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What you’ll get from this post: A practical breakdown of how one Fargo nonprofit grew from recycled jars and donated flowers into a 115,000-bouquet movement, and what nonprofit leaders can steal from their playbook for donor engagement, volunteer culture, and mission-driven growth.

Nine years ago, Kelly Krenzel didn’t set out to start a nonprofit.

She had a stack of recycled jars, some donated flowers, and a belief that showing up for people matters. That’s it. No business plan. No board of directors. No fundraising strategy. Just a hunch that small, intentional acts of kindness could compound into something bigger.

Today, Hope Blooms has delivered more than 115,000 bouquets to people facing isolation, grief, and hardship across the Fargo-Moorhead area. They’ve built nearly 100 community partnerships. They mobilize thousands of volunteers every year. And they do it all on 100% community funding.

When Kelly sat down with me on the Tellwell podcast, she said something that stopped me cold: “You don’t have to have the answer. You don’t have to have a big plan. You don’t have to found a nonprofit. You just have to be kind and you have to be intentional.”

That sentence is either the most naive thing you’ve ever heard or the most profound. I think it’s both. And I think the way Hope Blooms operates has lessons for every nonprofit leader reading this.

Let’s unpack them.

The Flowers Are an Excuse

Here’s what most people get wrong about Hope Blooms when they first hear about it. They think it’s about flowers.

It’s about connection.

Kelly calls flowers their “superpower,” but she’s quick to clarify what that actually means. The bouquet is the reason for the visit. It’s something familiar. Something that triggers a memory, opens a door, starts a conversation. But the real gift? Sitting knee to knee with a 90-year-old woman named Mavis in her assisted living room for 45 minutes, holding her hand, listening to stories about her two late husbands.

The real gift is showing up.

Why this matters for your organization: Every nonprofit has a “flower.” It’s the tangible thing you offer. The meal. The mentorship session. The after-school program. The question is whether you’re treating that thing as the mission itself or as the vehicle for something deeper.

If your volunteers deliver meals but never sit down, you’re running a logistics operation. If your mentors show up on schedule but never go off-script, you’re running a program. Programs are fine. But movements happen when the tangible thing becomes an excuse for genuine human connection.

Kelly put it this way: “Anything done with intention, you can feel it. It’s not just someone asking you questions. It’s someone leaning down to your level, making sure that conversation is accessible for you.”

That’s the difference between service and presence.

Vulnerability as a Leadership Strategy

Most nonprofit leaders I know have been trained, implicitly or explicitly, to show up polished. Board meetings require confidence. Donor meetings require composure. Staff meetings require vision. There’s a performance layer to leadership that we rarely talk about.

Kelly flips that.

She talks openly about crying in front of donors. About not having all the answers. About being headstrong on some days and exhausted on others. And here’s the thing: it works. Hope Blooms has grown every single year. Their volunteer base keeps expanding. Their community partnerships keep multiplying.

The counterintuitive lesson: Vulnerability attracts people to your mission. Not weakness. Vulnerability. There’s a difference.

Weakness says “I can’t do this.” Vulnerability says “I believe so deeply in this that I’m willing to let you see the messy parts.”

Kelly described it this way: when you’re willing to show up without being polished, when you invite people into the real experience of mission work, you build trust faster than any annual report ever could. People don’t give to organizations. They give to people they trust. And trust is built through authenticity, not performance.

Bad approach: “Our organization has a strategic plan and a donor engagement strategy that positions us for sustainable growth.”

Better approach: “We’re figuring this out as we go, and we need people who believe in this as much as we do. Here’s what we’re learning.”

One of those invites participation. The other invites a tax-deductible donation.

Kelly also talked about how vulnerability works inside the team, not just outward to donors. When she says “I don’t have to have all the right answers,” she’s modeling something for her staff and volunteers. She’s giving them permission to be honest about what they don’t know. Permission to ask for help. Permission to lean on each other.

That’s organizational culture. And it’s built from the top.

Think about the nonprofits you’ve worked with or inside of. How many of them have a culture where the executive director admits they’re stuck? Where the development director says “this campaign isn’t working and I don’t know why yet”? Where the board chair says “I don’t understand this financial report, can someone walk me through it?”

