ANF Memphis

Big Problems In Our Community Get Solved, When Normal Folks Get Involved! 

Army of Normal Folks (ANF) is a national movement built on a simple idea: Our country’s problems won’t be solved by fancy people on TV. They’ll be solved by us — neighbors, family, coworkers, and friends — doing what we can, together.

Now, ANF is launching local service clubs nationwide to make it even easier to serve our communities, including one in Memphis that's led by locals!  

WHY JOIN THE CLUB?

• Zero Requirements: Get involved as much or little as you're able to 
• Easier to Serve: You’re busy, so we provide the service opportunities.
• Community Worth Showing Up For: Potlucks, happy hours, and making a difference—together.
• Real Change: You get to help empower people. Together, we can transform our community.

WHAT YOU'LL DO AS A MEMBER

• Giving Circle: Where we pool our giving to make larger transformational gifts together than we could on our own. Everyone gets an equal vote on deciding where to make gifts. 
• Army Activations: Monthly service days that make it easy to show up and serve together
  
  
• Service Concierge: Your personal concierge can recommend 2-3 service opportunities that match your unique passions and abilities! Our "Opportunities" feature also enables you to explore many more at any time. 
  
  
• The 10 Level Challenge: A personal service journey you can take to deepen your service over time and there's sweet perks along the way. Think of it like "The Hero's Journey for Service". 
  
  

NEXT STEPS 

1. Join the Club: And fill out the survey, so that your Service Concierge can recommend 2-3 service opportunities that match your passions and abilities! 

2. Join the Giving Circle: The minimum is $10/month and you can give any amount up to $25,000. And ANF is offering these awesome challenge grants: If we get 25 members they'll give our giving circle $3k, 100 members they'll give $12k, and if we recruit more members than the other clubs (at least 200) they'll give $25k. 

3. Explore the "Opportunities" tab: To check our club events like Army Activations, monthly meetings that are like fun happy hours where we make the giving circle grants, and vetted service opportunities that are always available to you. There's 3,500 nonprofits in Wichita and it would be pretty darn overwhelming to research all of them! So we're showcasing a more limited group that match our focus on helping empower people to transform their own lives. You can also always use the Service Concierge to help you find 2-3 service opportunities that match your unique passions & abilities by filling out this survey. 

4. Take The 10 Level Challenge: It's optional, but always there for you. 

5. Track Your Service: Inside of your GivePulse account, click "Add Impact" to track your service experience. You can see your impact over time and it'll help us measure the collective impact of the Army! 


OUR GUIDING LIGHTS

The north star of local service clubs is to improve our community through a wicked combination of easy service opportunities, deep relationships, and empowering people to flourish like never before. 

Each club’s work is guided by two commitments: 1 Do & 1 Don’t. 

1. Do: Prioritize Flourishing & Empowerment 

There’s many service opportunities in a community, but our clubs place the greatest focus on ones that address what is most essential—the 7 conditions for human flourishing. These are the ingredients that are necessary for every human being to flourish: 

• Economic opportunity 

• Education 

• Access to credit 

• Safe, affordable housing 

• Transportation 

• Access to Health & Wellness (fresh food, healthcare, exercise) 

• Healthy relationships & community 

Helping every member of our community achieve all of these conditions and be in a position to flourish is the most transformational work that we can do alongside individuals, and to also cultivate a flourishing community. 

Empowering people to achieve these conditions is the most effective approach short-term, long-term for their achievement of even higher levels of flourishing, and it’s the most respectful of their dignity. This is in contrast to giving people things, which often results in “helping people live in poverty a little bit better” (when transformation is the goal), can communicate to them that they don’t have anything to contribute, and can be disempowering.

As a general rule, we want to limit one-way to true emergencies (ex. natural disasters, a child is about to enter foster care if they don’t have a bed) and find ways for people to contribute whenever possible. 

This principle isn’t as important when transformation isn’t the goal, such as helping an elderly neighbor with their yard. But the elderly have something to contribute too and if they want to contribute something such as food to thank you for your help, you should respect their dignity by accepting it! 

Examples of empowerment in action:

• Pay-what-you-can restaurants where guests can volunteer an hour for their meal

• Community gardens where neighbors grow food together

• Mentorship or skill-building that unlocks opportunities

• “Sweat equity” models where each person creates value through their work, skills or expertise 

Back On My Feet is a favorite example. Their running clubs for people experiencing homelessness build confidence and inspire them to participate in empowerment programs to achieve employment & housing. Over 10,000 participants have secured employment and stable housing through this dignity-first model.

Recommended Resources:

• How focusing the 7 conditions of human flourishing transformed a neighborhood (short) 

• “The Oath for Compassionate Helpers” (short) 

• 83-minute talk from Bob Lupton (medium)

• Podcast on the 7 conditions transforming Bonton Farms (medium)

2. Don’t: Engage in Politics or Public Policy Advocacy 

Clubs should avoid political activity and policy advocacy. Both are important, but they’re not our particular focus and dividing our membership along inevitable political/policy differences will be a roadblock to realizing the full potential of our vision. 

However, our work serving the community across differences should actually improve our politics and policy conversations! When we serve alongside people who are different from us, our respect for them grows and we increasingly move away from talking about others in unhealthy ways.