A Nashville Solution to Homelessness
The paper you just paid for was bought by someone else first, otherwise it wouldn’t exist. That’s how The Contributor works. A vendor who experienced homelessness paid $0.50 for this paper and then sold it to you. By buying it and taking it with you, you’ve just encouraged that vendor to buy another. BOOM! That’s the solution. Now keep reading. This paper has something to say to you.
Street Papers provide income for the homeless and initiate a conversation about homelessness and poverty. In 2007, The Contributor founders met at the Downtown Nashville Library to form one. In a strike of lightning we named it “The Contributor” to infer that our vendors were “contributors to society”, while their customers could contribute to their work. But, thunder from lighting is always delayed…
Three years later, Nashville embraced us like no other city in the world. The Contributor became the largest selling street paper per-capita on the globe. And today 70% of our six months or longer tenured vendors have found housing. BOOM! The thunder has struck.
The Contributor is a different kind of non-profit, social enterprise. We don’t provide emergency shelter. We don’t hire people in poverty to create products or provide a service. Rather, we sell newspapers to homeless people who work for themselves. We train them to sell those papers to you, keep the money they earn, and buy more when they need to replace their stock.
Our biggest fans, don’t always get this. Like lightning without the thunder, they see the humanity of the vendor but misunderstand the model. Case in point: In 2013 during a funding crunch, a representative of one of Nashville’s biggest foundations exclaimed, “I’m such a big fan that I never take the paper!” We responded, “Well, that’s why we are in a funding crunch.” BOOM! Thunder was heard. Taking the paper makes our model work, not taking it breaks it.
And, selling the paper twice doesn’t just fund the paper, it funds housing and change. BOOM! Our vendors report their sales to qualify for subsidized housing and even for standard housing deposits and mortgages. And we support their endeavors with our other programs. They don’t consider your buying the paper a “contribution”, It is a sale. When they sell out, they buy more and build the paper trail of a profitable business. Until making these sales, many of our vendors had never experienced the satisfaction of seeing their investment pay off. And when it does, it liberates! They have become “contributors” to their own destiny. And Nashville has become a city of lightning and thunder. BOOM!
Street Papers provide income for the homeless and initiate a conversation about homelessness and poverty. In 2007, The Contributor founders met at the Downtown Nashville Library to form one. In a strike of lightning we named it “The Contributor” to infer that our vendors were “contributors to society”, while their customers could contribute to their work. But, thunder from lighting is always delayed…
Three years later, Nashville embraced us like no other city in the world. The Contributor became the largest selling street paper per-capita on the globe. And today 70% of our six months or longer tenured vendors have found housing. BOOM! The thunder has struck.
The Contributor is a different kind of non-profit, social enterprise. We don’t provide emergency shelter. We don’t hire people in poverty to create products or provide a service. Rather, we sell newspapers to homeless people who work for themselves. We train them to sell those papers to you, keep the money they earn, and buy more when they need to replace their stock.
Our biggest fans, don’t always get this. Like lightning without the thunder, they see the humanity of the vendor but misunderstand the model. Case in point: In 2013 during a funding crunch, a representative of one of Nashville’s biggest foundations exclaimed, “I’m such a big fan that I never take the paper!” We responded, “Well, that’s why we are in a funding crunch.” BOOM! Thunder was heard. Taking the paper makes our model work, not taking it breaks it.
And, selling the paper twice doesn’t just fund the paper, it funds housing and change. BOOM! Our vendors report their sales to qualify for subsidized housing and even for standard housing deposits and mortgages. And we support their endeavors with our other programs. They don’t consider your buying the paper a “contribution”, It is a sale. When they sell out, they buy more and build the paper trail of a profitable business. Until making these sales, many of our vendors had never experienced the satisfaction of seeing their investment pay off. And when it does, it liberates! They have become “contributors” to their own destiny. And Nashville has become a city of lightning and thunder. BOOM!
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