Those moments feel risky. They feel like weakness. But Kelly’s nine years of growth suggest the opposite. Vulnerability builds the kind of trust that polished presentations never will. And that trust is what keeps volunteers coming back, donors increasing their gifts, and partners deepening their commitment.

Generosity Goes Beyond Finances

Kelly said something on the podcast that I’ve been thinking about since we recorded. She said the mission doesn’t belong to her. It belongs to the volunteers, the supporters, the recipients. It’s about them.

That sounds like humility, and it is. But it’s also strategy.

When you make the mission about the people involved rather than the organization running it, you create ownership. Volunteers don’t show up because Hope Blooms needs help. They show up because they feel like conduits of joy. Kelly’s actual phrase. Conduits of joy. That’s an identity, not a task.

Here’s the framework underneath it:

Hope Blooms treats every person in their ecosystem as essential to the mission’s existence. Not helpful. Essential. The volunteer who washes jars is as vital as the executive director. The donor who gives $25 is as important as the one who gives $2,500. The recipient who just needs a smile at the door gets the same intention as the one who needs 45 minutes of hand-holding.

This flattening of hierarchy does something powerful. It makes generosity feel accessible. You don’t need money to participate. You can donate time. You can donate recycled food jars. You can donate leftover flowers from your wedding. You can just show up and wash labels off jars for two hours.

For your organization: Ask yourself how many entry points you’ve created for people to participate in your mission. If the only way to engage is to write a check, you’re leaving the vast majority of your potential community on the sidelines.

Hope Blooms accepts monetary donations, of course. But they also accept recycled food jars. Donated flowers from weddings, funerals, grocery stores. Cleaning supplies. Paper towels. Clorox wipes. And time. Lots and lots of time.

Each of those entry points does something important: it gives people a way to say “yes” before they’re ready to say “yes” with their wallet. The volunteer who shows up to wash jar labels on a Tuesday afternoon? Six months from now, that person is writing a check. A year from now, they’re bringing their company’s team in for a volunteer day. Two years from now, they’re on the board.

That’s the pipeline. And it starts with a recycled food jar, not a fundraising ask.

The Mavis Principle: Give People What They Need in the Moment

Kelly told a story on the podcast that I keep coming back to.

She was doing a Petal It Forward delivery at a senior living community. That’s Hope Blooms’ program where volunteers show up unannounced, knock on doors, and deliver bouquets. She ran into a woman named Mavis in the hallway. Mavis had a calendar in her hand and couldn’t read it because of her vision. Kelly read it to her, noticed Hope Blooms was listed on the schedule, and said, “That’s us. We brought you flowers.”

Mavis started crying. She’d been feeling lonely.

Kelly didn’t just hand her the bouquet and move on. She asked if she could come back to Mavis’s room and visit. They sat together for 45 minutes. Hand in hand. Knee to knee. Kelly listened to stories about Mavis’s late husbands, her family, the hard transition into assisted living.

Later, Kelly sent Mavis a handwritten note. Mavis wrote back: “How lovely for you to visit people who are lonely. I love you. Please come back.”

They did come back. Multiple times. Strangers became friends.

The Mavis Principle: Give people what they need in the moment, not what your program says to give them.

Some people need a smile and a quick “thank you, how thoughtful.” Five seconds. Done. Some people need 45 minutes of uninterrupted presence. The mistake most organizations make is standardizing the interaction. Every visit is 10 minutes. Every call follows the script. Every touchpoint hits the same benchmarks.

Kelly’s approach: read the room. Stay flexible. If the moment calls for more, give more.

How this applies to donor engagement: Your major donor who calls to chat doesn’t want your elevator pitch. They want to feel heard. Your monthly giving member who shows up at an event doesn’t need to hear the case for support. They already support you. They need to feel like they belong.

Standardized engagement is efficient. Intentional engagement is effective. Those two things sometimes overlap. Often they don’t.

