HER | Habitat for Humanity: Mary Wormington is in building mode

Mary Wormington, executive director for Habitat for Humanity of Texarkana, poses in front of photos of HFH's previous projects in their offices off of Robison Road in Texarkana.
Mary Wormington, executive director for Habitat for Humanity of Texarkana, poses in front of photos of HFH's previous projects in their offices off of Robison Road in Texarkana.

Before Mary Wormington arrived at Habitat for Humanity of Texarkana, the organization had only been building one house every two years. After Mary was introduced as executive director in June of 2018, everything changed.

"In the last three years, we have built five houses, rehabbed two, sold all seven of them and we've conducted critical repairs for senior citizens," Mary said.

Mary and HFH have also recently opened a resale shop, The HFH of Texarkana Restore. The building has had its utilities turned on and is collecting donations of home items from both commercial and individual sources.

"It's a proven model - when you have a Habitat, and you open up a home improvement resale shop that generates enough money to take care of the personnel, those funds are going right back into our affordable housing and critical repair programs," Mary said.

Due to material costs, Habitat has not been able to build for the past few months, and won't start back building until the fall. Mary said the profits from the Restore will help them get back on their feet.

"You build a house, you don't get the return on your investment for 25-30 years," she said. "So, we have to have these different fundraisers. But fundraisers can't sustain building a whole house, no matter how successful it is. So, we need that extra income coming in. The Restore, we're hoping, is going to generate enough income for us to build our house in the fall and go from there."

Mary says it is the work of her board, volunteers and other community partners that has made all the success possible.

"I work with some incredible people that have been volunteers for Habitat for many years. This Habitat has been here for over 30 years, and people today still say to me, 'well, I didn't even know we had a Habitat.' So, that's my mission - to spread the word about what Habitat is doing," she said. "To me, we are a small group of people that can do a lot to change, and we can see the physical change we make in people."

With her experience in the community, she said her most important lesson learned has been finding partners to work with and benefiting from each others' expertise.

"To me, one of the things we need to do as a community is really start working together," Mary said. "For many years, people would see certain nonprofits as just charities. And I'm so glad that we're finally moving away from a nonprofit being considered a charity, because we run businesses. And in running those businesses, we need to partner together.

"We have a lot of nonprofits in our community. And how do they all survive if we all have to fundraiser and get money from the community? - Because there's lots of people with big hearts and people that have certain hearts for different nonprofits. There's enough for everyone, so we need to work together."

This method of using myriad resources in the community is something Mary has been doing for years, as a seasoned nonprofit-er.

She has worked with nonprofits in Texarkana dating back to 1998 - except for a couple of years when she worked in Northwest Arkansas, before returning to the area - serving as the chief professional officer at United Way Greater-Texarkana from 1998 to 2014. Before that, she worked for Walmart, where she grew connections through giving grant money away from the business foundation.

In her short stint away from Texarkana, which started in 2014, she said she felt a tug to return to the city she'd grown to love.

"I went to go help another nonprofit in Northwest Arkansas six years ago, and from that, I was recruited to work in the private sector," she said. "I think it was just to prove to myself that I could still do it, and it was wonderful. But I found myself coming to Texarkana every week or every other week. So, one day I had just decided that I was going to stay here."

She found a job at Crocker's Jewelers, who is now a partner with Habitat, and worked there for a while, before a board chair at Habitat recruited her to her current position.

"It was a whole new world learning about the organization and all of the arms that it has," Mary said. "We are a mortgage company, and that is new. I've taken more classes in the last three years than I did the whole time I was with another nonprofit. And one of the things I have learned is that we don't stop when we build their house and turn over the keys. It's a continuation of education for us and for our homeowners."

As director of Habitat for Humanity here, Mary has worked on several projects and accomplished a laundry list of objectives she set out to complete from the beginning, despite the presence of a pandemic. And she still believes, however, that she and Habitat are just getting started.

"One of the goals that I did not meet was to have a Restore in my first two years. It took me three years, but I'm really not counting COVID. So, I'm still kind of on my timeline," she said. "And of course, when I arrived at Habitat, we wanted to build more houses and start our programs.

One of the things Mary continuously tells her board is that when Habitat grows up, it will have a full staff.

"We will have a real bookkeeper and a project manager, and we will have a continuation of our repair program. We will have a full staff at the Restore, and we will have a truck," she said. "Having a very healthy Habitat to serve more people in our community and build more houses, steadily increasing our homeowners and the economy of our community - because we're building taxpayers. Our homeowners are contributing back to the county - That's my goal for Habitat."

Another goal Mary is passionate about is providing opportunities for their homeowners to attain financial security. She and her board are looking for funding for Financial Peace University, which includes financial lessons and philosophies by Dave Ramsey, to provide financial advice and guidelines to homeowners.

"As first-time homeowners, you don't know that you need to start keeping a budget for repairs, and you don't need to wait until something happens to an appliance or an air conditioner or heater - and then you don't have money to take care of it. So if we go through the Financial Peace University, then we're preparing our homeowners, and they can become financially secure," she said.

Whatever measure that is taken, Mary said she simply wants to serve her community however she can. And her philosophy to do just that has never wavered.

"I think it's just seeing that we can make a difference - it doesn't matter how small - in someone else's life," Mary said. "Working in the private sector was great. But at the end of the day, do you really walk away with improving the world, other than yourself? And to me, that has always been the main factor in staying in the nonprofit world.

"At the end of the day, I've done something for somebody other than myself."

(To inquire about volunteering for or donating to Habitat for Humanity, call 903-832-1746 or email habitattexarkana.org.)

Upcoming Events