![Home Sweet Home Ministries [HSHM] board president Sally Salegna and CEO Matt Burgess in front of historical HSHM photos.](https://npr.brightspotcdn.com/dims4/default/b79ae95/2147483647/strip/true/crop/5296x3310+0+0/resize/840x526!/format/webp/quality/90/?url=http%3A%2F%2Fnpr-brightspot.s3.amazonaws.com%2F6b%2F7f%2Ff4d4905a4c74a6437ea69feb4da6%2Fl96a2373-enhanced-nr.jpg)
Construction is well underway on Home Sweet Home Ministries’ [HSHM] new shelter village for the unhoused in Bloomington, the latest ambitious project for a 108-year-old nonprofit that’s repeatedly embraced innovative ideas to meet its mission.
HSHM is a prominent nonprofit in the Bloomington-Normal community that specializes in supporting people experiencing homelessness. From 1917 to the present, it’s changed its approach to caring for the unhoused while maintaining its core values.
Most recently, HSHM is gaining attention for its in-progress shelter village The Bridge. It will have about 50 tiny sleeping cabins surrounding a community building that will serve the unhoused on a site near HSHM’s facility, just south of Downtown Bloomington. The Bridge is expected to cost $2.65 million to build, and another $700,000 or so to operate every year.
Experts say nonprofit organizations have to build and maintain trust for community members and their local government to invest a substantial amount of money into them.
The trust from the Bloomington-Normal community that HSHM has built as a nonprofit did not happen overnight – it came from a mission that has not been lost in over a century of service. And innovation is right in its mission statement: “Home Sweet Home Ministries demonstrates Christ's love through innovative approaches that instill hope, restore lives, and build community.”
Foundations and history
The mission of HSHM started in the early 1900s with its founder, Billy Shelper. Shelper was a travelling salesman and candy store owner who would frequent bars late at night and was a self-professed alcoholic.
HSHM CEO Matt Burgess said around 1908 Shelper had an episode where he came to the realization of his alcohol problem and decided to go to a tent revival led by traveling evangelists Billy Sunday and Mel Trotter.
“Billy Shelper went to this tent revival every night for 14 nights, sat in the front row and had a conversion moment,” Burgess said. “He accepted Christ, turned his life over and said, ‘OK, I'm gonna change what I do with my life.’ And that's when he first started ministering to people in the community.”
Shelper started small with a jail outreach program, where he and his friends would visit the McLean County jail and share the gospel with inmates.
After doing jail outreach for a number of years, Shelper founded Home Sweet Home City Rescue Mission in November 1917.
“The very first thing that our organization did was we celebrated Thanksgiving as a community,” Burgess said.
Home Sweet Home City Rescue Mission provided worship services, Sunday school services and evangelistic activities.
“But in the basement of that first location, there were rooms where men could sleep if they had no place to sleep,” Burgess said. “So from the very beginning, we functioned as the equivalent of a shelter.”
During its first 50 years, Home Sweet Home City Rescue Mission moved four times.
“There was always the need to renovate, to improve, to get volunteers to come in and help beautify and help make [the buildings] safe. But we just moved as we needed to, to either grow or to relocate because of necessity,” Burgess said.
In 1971 HSHM bought a former seed facility from the Funk family that closed in the 1960s. The nonprofit started operating as a shelter from that location in 1973 and that is where it resides today.
A major fire in 1978 gutted the entire front half of the building, changing the layout. To this day, the front half is only one story, while the back half is four.
Roughly 55 residents were there at the time. All were evacuated to safety, and HSHM found other housing solutions while repairing the building.
Mission Mart
In the late 90s, HSHM launched Mission Mart in the basement of its building.
Former employee Sabrina Burkiewicz started at the Mission Mart in 2005, and said back then thrift stores were on the rise and just starting to get popular.
“[The Mission Mart] was a wonderful place, and I loved it,” Burkiewicz said.
Burkiewicz had a vision for the thrift store; she said she asked herself, “Why should somebody who can't shop any place else, like one of our clients [at HSHM], why should they have a second-hand shopping experience?”
So, in just 72 hours, Burkiewicz, a new store manager and a team of volunteers transformed the Mission Mart into a first-rate second-hand shopping experience.