A practical test: Look at your next week of donor or community touchpoints. For each one, ask: “Am I doing this because it’s on the schedule, or because this person needs it right now?” If the answer is always “schedule,” you’re running a system. Systems are good. But systems without flexibility become mechanical. And mechanical relationships don’t last.

The Mavis story also illustrates something about follow-through. Kelly didn’t just visit and leave. She sent a handwritten note. Mavis wrote back. They built a relationship. Hope Blooms visits that community six to eight times per year, and Kelly now looks for Mavis every single time.

That’s the difference between a program and a relationship. Programs have start and end dates. Relationships don’t.

Surround Yourself with People Who Love You Enough to Challenge You

Kelly was honest about something that a lot of founders struggle with: when you’re too close to the mission, you lose perspective.

She said that in previous roles, seeing the big picture was easy. Bird’s eye view. Clear problems, clear solutions. But when it’s your thing, the thing you built from nothing, the thing that keeps you up at night, you can’t always zoom out.

Her advice? Surround yourself with people who will challenge you and support you at the same time.

That’s a specific combination. Kelly isn’t talking about yes-people. She’s also not talking about the people who weaponize “radical candor” to point out flaws and then hide behind the phrase “I’m just being honest.”

She’s talking about people who understand the context. Who have earned the right to push back because they’ve shown up. Who wrap their hard truths in genuine care.

The practical version: Your board should include at least two people who will tell you when something needs to improve. Not in a “well, actually” way. In a “I see what you’re carrying, and I think there’s a better path forward” way.

If every piece of feedback you receive feels like an attack, you might not have the right people around you. If every piece of feedback feels like a compliment, you definitely don’t.

Protecting Your Energy Is Part of the Job

Kelly admits that the work is tiring.

She says she wants to love every single person in the world. She means it. But she also comes home after a full day and needs quiet. Needs time with her favorite people outside of work. Needs to recharge.

This is the part that nonprofit leaders skip. The refueling.

Kelly’s framework is simple: the mission fuels her during the day. Her people refuel her after. She doesn’t pretend she can run on mission alone. She doesn’t guilt herself for needing rest. She’s honest about the cost of showing up with your whole heart, and she builds recovery into her rhythm.

For executive directors and development teams: You cannot give what you don’t have. If your entire identity is wrapped in the mission, you will burn out. It’s math, not weakness. Build recovery into your schedule the same way you build donor meetings into your calendar. Protect it with the same urgency.

Kelly’s version: time with people she loves. Yours might be different. But it needs to exist, and it needs to be non-negotiable.

Your 30-Minute Action Plan

You’ve read enough. Time to do something with it. Pick one. Do it this week.

1. Audit your “flowers” (15 minutes)
Write down the tangible thing your organization delivers. Now write down what that thing makes possible for the people who receive it. If your team can’t articulate the second part clearly, that’s your first project.

2. Create one new entry point for participation (10 minutes)
What’s one way someone could support your mission without writing a check? Donated supplies? Volunteer hours? Social media shares? A recycled jar? Add it to your website this week.

3. Call one donor and just listen (15 minutes)
No ask. No update. No agenda. Call a supporter, tell them you’re grateful, and ask how they’re doing. See what happens when you give someone what they need in the moment instead of what your development plan says to give them.

4. Schedule your recovery time (5 minutes)
Block two hours on your calendar this week that belong to you. Not the mission. You. Protect it like you’d protect a meeting with your biggest funder.

Resource Hub

Hope Blooms
Kelly Krenzel’s nonprofit that repurposes donated flowers into bedside bouquets for community members facing isolation and hardship. Based in Fargo, ND.

Tellwell the Podcast: Kelly Krenzel Episode
The full conversation that inspired this post. Listen wherever you get your podcasts.

Kelly’s First Podcast Appearance | Tellwell the Podcast, Episode 15, Season 1
The origin story of Hope Blooms, including the grandma, the recycled jars, and the spark of postpartum inspiration.

Radical Candor by Kim Scott
Referenced in the episode. The framework for caring personally and challenging directly. Worth reading with Kelly’s caveat: care has to come first, and it has to be real.

Hope Blooms on Facebook
Follow along for volunteer opportunities, delivery stories, and updates from the Hope Blooms community.