How to Use Innovation for Positive Change

In this episode, Rob Harter speaks with Scott Key, the founder of Every Shelter, a nonprofit focused on providing innovative shelter solutions for refugees. Scott shares insights into the global refugee crisis, emphasizing the staggering statistic that refugees remain displaced for an average of 20 years. He explains how Every Shelter addresses this challenge by focusing on localization, empowering refugees, and fostering economic opportunities through innovative shelter products and services.

Scott delves into the importance of innovation in the nonprofit sector, how his organization leverages hyperlocal solutions to meet refugee needs, and the value of risk-taking for meaningful social change. He also discusses his vision for Every Shelter as a research and development hub for scalable, impactful solutions in the humanitarian sector.

Mentioned:

• Every Shelter – A nonprofit providing shelter solutions for refugees

This Episode is Sponsored By:

• DonorBox – Helping nonprofits maximize their impact with user-friendly donation forms and secure fundraising solutions.

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Transcript:

Dr Rob Harter (00:01.133)
Well, welcome to the nonprofit leadership podcast, Scott. Thanks so much for taking time to be on the show today.

Scott Key (00:05.974)
Yeah, really thankful to be here,

Dr Rob Harter (00:08.483)
Absolutely. Well, I have found it’s always helpful for my listeners to get a real quick overview as to what you do and what every shelter is all about. So maybe just start with that. Let’s give a quick summary of your mission and your organization.

Scott Key (00:21.858)
Yeah. So, I always start with one statistic and it’s, and it’s actually what got me into this work in the first place, but, refugees on average will stay this place for about 20 years. and if I had your listeners close their eyes and just imagine what a refugee shelter looks like, it probably doesn’t jive with 20 years. And so, that was really what drew me in when I got started with this. every shelter is all about helping refugees create home for themselves.

you know, and we’re a little bit ambiguous on purpose with that because 20 years you are creating home, you know, referring to them as shelters is not maybe fully descriptive of what, you know, kind of the charges.

Dr Rob Harter (01:04.405)
Yeah, well with the work you’re doing, there are many aspects I understand to it. What would you say are the top one or two things that you’re really trying to solve? Because you’re working with refugees, that’s a huge, there’s so many different layers to that. But yeah, what are you really trying to hone in on?

Scott Key (01:19.222)
Yeah. So really specifically, we work in refugee camp settings, refugee settlements. So when I talk to an American audience, when I say refugee, often what people are thinking of is resettlement. Refugees who have the opportunity to come live in the US or Western Europe. And that is not what we’re talking about. What we’re talking about specifically is refugees who have crossed the border and are living most often in a camp or a settlement.

A lot of our work focuses around kind of the local ecosystem around refugees shelter. So we ultimately want refugees to have safe, stable housing. The way that we do that is by investing in product development, local supply chains, and then refugee led markets in those camps. And so we have a few products that are kind of our origin. We have a flooring system. We have a roofing tarp.

And in both cases, the goal is for those to be made locally so that the local economy can benefit from the production of those things. You know, in addition to that, we have our hardware stores, we have sheltered depots, we run hardware stores and refugee camps so that refugees have more agency over what it is they are needing for their homes. So if you juxtapose that to the way that aid often works in our context, in-kind aid distribution.

It’s very need and preference blind. It relies 100 % on philanthropy to underwrite it. And our stores are an ability for refugees to be able to actually choose the things that they need and not need tell them what they need. And so the stores ultimately need to reflect back the needs of the community well. And those stores become really a platform for us to develop increasingly precise solutions for those communities. So the stores ultimately become a place for us to serve that community.

and there are very, very specific needs.

Dr Rob Harter (03:13.429)
Well, and yeah, it is such a big issue. I’m glad you narrowed that a little bit down. And one of the things you talk about when I looked into your website and some of the work that you’re doing, you talk a lot about localization in the context of what every shelter does within the humanitarian system. Maybe you could talk a little bit more about that because I think that’s unique and I want to make sure my listeners understand what you mean by localization.

Scott Key (03:34.808)
Yeah, absolutely. Yeah, so I’ll start with the kind of like the counterbalance of that, which is the way that we’ve globally, attempted to serve refugees is really through a kind of a global mindset. You know, the UN High Commissioner for refugees has a catalog of products that are relevant globally, or at least in theory, those are made in a factory somewhere and then brought in when a need is there. That may be an appropriate solution during what’s called the emergency response phase of a refugee crisis.

But when you consider that 20 year statistic, it just really doesn’t work longterm. so, but when we say localization, we mean that very literally. want, well, let me say it like this. The communities that surround refugees have the resources and the solutions to the needs that refugees have. And so sometimes we feel like our job is often, you know, connecting dots that are just desperate to connect. Our stores are really.

Our stores are a really great example of that. We’re making a platform or an access point to a local Uganda business to the refugees needs. And so we really want to see, yeah, that economic benefit live close by. I’ll give one specific example. In our store in the northern part of Uganda and the BDBD refugee settlement, the second largest refugee settlement in the world, we

Our customers there have a hard time acquiring certain products, grass, poles, there’s been really rapid deforestation. so at that store, we have invested in a model home, which looks exactly like the homes that they build for themselves in South Sudan, but it’s substituting in products that refugee led organizations or Ugandan run businesses actually produce. So treated bamboo.

you know, a palm leaf product, et cetera. And so when we say local, oftentimes we do mean hyper local. We mean these are South Sudanese refugees, which has different preferences than maybe a refugee from the Congo. And we want to make sure that those solutions are relevant to them. But even in the context of that camp, which we talk about, you know, subject like scale, there’s 270,000 South Sudanese refugees living in this camp. So if you solve that problem in a local context,

Scott Key (05:57.848)
you’re ultimately able to serve quite a lot of people. so, yeah.

Dr Rob Harter (06:04.567)
Wow, that’s 270,000 and just in that one camp. Talk to me about how you sort through just the immensity of it and feeling overwhelmed by all the needs of just that one example of one group. And I know you serve more than that, but talk about how do you sort that through as a leader?

Scott Key (06:21.74)
Yeah, it’s a pretty relevant question right now. mean, there’s so many things that we could tackle, you know, it’s, and we, and we’ve got a relatively small team. so, you know, filtering and deciding what to pursue is ultimately, you know, question that we always have to answer. so internally we talk about, you know, the three Rs, you know,

Is there a ripple effect with this product? Is there something about this pursuit that can kind of have an outsized, like leveraged impact? Is there a revenue opportunity? And by that, we don’t mean to us, but is there, does this pursuit have the ability to potentially self sustain itself financially if we pursue it? And then the other one is reputation. If we’re successful in this, you know, pursuit, you know, does that somehow build the credibility of the project and the team? And so we try to use that as a filter.

our team and the work that we do, it looks a lot like a studio in the sense that we’re