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(Ruth McCambridge, editor emerita of the Nonprofit Quarterly)

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(Peter Block, author of Community: The Structure of Belonging)

This book tells the story of Wellspring House, an extraordinary community founded by ordinary people with a simple but radical mission: to live together and share their home with people who needed one.

Rejecting typical nonprofit models, they created a welcoming home for families, mostly headed by women, through reciprocal relationships, human dignity, and fresh flowers always on the table. Wellspring listened to what their guests needed, then stretched to meet those needs: by developing affordable housing and a land trust, educating women to be change leaders, supporting parents, and more.

This book combines the dramatic narrative of creating homes and losing them-including their own-with an analysis of misguided anti-poverty policy. It is a cautionary tale about the misuse of power in nonprofits. In a time of desperate need for hospitality and community, it offers justice-seeking organizations and activists an inspiring model of how to make a real difference in the place you call home.