Susan Davis: As a young man you started out as a business entrepreneur. Did you learn something about how to spot a market opportunity that you can pass on to others?

Millard Fuller holds David Bako at the dedication of his family's Habitat house in Cluj-Napoca, Romania in 2003, the 150,000th house that Habitat had completed at that time

Millard Fuller: I think it's a question of seeing what needs to be done and isn't being done. In other words, find a niche where you can fit in, instead of just trying to run somebody else out of a business and take it over—which is the way some people operate. I had to find a niche, and that is my own way of operating.

That's what we have discovered in terms of Habitat for Humanity. Building houses was nothing new. But nobody was building houses out of a religious motivation or a Christian motivation. Housing is too capital intensive for any one denomination to do it. It takes too much money. What church on Earth can raise $750 million a year? What one institution can raise that kind of money on its own?

So Habitat for Humanity came in and made an appeal to the whole Christian family, from the most liberal Protestant church to the most conservative Catholic church—we want to get them all under the same umbrella. While they differ on many things, they agree that this ministry we're doing is a good idea; building houses is a good idea. It's a way to put God's love into action in a very practical way. It's directly in line with what they believe theologically.

So we have Jerry Farwell's church, which is a very, very conservative church. We've got Universalist Unitarians. And then we've got synagogues.

You have to be wise about how you put those coalitions together. I was recently in Redmond, Washington, in connection with our annual Building on Faith Week. When I was there I spoke to the largest evangelical church in the state of Washington: 6,000 members. It's very evangelical and very conservative theologically.

But the director, who used to be on our staff in Americus, got all the very evangelical churches to work together, and they were building Habitat houses in one neighborhood. Then in another neighborhood he had the liberal Christian churches working with the mosques and the synagogues. He had them all.

But you couldn't put them together. If you had told that evangelical church to come build with a mosque, they wouldn't have done it. But they would build with a fellow evangelical church. You end up with everybody at the table.

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The best way to fight terrorism is that every time a terrorist attacks you, you go build his family a house

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They had a big sign out there where these liberal Christian churches were building with the mosques and the synagogues. It said "Habitat for Humanity, a Christian ministry, welcomes our Muslim and Jewish friends with open arms."

Over a period of time you may be able to entice a few of these evangelicals to come over. They'll stick their toe in the water and say, "That's not too bad."

Change Your Whole Way of Thinking

SD: Building bridges between people of different faiths has never seemed more important.

Millard Fuller: Yes, think about all of the talk now about how we're going to be protected from terrorism. When Jesus came out of the wilderness, he came out with the message, "Repent, for the Kingdom of Heaven is at hand." Basically he said, "Change your whole way of thinking because God's new order of the spirit is confronting you."

Well, if you change your whole way of thinking, maybe the best way to fight terrorism is that every time a terrorist attacks you, you go build his family a house. Instead of plotting and scheming to find out who he is so you can kill him—do to him what he's been doing to you—go with a counter proposal: "You want to kill me? We want to build a house for you."

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If good is as good does, we need to do good as a nation. We are the richest nation the earth has ever known.

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That's revolutionary. You know how much money we're spending on fighting terrorism. What if we spend just a portion of that on befriending these people, who we consider our enemies, who we say are evil?

You know, we now brand whole nations as evil. We've decided that country X is now evil—everybody who lives there is evil. And by the way, in our country everybody is really wonderful. Everybody is good. Well, if good is as good does, we need to do good as a nation. We are the richest nation the earth has ever known.

We have an incredible responsibility to be a blessing to the world. With Habitat for Humanity we're trying to be a little light shining in the darkness—showing how that works in practical terms.

We've built almost 500 houses in Afghanistan, and we're trying to get started building in Iran right now. We go right into the heart of the societies that our government has told us are evil and start trying to do good.

Try to reach out, constantly. It's that constant expanding scope of what you're doing, with no limits. There is nowhere you won't go.

I think that correctly understood the Christian religion is truly an expansive religion. It's constantly reaching out to expand and the way it gets you to expand is through love.

The Crusaders convoluted the message. They felt they could spread Christianity through force. But if you have the mentality of constantly expanding through love, and that nobody is beyond your scope of concern, then you want to build a house for everybody. You don't just want to build houses for fellow Christians or fellow Americans.

You want to build houses for the poor Muslims, for the poor Hindus, for the poor Buddhists. You want to build houses for the poor enemies that you have.

