After an ultimatum from her stepfather, Brittany Williams found herself standing at her father’s front door. Her mother had just left her there.

“He was schizophrenic and an alcoholic — very, very unsafe,” said Williams about her father. Instead of knocking, the 13-year-old walked away. “I immediately left. I was just like, ‘I will not stay here. I would rather take my chances figuring it out than stay here.’”

It would be another four years before she found stable housing or a healthy relationship with an adult she could trust. But once she did, it changed everything. How? Through connection. 

Human connection empowers people to reclaim their lives with a sense of worth and purpose. It should be at the heart of every changemaker’s vision. 

“Transformation happens within long-term relationships with healthy adults,” said Lisa Steven, founder and executive director of Hope House Colorado, where Williams found her people. “You have to build that relationship and trust before you earn the right to speak into their life.”

Relationships should be at the center of all nonprofit work. Organizations that overlook this key element miss their biggest opportunity.

The protective power of relationships 

At 11, Scott Strode began stealing beer from his parents’ garage. The alcohol, which he shared with other kids, quickly became a proxy for connection. 

“I could steal a couple of beers from the fridge in the garage, and then people wanted to hang out with me on weekends,” he said. “I started having people around me, and that’s really all I wanted — was to feel loved and that people wanted to be around me.”

More than a decade later, Strode finally figured out what real connection was. Only then was he able to give up alcohol and drugs.

Now co-founder of The Phoenix, a sober active community, Strode is fostering an environment where others can find genuine connection. 

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John Vance started smoking weed and doing acid with other kids in eighth grade, believing he had found his people.

“I remember thinking, ‘Those kids look really cool, but they’re way too cool for me,’” said Vance. “Once I started smoking weed — they all smoked weed too — I started meeting these people and I was like, ‘Wow, these people are cool and they accept me.’”

He managed to keep the crisis at bay through high school, college, and a Ph.D., but when it finally caught up with him, he realized he had been alone for a very long time.

He eventually found his way to DV8 Kitchen and Shepherd’s House, where he found belonging. 

—

What did Williams, Strode, and Vance all have in common? 

Each of them was searching for a basic need: human connection. When they couldn’t find it, they settled for inadequate substitutes. 

According to Harvard’s Center on the Developing Child, this need for connection cannot be overstated: “The most common protective factor for children and teens who develop the capacity to overcome serious hardship is having at least one stable and committed relationship with a supportive parent, caregiver, or other adult.”

Scientists have found that early relationships shape children’s brain development, affecting their learning, behavior, and health throughout life. The quality of these early relationships with caregivers — whether supportive or not — plays a critical role in their overall well-being. These effects are often tied to larger societal challenges.

So, what should this insight mean for how nonprofits structure their programming? 

A relational problem requires a relational solution

After 43 years of working with middle and high schoolers, Elevate USA has seen how long-term relationships shape lives and how new, healthy relationships can reverse negative impacts. 

At the organization’s core is a belief that every social problem boils down to the quality of relationships in a person’s life. These might include poverty, homelessness, substance use, or incarceration. 

“All of these challenges in a lot of these communities go back to the same root problem,” said Emma Turnbull, director of marketing and communications. “We call it relational insecurity or relational instability — not having that one person to confide in, to feel safe with.” 

Addressing only financial support or physical needs, while essential, often neglects the deeper, underlying factors that contribute to long-term challenges. Many issues, particularly for people experiencing chronic poverty or homelessness, stem not just from material shortages but from a lack of meaningful relationships and support networks. 

This relational poverty — the absence of trust, community, and belonging — can fuel feelings of isolation and disconnection, often hindering the possibility of lasting change.

“A relational problem requires a relational solution,” said Turnbull. 

“Early on, when we said that we build long-term, life-changing relationships, people would say that feels soft,” said Kevin Byerley, CEO of Elevate USA. “But that’s exactly where all the outcomes are — having a positive, caring adult. Just one relationship in one of these kids’ lives makes the difference.”

Elevate’s “teacher mentors” teach leadership and character development in the classroom and spend time outside of school organizing activities and building stable, long-term relationships with their students. 

It’s working. Elevate students exhibit improved character traits and social-emotional health after three semesters or more in the program: 91% graduate from high school, while 86% pursue college, the military, or a trade school. They are more likely to get out of bad relationships (57% increase), become leaders (167% increase), and serve in their communities — 61% compared to the national average of 23%. 

Like the teacher mentors at Elevate, Scott Strode has learned the transformational power of relationships. In his early 20s, he started overcoming his addiction when he joined different fitness communities. The people who boxed with him — and then climbed, cycled, and ran with him — helped Strode see who he could become. 

