Anchor of Hope’s inspiring story: Part 2 — A shift that changed everything

In Part 1 of this series we tell the story of the unlikely beginning of a Christian non profit in Bloemfontein called Anchor of Hope. In this episode we look at a transformative turning point which saw Anchor of Hope change its model and its founder, Boeta Swart, change his mindset

When he started getting calls from people who complained that their children were not eating because he had not brought them food, Boeta Swart started asking some serious questions about what they were doing.

At the time, in 2016, Anchor of Hope, the small non-profit he had started after giving his life to Jesus, was feeding and clothing schoolchildren in the Bloemfontein area daily and delivering food to certain homes.

For the home deliveries they relied on close-to-date food given to them by a supermarket, subject to availability. Because they had no control over this supply they were not always able to take food to people’s homes.

At that time Boeta was also finding it increasingly difficult to get donations from companies to support Anchor of Hope’s work in the community. There were too many NPOs approaching the same, limited pool of corporate donors.

He asked himself: “If the money for donations is declining and people are blaming us for not giving them food, how can we be sustainable?”

Asking those questions led to him changing the whole model of the NPO, which set it on a new course of sustainable growth and impact. And in the process he discovered that preaching was not the only way to do ministry.

It bothered Boeta that people who complained that he had not delivered their food were genuinely hungry, but, thanks to state grant money, they had cigarettes, air time and new clothes.

In this season of questioning, he said God awakened him to 2 Thessalonians 3:10, which says: “For even when we were with you, we gave you this rule: ‘The one who is unwilling to work shall not eat’.”

He said he realised they were “feeding the wrong people” and making people dependent on them for food.

“We then decided to only give food and clothes to children, who are not allowed to work, and to the elderly, who are not able to work. That’s where the whole idea came of job creation,” said Boeta.

He started researching non profits and found that at the time only about 3% of non profits in SA were sustainable, compared with about 70% in the US. He realised that a non profit is, in fact, a business, with contracts to fulfil and salaries to be paid, like any other business. The difference is that a NPO’s profits get pushed back into the organisation, to grow, to create new projects or to support non-sustainable areas of the operation.

Applying his insights to Anchor of Hope, he realised that their current projects — a food and clothing bank, and a pregnancy crisis centre — were unsustainable and they needed to launch income-generating projects to support them.

He approached a local, big company and asked what they were looking for in an NPO. The answers he got were BEE points, a tax advantage, accountability, financial stewardship and a way to measure the impact of their sponsorship.

After adding sustainable job creation projects, and making sure that Anchor of Hope ticked all the boxes required by companies, he said he no longer asked businesses for a donation but offered them a product or service together with all of the BEE, tax and other advantages they wanted. This immediately gave Anchor of Hope an advantage over NPOs that were merely asking for a donation.

This new model proved to be good for Anchor of Hope, creating opportunities for growth; good for the companies, meeting their needs; and it provided dignity and skills development for the beneficiaries.

Boeta said that today, the NPO is involved with 125 different businesses. He has been able to build personal relationships with the various business managers, to pray for them and their families and to offer godly counsel when asked.

“I always tell the guys that the Bible contains everything you need to know in order to run a business and that you can manage a business according to God’s will and still prosper, give your children a good education and have nice holidays,” he said. “That’s the type of preaching and evangelism that I can do.”

Eight years down the road of applying this new NPO model, Anchor of Hope has become an influential non-profit, umbrella organisation with seven separate divisions, restoring dignity to vulnerable people in the Bloemfontein area.

Boeta said he is thankful that they were able to start their transition at a time when they still had donations coming in which they were able to invest in starting sustainable projects. He said he believes that in SA, 75% sustainability is a good target for NPOs. He cautions against 100% sustainability as that may tell companies you don’t need them.

He said that every year he asks God what new sustainable projects to add to their operations. “Because if you don’t keep growing your project in profit or in income, then actually you’re dying a slow death.”

Another one of their major lessons has been to ask companies what projects they want to support and to implement projects that touch each of these main areas, namely, welfare, education, the environment, disabled people and women.

“So, when I go to a company, I say: ‘Listen, do you want to support us?’ And if he says: “Yes, but we focus on education”, I can tell him there’s a project that’s involved in education.

“So it’s actually really difficult for them to say no to me.”

Another important development was to set three major pillars which guide their approach to every project. The pillars are partnerships, relationships and sustainability.

“We started partnering with other NPOs that are either sustainable or very credible. So, we go to companies as an umbrella organisation,” said Boeta. So, for example, if he visits a company which says it wants to get involved in an area which Anchor of Hope does not cover, he can still say they have a partner that is involved in that area and Anchor can be their steward in that project.

“Regarding relationships, some of the companies we are involved with have been with us for the last 15 years.That’s unheard of in the NPO world,” he said.

He said they constantly seek out sustainable projects to support non-sustainable projects. While some projects can not be sustainable, he said you can bring down costs, for instance, by adding boreholes and solar panels, owning properties rather than renting, growing vegetables or baking bread, You can even enhance sustainability by securing employment for residents as they have done with a women and children’s shelter they are establishing in a house they were given at the beginning of the year. He said they only start on a project when they have a workable sustainability model. 

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