SD: Would you build in the West Bank or Gaza?

Millard Fuller: We haven't yet but we are trying to. That's a very difficult situation. If you are perceived in the Arab world as a friend of Israel in any way, you are an enemy then. So we have an address in Amman, Jordan.

We are trying to reach out and establish a presence in the Islamic world, and I would love for us to be able to build in Jerusalem for Christians, Muslims and Jews without discrimination. But that is probably the most difficult situation in the world today.

Our goal is to be in every nation on earth. We're in 100 countries now. We'll get the low-hanging fruit first. You don't climb past fruit in order to go get the fruit that's in the top of the tree. You get the low-hanging fruit and then eat as you go up. Probably Israel and Saudi Arabia are at the top of the tree. We're even building in places like Vietnam, Jordan, Egypt, and Indonesia.

I was in Indonesia in March. There were no Christians in one community there. It was 100-percent Muslim. And we're building a new house for everybody in that village. Most of the houses are being built for them by Christians. The Christian churches out in Jakarta are going out there every week and building houses for Muslims.

And it has an impact. These are simple rice farmers who are living in absolute squalor—in the mud and dirt, eeking out a living raising rice. Here comes a bunch of Christians marching in who say, "We'll build you a house." They go, "What?" It really blows their minds. We're just saying, "We accept you just like you are."

Global Village: Expand the Circle

SD: You are building a Global Village and Discovery Center interactive museum near Americus with life-size Habitat houses from countries around the world. Is this part of your vision for getting Americans to be more involved in the world?

Millard Fuller: My vision for the Global Village is not finished—we've still got quite a number of houses to build. It looks finished; it looks very good. It's a beautiful place, but when it's finished it's going to be even more impressive.

The Mexico house is under construction and the Guatemala house is finished. We have finished almost all of the Africa section, including separate houses for the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Ghana, Guyana, Malawi, Zambia, Tanzania, Botswana, and South Africa, and the Africa section is just beautiful. The Asian Pacific and Latin America areas are not finished.

We've had about 21,000 to 22,000 people go through there since we opened it a year ago. My vision is this: this year that number will go to at least 30,000 people and I think that within five years you're going to see 60,000 to 70,000 people going through there each year.

It's a place that inspires people, especially young people. We're having several thousand students come in here from as far away as North Carolina, South Carolina, all over Georgia, Alabama, and from Florida.

We've got a tour train [the SAM Shortline excursion train from Cordele to Plains] that comes by three times a week and lets passengers off to tour the Global Village. Then they get back on the train and go out to see Jimmy Carter's boyhood home.

Guatemela house in the Global Village and Discovery Center

So I have visions of the Global Village increasingly inspiring people to get involved in this work, especially the work outside the borders of the United States. I think it's going to be a very important tool in our tool belt that we use to inform, educate, and inspire people to get involved in this ministry.

SD: Is your idea to get people involved in working outside of the United States?

Millard Fuller: Yes, because so many Americans don't even know we work outside the United States. Even those who know often don't want to support it. You'd be amazed at the checks we get here that say specifically, "Do not use outside the United States."

We need to change that mentality. People need to understand that people outside the United States are fully human. They're not some subhuman species—they're equally made in God's image.

I'm glad when anybody wants to support Habitat, anywhere. If somebody gives us a check to build a house in their hometown, I'm grateful. But

Papua New Guinea house

I think we've just got to figure out how to share God's love everywhere.

As I was saying, the Christian religion is an expansive religion. We've got to figure out how to penetrate to the remotest corner under the darkest bridge where homeless people are living and bring them out to the light. And to say, "I've got good news for you. We came and built a house. You don't have to live under the bridge anymore. You can live in this room."

SD: Isn't your Global Village program another strategy for getting people to care about people that they perceive as being very different from themselves? You take people to different countries to build Habitat houses?

Millard Fuller: That's right. The director of the Global Village program estimates that we will send out more than 400 teams this fiscal year. That's more than one team per day.

SD: But you also have a very visible strategy of focusing on building houses in America.

Millard Fuller: Yes, but it's like a moving vehicle. If you've got a vehicle that's moving down the road and you hit it from the side, you can more easily move it in another direction than if you've got a vehicle sitting dead still and then trying to get it going.

If you get people in the practice of being concerned, and they're building houses locally, then they're moving, in terms of doing something. So then you hit them on the side and say, "How about Mexico? How about Honduras? How about Guyana? How about Trinidad? How about Puerto Rico?"

