, maintaining focus on your “why?”—and keeping it front of mind—is essential. Everything you do flows from that, according to Mark: “This is about ending poverty. Whatever the best path to that end is what I need to keep in mind. I need to be ready to live as big as it takes to get the job done. And if that means that I have to travel more than I like traveling, then that’s too bad. That’s what I need to do.”

The Challenge of Shifting Mindset

Mark had the unique situation of spinning off SHP from another organization he had created. Transitioning his thinking to addressing poverty on a country-wide scale rather than a community-wide one, involved some mental work on his part. 

“I lived and breathed A Wider Circle for 20 years—it was in my living room for the first six or seven. And I worked seven days a week, 15 hours a day,” Mark says. So, even though I was ready to spin off and do this, and the board was very supportive, it was still a bit of a challenge, pulling my head into this national focus. I have, in Katherin, the right partner to do that. I just need to make sure I work hard enough. That’s the story of the .ORG—if you work hard enough, good things happen.[AW1] ”

The Courage is The Commitment

PIR asked Mark to speak to others rolling out a .ORG. Mark’s advice boils down to one very important word: “commitment.” 

“Be sure you’re ready, and recognize that if you make that commitment, it’s a beautiful thing. The courage is the commitment,” says Mark. “I realized that early that sometimes the challenge will be whether everybody will commit enough? I mean, there are so many nonprofit organizations focused on poverty, we should have this thing solved. Never mind the think tanks writing about it, or the professors teaching about it—we should have this thing solved! I think we don’t because the commitment isn’t quite there.” 

Commitment on a societal level, and also on a personal level. “It doesn’t matter what time of day it is. I’m a believer that if you’re going to start a .ORG, go all the way. If you think that means I’m saying you shouldn’t have a balance in your life, or work-life balance, I’m saying perhaps you should redefine that for yourself,” he says.

Measuring Success Along the Way

PIR congratulates SHP on officially soft launching The National Plan to End Poverty! The plan is divided into three sections—Learn, Act, and Interact—and offers a way for anyone interested in ending poverty to engage. We asked SHP how they are evaluating effectiveness of this roll-out, which is a beta-test of the plan. 

“We’re concerned with how many people are tuning into it and using it—not just looking at it, but actually studying the data.” It’s really going to be [important to see] how many people take actions. Hopefully, there will be hundreds and thousands of people leading,” Mark says. Because the stakes are too high not to. “There are families in poverty who are in the same place they were 50 and 60 years ago. All they may know is how to just get by, and that is a tremendous loss to our country as a whole. Because in that group of people who live in poverty there is enormous potential. Teachers and lawyers and marketers who will get a chance to pursue [those careers]. If we don’t help those folks to realize their potential, what a shame for us as a people.”

Beta and Beyond

Once Mark and Katherin completed the beta-testing of their National Plan to End Poverty, they were ready to launch it in earnest. This required an investment of resources, both human—especially in the area of communications and fundraising—and financial, with an initial fundraising goal, according to Mark, of about $500,000. At the same time, SHP knows they needed to take their time and get it right, so they made sure to be patient when building their team.

“I think you can get carried away and spend a lot of money getting advice, whether it’s consultants on all of those areas. One thing we’ve discussed a little bit is to start small—I think the idea is to be purposeful. So for us, we needed to finish and soft launch this national plan. That was our first initiative.  And that three, four, maybe five, months from the soft launch, we performed a hard launch, with the media attention and the energy and a lot of partners from around the country. All saying, ‘Look, this is a good plan.’”