Making the transition from the corporate to the nonprofit world isn’t always easy. But Sylvia H, a longtime resident of New York City is giving it a shot. She had built a career managing big accounts for consumer packaged goods clients including Procter & Gamble and Lever as well as General Foods for major advertising agencies like Ogilvy and had even started her own firm. But she had wanted something more out of life. Now she’s working to build a non-profit that helps people truly in need.
Last September she started working with Instacart as a Personal Shopper and has been using the flexible income to turn her dream of building a non-profit into a reality. “Instacart allows me the freedom to work on this idea,” she says.
Sylvia has been an avid runner. During a 10K race in Central Park, she started looking around at the other runners. “I’m thinking: look at all these people with all these sneakers,” she says. She had lived in Lusaka, Zambia and knew how many people in southern Africa were walking without shoes, leading to infections and injuries. Foot protection is a real need, she says, “Especially for the women, because they’re the ones walking five miles to get water…In some places children cannot go to school unless they have shoes.”
So when she saw all those racing shoes, many of which the owners would chuck in the trash even though they were still perfectly usable, she thought: “I should be collecting them and sending them to where people can use them.” Sylvia’s plan is to start a non-profit that gathers gently used running shoes and delivers them to in-need people in Africa.
Today she’s building the business plan and figuring out exactly how she’s going to fund operations. But Instacart also gives Sylvia flexibility. She notes that she had worked about twenty hours per week with Instacart — but that, due to a number of obligations, non-profit and otherwise, she had to scale back. “That’s such a wonderful part. You don’t have to explain yourself to a boss,” Sylvia says. And when her obligations subside she plans on ramping up her work with Instacart again.
In the meantime she still has to pay her bills. New York isn’t cheap.
Sylvia anticipates that if her non-profit gains traction she’ll have to travel to Africa. Already she’s noted many fellow Instacart shoppers who have big adventure travel schedules. They work a few hours-heavy months with Instacart to build up a savings and then take off to explore a far off land for a while. When they return, they repeat the process — all without the need to seek permission from a manager. Sylvia plans to do the same when she needs to travel to Africa.
“Building this nonprofit is going to take a while,” she says. “So working at Instacart is going to work perfectly.”