Sometimes you can expand their world and get them to reach out. People tend to put limits around themselves. Every healthy person loves

South Africa house

himself or herself, but a healthy person has a healthy self-love and then goes out from there.

The challenge of the Christian religion is not to quit loving yourself, but to love your neighbor as much as you love yourself. But then some people say, "I define my neighbors as fellow white people or fellow Christians or fellow Baptists or fellow Americans." People put different size circles around themselves. They say, "I love, but beyond America forget it."

I'll give you a good example. There was a young man that I had met in Russia. He spoke Russian but he was from Ghana. He helped me get on an airplane and I invited him to come here. He showed up—that's an amazing, long story, but he came.

I went to the local Methodist church and got them to support this young black African kid. He went all the way through our local university, Georgia Southwestern State University. Then he went to the University of Georgia where he got a degree in pharmacy. Now he is in medical school, becoming a medical doctor for the poor.

The Methodist church here, which is an all-white institution, loved that guy. But he was a dedicated Christian.

Then a girl came here to America from Afghanistan. She was a Muslim. She wanted to go to nursing school here at Georgia Southwestern. I went back to the Methodist church that had such a good experience with the young man from Africa and asked them to support this girl from Afghanistan.

I thought they would adopt her. But they said, "No, we won't support her because she's a Muslim."

The ironic thing was that she was very seriously interested in becoming a Christian. But she wasn't a Christian yet. If they had helped her, I think she would have become one—that would have been the thing that would have made her one—because her uncle is Jimmy Carter's assistant Sunday school teacher. He's already converted and is a deacon in the church out there. He brought his niece over here and I've got her here as a volunteer in Americus.

Ghana house

I was just giving her unconditional love. I didn't say, "You've got to be a Christian before we'll accept you as a volunteer." I just said, "Come." We gave her clothes and more, and we loved her.

But those are the circles that people draw around themselves. One of my favorite poems is from Edwin Markham:

He drew a circle that shut me out—

Heretic, a rebel, a thing to flout.

But Love and I had the wit to win:

We drew a circle that took him in!

That's my philosophy.

SD: And your circle stops only with every country on this planet?

Millard Fuller: It doesn't even stop there. I already have a building permit to build on the Moon. I went down to Florida to speak and they gave me a building permit for the first Habitat house on the Moon. I think that new way of thinking is the only hope that we have of bringing peace to the world.

SD: The Global Village and Discovery Center and subsidizing volunteers' living expenses are big investments and that requires management. Isn't that an area where some organizations go wrong, because they don't invest in setting up the infrastructure?

Millard Fuller: That's right. We struggle with that around here. There's a big difference between a manager and a leader. Managers are bean counters and the bean counters always want to count the beans.

A leader is always making new beans. So what happens sometimes, when managers get too big a voice in an organization, they start counting the beans. They don't realize that there are other benefits to activities such as having a volunteer program, that you may not be able measure immediately. But it is generating benefits for you even though it costs you some money to operate it.

Tanzania house

We've had a problem regarding our global business down here because some of the board members are saying that it costs a great deal to run the Global Village: The amount of money that people give in donations is not equal to the amount of money we're paying to maintain it.

My answer is, "Did you know a man went through there the other day and was so inspired that he wrote a $50,000 check. What about that?"

The other thing is that literally hundreds and thousands of schoolchildren are going through there. Very few of them write checks but they will write checks in 10 and 15 and 20 years. Then what is that worth? A leader has to be more than a bean counter.

Think Big, Maintain the Vision

SD: A leader has to be a visionary and think big.

Millard Fuller: People around here laugh and say, "Millard has dreams and it gives the rest of us nightmares." But I'm always pushing us to go to another place. If we're in 100 countries I'm already thinking about 120 countries.

We're building 22,000 houses this year. I want to get us to 30,000 houses a year as fast as we can. And I've already launched a new initiative called the Quantum Leap Initiative so that we will have built 200,000 houses by next October. I want to take us from that to 400,000 houses in six years—to go from housing 1 million people to 2 million people in six years.

SD: How do you do that?

Millard Fuller: Very simple. The old 10-percent rule. That's all it takes.

It goes back to the fundamental way you think: Jesus said, "Change your whole way of thinking." So instead of having a base line of zero, and anything above zero is considered progress, you set your base line at 10 percent above zero and that becomes your starting point. So anything above 10 percent is good. If you just do 10 percent, that's just what's expected. You move the base line and you start thinking in a different way.

