My Nonprofit Reviews

Bringing Justice Home is a remarkable nonprofit which two women, one a librarian, the other a recognized poet and a social worker (who is legally blind) built to serve people who are food insecure in Louisville, KY. They did this without any backing but their own faith and desire to both give and change the way food charities too often treat food-insecure people in ways that diminish their self-respect. What is different about this non-profit is its consideration of and respect for the housebound and low income people it serves, whom they call not clients but neighbors, and, it is, to my knowledge, all but unique in its attention to individual preferences for food (unlike most food banks), and its assumption of equality--the underlying sense that "there but for the grace of God..." In short, that we are all one illness or accident or loss from age away from isolation and food insecurity. It is not only food but also friendship that BJH offers --concern, conversation, choices--a human exchange. And I have read testimonials from those neighbors whom BJH serves about just how profoundly this has changed their lives.
In a short few years, BJH has gone from concept to a well-structured non-profit, all volunteer delivery of food and other needs to 40+ medically vulnerable Louisville residents with food insecurity, creating procedures to find and screen these individuals, while setting up systems for food acquisition and delivery, building a Board to support their work, raising funds from mostly small donors, and attracting and managing a growing number of volunteers. They hope to continue to grow BJH to serve more people, while also believing that small scale and high value go together.
I am a donor to BJH who has known its co-founder, Constance Merritt, for many years, and can think of no person whom I admire more, nor who has built a more original and accomplished life. She is a person of many gifts who walked away from a career as a prize-winning writer to follow her calling of service to others; after getting a social work degree, she went on to build Bringing Justice Home, a nonprofit that responds to our most basic needs and answers them with the kind of fellow feeling, generosity and humane intelligence that distinguishes her as a person.