Wake Up, Show Up, Step Up: NSPIRE Founder Celebrates 25 Years of Supporting the Homeless with New Fund

“Some people wake up to an alarm clock. Others wake up to a calling.”

Gregg Kennard, one of the founders of NSPIRE, feels fortunate to fulfill his calling by serving those struggling with homelessness and addiction in his community. He recently connected with the Community Foundation for Northeast Georgia and became a fundholder to build financial support so NSPIRE can continue expanding its ministry.

Gregg has felt this calling to serve his community since his teen years when he connected with a friend who was founding a homeless service organization called Safe House Outreach.

“I started volunteering on the weekends, and that particular issue just really got into my heart.”

Gregg’s volunteer experience with Safe House Outreach was instrumental in his vision for NSPIRE, a nonprofit he started in 1999 through his church. Due to the care and commitment of Gregg and his team, NSPIRE has grown exponentially over the last 25 years.

“As a church back in 2007, we had some circumstances and relationships that helped us take our overall community outreach to another level as it relates to homelessness,” Gregg shared. “We’ve now seen thousands of people come through our program, really turn their life around.”

Although clients often come from troubled situations, the tools and training NSPIRE offers gives these individuals the opportunity to choose a different path.

“We have had many clients come from corrections where a judge or probation or the court said, ‘We want them to go to a program rather than staying locked up.’ So, we have saved these individuals, sum total, about 150 years of jail and prison time,” Gregg said. “A typical client of ours would have a mental health diagnosis, sepsis abuse disorder and a felony background. So we’re working with folks that have some barriers on them.”

Gregg and his team first meet clients’ physical needs such as food, shelter and safety, freeing them to dream and plan their next steps. 

“Now we can do the work of creating goals, imagining a new future, reaching your personal potential,” he explained. “We see the greatness in you and we expect it and we’re gonna give you the support to reach it.”

NSPIRE provides job training, counseling services, therapy, health and nutrition education and services, life coaching and spiritual mentoring. Across 13 weeks, clients tackle a rigorous program.

“An individual client will go through 390 hours of job training with us. They’ll go through 39 recovery meetings, 39 health workouts and 26 coaching sessions. They’ll experience 10 individual therapy sessions,” Eric explained. “So every day is just a dance. It’s a very busy program.”

Gregg has a front row seat to transformational stories every day in the program, but one recent client stands out.

Though the prospective client was facing 20 years of incarceration, a judge believed this individual needed programming more than time with the Department of Corrections. After just 13 weeks with NSPIRE, this client found a new direction for his life!

“He got his GED, and now he’s moving onto college in the next few weeks. So he’s getting a lot of the tools to keep him in a sustainable, successful place.”

Gregg has witnessed numerous success stories like this one. “Now they’re believing, ‘I can go to school.’ We have people in school right now getting an HVAC certification, welding, IT, culinary arts, horticulture, and more.”

Gregg explained, “When you take the limits off and you start allowing people to believe in themselves and they remove their own inhibitions, it’s amazing. It’s a miracle.”

The next step for NSPIRE is to purchase their own housing and expand this arm of their outreach. 

“We lease apartments,” Gregg said. “We’ve been paying rent for 17 years and have paid millions and millions of dollars to all these apartments, housing 70 people at a time. So, of course, what we’d love to do is have our own property with our own residential community.”

With this goal in mind, Gregg coordinated with the Community Foundation for Northeast Georgia to become an official fundholder this year! He hopes his fund will pave the way for an improved housing experience for NSPIRE’s clients.

Through NSPIRE and his new fund, Gregg is pushing for change one client at a time: “I believe homelessness is solvable.”

“We’re communicating, ‘This is what’s available to you. Let us support you in getting there.’”