For example, we have regional conferences every year around the country. We have seven regions in the U.S. and I've said, "We should have 100-percent attendance at all regional meetings" because people have been saying, "If we get 600 people at a meeting isn't that wonderful?" Of course those 600 people only came from 60 percent of the affiliates—40 percent of them didn't show up.

I said, "That's not success. That's a 40-percent failure. You've got to have 100 percent because people who are not there do not get any inspiration."

So you change the base line and say, 100 percent is what you've got to have—not, "Oh isn't this wonderful, we've got 600 people here?" And then forget that 40 percent of the affiliates that didn't send anybody.

SD: So you're building 20,000 homes a year right now?

Millard Fuller: This year the estimate is 22,000.

SD: What is your budget this year for 22,000 houses?

Millard Fuller: Our combined budget around the world is about $750 million. The budget here in Americus is just a little shy of $200 million. Next year we will have built 200,000 houses for 1 million people.

Haiti house

SD: Does growing so big change the nature of your organization?

Millard Fuller: I run into this all the time: people will say, "Oh, we're losing our little intimate family that we had."

I say, "You can't have it both ways. You can't talk about ending poverty housing and then want to have a tiny, little crowd of folks. You've got to have a huge crowd."

SD: Some social entrepreneurs say that as the head of an organization, even when your organization is growing larger, you can't give up control of the budget and of the hiring and firing of staff.

Millard Fuller: I don't agree with that. In fact, I think it's the downfall of some social entrepreneurs. They try to control things too tightly and they keep tight control, but they stifle growth.

It's sort of like raising a child. I had four children—thanks be to God, they all turned out good—but we never tried to overcontrol our kids. We would give them guidelines and limits, but we would let them do a lot of their own things and discover what works and what doesn't work. I think it's important in an organization like Habitat for Humanity that you don't stifle.

Entrepreneurship from an Early Age

SD: Were you born with your entrepreneurial skill or did you learn it from your father? You told me that you had your first pig at the age of six.

Millard Fuller: Yeah, my dad was a very small entrepreneur. He was a real entrepreneur but he was a control freak. He ran a country grocery store.

I had an aunt that lived up in Detroit, and I went up to see her. She married a Finlander from the upper peninsula of Michigan. I went up there when I was 12 years old and spent most of the summer with her. I discovered frozen custard there and I came back and told my dad, "I've discovered the most wonderful thing on earth. There's nothing more wonderful on Earth than frozen custard."

There was no frozen custard in Alabama. I brought back some literature for him and my dad started what I think was the first frozen-custard place in Alabama. He built it right beside his grocery store.

So he had the grocery store and his frozen-custard place. He served frozen custard, hamburgers, hot dogs, milkshakes, and so forth. I can close my eyes right now and see my dad running between them, because he ran them both. He would run out of the grocery store and go over and make some hot dogs and hamburgers and milkshakes, and then run back over to the grocery store and sell some eggs and bacon, and then run back over to his frozen-custard place—because he was a perfectionist.

Zambia house

He couldn't stand for anybody to make a mistake. If he hired somebody, after they made the first mistake he'd fire them. So I learned, by negative example, that if you're a perfectionist, you're always going to run a real small operation.

My daddy ran a very successful, really small operation, but he taught me how to be an entrepreneur. He bought me a pig and gave me a little blue notebook, saying, "On this side, son, you put income. And on this side, you put expenses. And when you sell that pig, you've got to get more money to put on this income side than you've got expenses, or you lost money."

Mixing a Strong Faith and Inclusiveness

SD: It's clear your religious faith powerfully informs your work. Have you encountered many people like yourself around the world?

Millard Fuller: Not too many who think like I do, because I consider myself to be a strong evangelical Christian. Many times, people who are willing to work with the Muslims and the other non-Christian groups feel like they've got to give up their Christianity, or they've got to hide it. They think, "If I go around telling all these people I'm a Christian, they wouldn't like it."

So in Christian America—by that I mean the dominant religion in America is Christian—it's considered politically correct, if you're in a mixed group of faiths, to not say "Jesus." There's an unspoken agreement that if you have some Jews, Hindus, Muslims or Buddhists, you don't say "Jesus."

I'm very open. I say, "You don't have to exclude Jesus in order to include others."

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