What Works: How a Nonprofit Had to Fail to Find Success

Whole Me began 11 years ago with a grassroots effort. People who worked with deaf and hard-of-hearing children saw a problem. The kids they were interpreting for in school were going home to afternoons of isolation. So they built a solution: An after-school program for deaf students. No one got paid. The office was a dining room table.

Over the next decade, Whole Me grew little by little. The budget reached six figures. But it took failure in 2011 for the small organization to find a solid path to financial security.