He was surrounded by people tackling tough challenges and helping him do the same. He had finally found the real-life connection he thought alcohol had given him when he was 11.

He co-founded The Phoenix, a nationwide sober active community, to create a space for others to experience the connection and healing that gave him his life back. 

Starting as a single gym in Colorado, The Phoenix has now served more than half a million people in 44 states and online. A wide range of community-building activities creates space for everyone to find their passion, from weightlifting and CrossFit to mountain biking, ice climbing, art classes, and knitting. Livestream events like sober hangouts, book clubs, and music classes are gaining momentum.

Members come to help and be helped. After three months, 78% feel more connectedness, 87% feel more hope, and 83% remain sober. 

“Coming to a Phoenix event or going for a run with somebody who has a similar background to me and similar lived experience, we fist bump at the end of that run,” said Strode. “In those friendships and that connection, I find a space where I can be vulnerable and share about stuff that’s hard for me. I heal in those moments.”

The relationship changes how people see themselves

When she was 17, Williams found healthy relationships at Hope House Colorado. Then a mother of two, she was amazed by how the staff and residents treated her.

“The culture here was that you deserve dignity, so we’re gonna treat you with dignity,” she said. “They weren’t going out of their way to make me feel comfortable. It was just normal.” 

Lisa Steven, who started Hope House Colorado following her own experience as a teen mom, explained that the relationships she and her staff build with teen moms lay the groundwork for helping them understand their identities.

“[Teen moms] come with so little trust because everywhere they go, there’s that sense of, ‘You can’t make it, you won’t get there,’” she said. “To break the cycle is so much more than making enough money. It’s really about transformation of the way they see themselves and how they view the world.” 

The dignity Williams found in her relationships at Hope House reaffirmed her belief that she could create the life she wanted for her children. “I knew I could be a good mom if I could just figure it out — if I could just have some people come alongside me to help me figure it out,” she said. Sixteen years later, she and her husband have five thriving kids. Her oldest is deciding where to go to college next year. 

I’munique Liggens had a similar experience at Café Momentum, an organization that offers work and life skills training to justice-involved youth at its top restaurants in Dallas and Pittsburgh.

She spent years in and out of juvenile detention, having dropped out of school in the eighth grade and sometimes living out of a car. 

At Café Momentum, she was given a case manager who didn’t treat her like a problem to be solved. She connected with her and encouraged her to believe in herself.

“My case manager was my person,” she said. “She was phenomenal. She showed me that I could be me despite adversity.”

The relationships make a difference: In 2023, 93% of Café Momentum’s interns made academic progress, 90% complied with court orders, and 63% received therapy or professional mental health services.

Accountability is more effective with a relationship to back it up

Rob Perez, now more than 30 years into his own long-term recovery from substance use, co-founded DV8 Kitchen with his wife, Diane, to offer employment and support to others seeking second chances. 

He was surprised to discover that even with a history similar to the people working for him, he had a lot to learn about his employees. 

Perez used to fire his workers for the same repeated offense: being late. But then he had an epiphany. He asked himself: “Do people coming out of incarceration or addiction really know how to be on time?” 

“I started to realize I’d never asked them,” he said.

He changed. Perez started asking employees why they were late. Often, there were practical problems like alarms and sleep habits that Perez and the employee could talk through together. 

After these 5-10 minute conversations, “They kind of liked me more, and I kind of liked them more,” Perez said. “They understood, and 9 out of 10 people after those discussions weren’t late again.” 

“Until we get to the point where they trust us and we trust them, it doesn’t work.”

DV8 was where John Vance worked during his recovery, and it offered more than just a connection with Perez. Being among others in recovery was essential for him. The relationships he forged at DV8 motivated him to succeed, with everyone holding each other accountable in ways only those who have been through recovery can.

“It’s like we’re all just trying to rise out of the rubble and get our lives back together,” he said. “If you see somebody slippin’, then you’ll be like, ‘Hey man, bring it back in.’”

The entire DV8 staff is in recovery, which was huge for Vance, who now works as a substance use counselor in a local jail. “Now that I work in the field, I see how important the therapeutic community is.” 

Before his addiction overwhelmed him, Vance had been an English professor, but he had never been fully at ease in the company of other professors. At DV8, he found his people. 

“I didn't understand that I needed in my life not just to stay sober,” he said. “I needed a group of people around me that were just like me and trying to do the same things. I love, love those guys. They are my people. I feel more at home now than I ever have.”

Stand Together Foundation partners with the nation’s most transformative nonprofits to break the cycle of poverty.

Learn more about Stand Together’s efforts to build strong and safe communities and explore ways you can partner with us.