People helping people: Truly a beautiful thing

Kelly McDavid

I get asked all the time, ‘What is Blackbaud’? I’ve only been here six months but I answer simply and with what I know: “At Blackbaud, your passion is our purpose.”


In the words of my adorable high school sister, “But literally I can’t even."  Exactly. I can’t even begin to describe how literally true this statement is. At Blackbaud, we don’t just provide, we DO. We put our mission into practice on Friday May 15^th with our recent Support Day of Caring. We spent the day working with the Sea Island Habitat for Humanity foundation.


If you don’t know about Habitat, let me share what I learned in the day I spent with them. It is the pre-eminent organization fostering the idea, “You can make your life better with the will to do so.”


Meet Robert (pictured below). Robert is standing in front of his house. He is able to afford a down payment on the house with what Habitat calls sweat equity or 600 hours of labor spent building your own home. I learned that for every 100 Habitat applicants, only five qualify for a home. Robert is a reverend in our community; he is funny and quick to correct me when I attempt to paint the vents of his home green: “No, that house is red, I know because it’s my house.”


‘My house.’ I could tell these words were said with pride, simply because Robert hasn’t been able to say them very often.




 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


 


It’s a different experience to share in the building of someone’s future, literally. What is great about Habitat is that we learned new skills too. We were educated in roofing, the correct use of circular saws versus table saws, and the art of swinging a hammer.  We acquired these new skills, made new friends, and spent our Friday outside the cube and getting “on the job training”! Please enjoy the short video below of the BB crew taking their hands off the keyboards and getting a little dirty! (Literally)


https://youtu.be/V2n6WFwEQdQ