The Purpose Prize From AARP Gives Nonprofits $75,000 — and the Tools They Need to Grow

Helping real people 

Malone’s nonprofit was inspired by her husband’s cousin, Vivian Malone Jones, the first Black student to graduate from the University of Alabama. In 1963, as part of the fight for civil rights and integration, Jones was escorted by the National Guard as she arrived on campus to enroll in the segregated school. Alabama Governor George Wallace attempted to block  her entrance, an incident known as the Stand in the Schoolhouse Door. That inspired the name Vivian’s Door, Malone says. “It seemed right for what I was attempting to do — help people walk through doors of opportunity,” she says. 

In 2018, Malone launched Vivian’s Door as a nonprofit dedicated to helping minority-owned businesses, which often lack financial resources and the networks to help scale up their efforts. Malone had spent her career as an entrepreneur, running a printing company and leading a business network in the southeastern U.S. with over 1,400 members, and she knew fellow entrepreneurs could succeed with some business training.  

When Malone applied for a Purpose Prize, she was providing networking and mentorship opportunities to 250 businesses a year. The organization was helping people like Dexter Sutton, a gym owner whose business was decimated by the pandemic. Vivian’s Door helped him get attention through media stories, secure land grants and develop a business plan. Within two years of working with Vivian’s Door, Sutton doubled his income. 

This kind of work — helping entrepreneurs create strategic plans, apply for bank loans and use social media marketing — caught the attention of the Purpose Prize judges. When Vivian’s Door was announced as a winner, it caught the media’s attention, too. “It seems as if every publication in town was calling, wanting me to do some kind of interview,” she says.  

Malone and her team quickly went from handling 25 to 30 client queries a month to more than 100 from across the country.  

Janice Malone, center, at a Vivian’s Door event.

Craig Mulcahy

The rapid increase in interest revealed gaps in the organization’s client intake systems, Malone says. Purpose Prize coaches helped Vivian’s Door create a centralized data management process to improve client tracking and staff coordination. “We’re now much more organized and systematic in how we do this,” says Malone. 

Lasting impact  

During her year working with the Purpose Prize, Malone was matched with a coach who was a former federal government grant administrator. She provided an insider’s perspective on how institutions approach grantmaking and noted that clear goals, a target audience and expected outcomes would make the organization’s applications for funding stronger.  

Malone also got a new perspective on fundraising. A Purpose Prize mentor taught Malone to identify current funders who could increase their donations. “We’d never even thought of things in that way,” Malone says.  

This kind of coaching for nonprofit founders is “intended … to help them take their organization to the next level,” Nawrocki says.  

Thanks to the prize money, Vivian’s Door now has a newly renovated computer workspace for clients, along with room for classes, individual coaching and events. Malone has also expanded her nonprofit’s reach, adding a program to help minority farmers and another to interest youth in agricultural careers.  

That support has helped Vivian’s Door grow more efficiently and effectively, Malone says. During her year with the Purpose Prize, she says, “We had to hold on for dear life because it was so much coming at you at once. But we were able to learn a lot [and] really get strong.”