“And then we started saying, ‘Well, why can't we be the third place like Starbucks? Why can't we offer bingo? Why can't we have a free hot dog lunch? Why can't we do walking taco day?’” said Burkiewicz. “And people just loved that we were building community.”
The Mission Mart closed in 2020 due to a downturn in the retail sales environment and the COVID-19 pandemic.
“That was just personally devastating,” Burkiewicz said.
What healed Burkiewicz’s heartbreak of the Mission Mart closing down was seeing HSHM expand its Bread for Life Food Co-op and the beginning its community center, The Junction.
“I think that's pretty awesome too, that God always provides after something disastrous,” Burkiewicz said.
HSHM board president Sally Salegna said timing-wise everything has worked out after Mission Mart closed.
“I don't think anybody 10 years ago would have known that The Junction was going to be there, what The Junction was going to look like. I think everybody probably thought Mission Mart was going to be there forever,” Salegna said.
The closing of Mission Mart bringing forth the opening of The Junction is only one of many times HSHM has overcome a challenge and used it to adapt to change.
Innovative approaches
In the last 108 years, HSHM has provided services that were fit for the times, but deemed not necessary for today.
For instance, HSHM used to provide crutches for children with polio during the depression era; and in the early 2000s it added an addiction recovery program for several years, ultimately passing the program off to those with more expertise.
“It's important that we're continually thinking, ‘How do we need to develop what we're doing? How do we need to change what we're doing to stay relevant, to really meet an emerging need that we haven't met before?’” Burgess said.
This way of thinking is exactly how a nonprofit stays successful. A good nonprofit leader is always looking for continual improvement, said Bill Stanczykiewicz, a nonprofit expert and director of The Fund Raising School at Indiana University.
“Donors are interested in compelling ideas. They're interested in social change, social impact, community improvement, personal impact on people and on causes,” Stanczykiewicz said.
Nonprofits like HSHM are able to fill a gap when it comes to care for those experiencing homelessness.
“If you think about homelessness, the business sector can't do this because the business sector has to turn a profit, and we don't criticize the business sector for that,” Stanczykiewicz said.
Stanczykiewicz added that the government can provide funding, but that a nonprofit serving the unhoused will know those folks on a first-name basis, and be more personal than a government-run organization.
A majority of people want to make a difference in the world, but don't know how or are afraid to ask, according to Stanczykiewicz.
“And that's when the nonprofit shows up, and they show up and they can create that bridge and provide an opportunity to make a difference to people who have a desire to make a difference and just don't know how,” he said.
A good nonprofit brings people together
A nonprofit organization brings together people who share the same passion, philanthropic value and motivation, and Stanczykiewicz said a good one will have a multiplier effect.
“It's not two plus three equals five, it's two times three equals six. It's not two plus four equals six, it's two times four equals eight. There's that exponential multiplying effect that nonprofits can provide by bringing together like-minded, like-hearted people who care deeply about homelessness or any other social issue,” Stanczykiewicz said.
All of that starts with a great leader. Stanczykiewicz said the first thing they need is humility.
“The effective leader then creates a very open culture where people are free to share their ideas,” Stanczykiewicz said. “The best way for a leader to make well-informed decisions is to be well-informed. And the best way to be well-informed is to gather information from a lot of different people, a lot of different sources.”
Board president Salegna said the pastors at her church know about her role with HSHM, so she can help its mission by speaking out at her church and connecting with others.
Recently, Salegna said she was recognized while wearing a HSHM shirt, and people asked her how they could help out with The Bridge.
“A lot of it is just making sure that you're sharing what you're doing,” Salegna said. “Because I was like, ‘Here you go, here's how you do this, I'll reach out to you, and I will connect you, and I will personally make sure that you've got the information you need.’”
In the past, Salegna said the community was not as receptive to helping its unhoused neighbors. However, news coverage of local tent encampments over the last couple of years may have changed people’s minds.
“I think the community is ready to come on board and do what they can,” Salegna said.
Continuing the mission
Today, HSHM is continuing its mission of innovative care by building Bloomington’s first non-congregate shelter village, The Bridge.
“There were no plans that were being developed to address unsheltered homelessness,” Burgess said. “I think because we took that very seriously, we showed our willingness to go out on a limb and really stretch ourselves as an organization, as a ministry, I think people have appreciated that.”
The Bridge is on track to open in December. In the meantime, HSHM is seeking donations to help bring the tiny homes to life.
