Nora El-Khouri Spencer is Founder and CEO of Hope Renovations, a nonprofit with a dual mission: to empower underemployed women and gender-expansive folks into careers in construction while helping older adults stay in their homes their whole lives.
After a 15-year career in corporate human resources, Nora, a self-taught remodeler, decided to switch directions to pursue a Master of Social Work from UNC Chapel Hill with a focus on social justice via entrepreneurship. In Summer 2020, Nora combined her passion for women’s workforce development, her interest in preserving housing for older adults, and her love for construction to launch Hope Renovations.
Nora is a Licensed Building Contractor and maintains a Certified Aging in Place Specialist (CAPS) designation. She has received multiple honors for her work, including being named the 2023 National Association of Home Builders’ “Woman of the Year” and a 2022 Top Ten CNN Hero. She speaks about gender equity in the trades throughout the country and has been a recurring guest on The Drew Barrymore Show as “Nora the Tradeswoman”.
In March, Nora became a new mom. Besides being completely obsessed with her son (a future feminist tradesman) she is also an avid UNC Tar Heels and LA Dodgers fan, a Master Gardener, and a beach addict. She lives in Chapel Hill with her husband Brian and her little Isaac James.
Company History:
Hope Renovations builds futures and transforms lives with a dual mission: preparing underemployed women and gender expansive individuals for construction careers and helping older adults age in place.
Launched in summer of 2020, Hope Renovations offers a pre-apprenticeship training program for underemployed women and gender-expansive folks designed to give them the skills to confidently enter the trades or enroll in apprenticeships and continuing education – ultimately putting them on the path to living wage-paying jobs in construction.
We also complete small to mid-sized home repairs and modifications for adults 55+ and those living with a disability, so they can stay safe and independent in their homes. These jobs provide our trainees the opportunity to apply and practice their skills in a real-world setting.
In just over four years, Hope has trained more than 100 new tradespeople for the industry. 100% of those who have entered the industry are making living wages. In addition, we have completed more than 250 projects in our communities, ensuring safety and comfort for over 300 seniors.
What unique strategies set your business apart from the competition, and how have they contributed to your success?
While there aren’t many standalone women’s trades training programs out there, there are plenty of places where someone can get great construction skills training. What makes us unique, though, is that we provide a number of wraparound services; career-related supports (professional development coaching, resume writing, interviewing practice) and social supports for common barriers to employment like childcare, health, mental health, transportation, etc. After all, you can have top-notch hard skills, but if you’re struggling with health issues or you’re a poor communicator you may not be able to sustain your job and build a career.
On top of that, we are a nonprofit with a dual mission. Our trainees get their hands-on experience working alongside our construction crew, carrying out repairs and renovations for older adults so they can stay in their homes safely as they age. Having this additional focus broadens our target audience, increases our impact, and amplifies our opportunity to inspire.
What challenges do you anticipate facing in 2024? How do you plan on meeting those challenges?
Election years are tough on nonprofits. Many of the donors we rely on shift their contributions to the political candidates they’re supporting, and grantors often hedge on offering funding opportunities until they know who’s going to be in power and which of their focus areas is going to take a front seat. But for us, this creates an awesome opportunity for storytelling! Four years in, we have over 100 extraordinary graduates of our program out in the world doing amazing things. Many of them come from backgrounds where, a year or two ago, they never could have imagined this kind of change in their lives. It’s our job to share these transformations so we can inspire donors, funders, partners, future trainees, and the entire industry – so storytelling has become a major focus.
Tell us a little about your approach to marketing.
We came on the scene at a time when the construction industry was thriving, workers were desperately needed, women were in urgent need of living-wage paying jobs, and the whole world needed inspiration… thanks, Covid! In many ways, we’ve just been lucky. What began as a local news affiliate sharing a quick story about us led to a big Christmas-eve feature on CBS This Morning in 2020 – and then things mushroomed from there. Newspaper and magazine articles, more TV opportunities, I was invited on the Drew Barrymore show (twice!) and was honored as a CNN Hero… all in the space of a couple years! (I get asked a lot, “Who is your PR person? They are killing it!”)
That early marketing opportunity was all about the uniqueness of our program, me as a Founder (and my story). And let’s be honest, women wielding power tools is pretty dang cool to watch. Suddenly, it became clear that we didn’t just start up a training program. We had a national platform from which we could work to change the culture in our industry! So now, we’ve shifted from telling OUR story and MY story to telling the stories of the people we serve. The women and gender-expansive folks we’re training, the older adults we’re helping stay in their homes as they age. Our tagline is, “building futures, transforming lives.” Our marketing focus now is making sure that our community, our region and the whole world can see how we’re doing that and be inspired.
Which marketing channels are you using currently? Where are you seeing most success and how has this evolved over time?
When we first launched, the majority of our trainees and construction clients came to us via referrals from local agencies and organizations. Now, 75% of the people we serve hear about us through either social media, word of mouth, or a Google search. I can’t take credit for the Google search – that’s been organic. (Again, not a lot of women’s trades training programs out there!) But Instagram (for training) and Facebook (for our Aging-in-Place services) have been great platforms for generating interest and engagement.
That said, one of our most successful marketing channels is mass comm. While we’ve been fortunate that most of our opportunity has come to us rather than us seeking it out, it would be easy to say “no” with all that we have going on and our very small team. Instead, we say yes to every opportunity. Some of them have resulted in great content but not much exposure. Some of them have resulted in decent content but astonishing engagement. ALL of them bring in new donors, partners and supporters – the lifeblood of a nonprofit.
How much or how little are you using A.I. or automation in your marketing efforts?
As a former journalist, I have a tendency to be a little snobby about using A.I. for written content. However, as a nonprofit with limited capacity, we’d be crazy not to use A.I. to help draft content, whether for social media posts, newsletters or grant applications! But the key word there is “draft”. A.I. is a tool just like any other, not a full solution. Nothing can replace the human voice, particularly in our world of telling the stories of the people that we serve.
What is something you’ve learned in your career that you would like to share with young SMB marketers entering the industry?
If you’re marketing something that’s going to take off, you’ll know it early on. From the time when Hope was just an idea, the feedback I was getting was, “Wow! This is so needed. What a great idea. Where has this been?” I knew I was onto something before we even started up. So, no matter how busy I was, I prepared for that by making marketing and PR a priority: creating an early comms plan, sharing content as often as possible, and answering every call or email from any type of media outlet. I would venture to say that a lot of our early success is because marketing was made such a priority.
Great example: although I didn’t really have time, I made time to engage with a women’s magazine that wanted to do a story on our program. A woman read that story once it was published, loved it, and passed it on to her daughter – a producer with the Drew Barrymore show! I got to be “Nora the Tradeswoman” for a couple episodes, teaching Drew how to do home repair projects. The engagement from that experience is STILL having ripple effects for us! So, the lesson is to take every opportunity to get the word out there… you never know what doors it will open.
