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“How does a 19-year-old college student start his own non-profit?”

I was your average college student: going to class, studying for exams, and partying in between. I kept hearing that this was, “the best time of your life, so enjoy it”…so I did. It wasn’t until one October night during my junior year that I discovered how blissfully unaware I was that something in my life was missing. Something bigger than myself. Here I was embarking on my higher education, but I wasn’t even scratching the surface of my higher thinking. That is, until a 60 Minutes special and a TV show challenged me to dive head first into my life’s purpose and passion. It was time to start my own company—my own non-profit organization.

How does a 19-year-old college student start his own non-profit? It was a daunting question that I began to answer by just Googling and jotting ideas into a Word Document. Once my thoughts were written down, ignoring the obvious lack of structure and misspellings, I could begin researching, asking questions, getting feedback and assembling resources. The next simple and unorthodox step in the creation of my organization was to craft a 44 slide Power Point presentation that I used as a “sales pitch” to introduce my vision to family and friends who helped my fine tune my ideas.

After six months, I asked my best friend to run the organization with me and within the next year I had an amazing team of young social entrepreneurs helping me propel the vision of L2G. With a dedicated group of “movers and shakers”, we accepted our very first donation in the frozen food section of an Ann Arbor grocery store and since that moment of elation and reassurance, we have been raising tens of thousands of dollars for deserving Michigan families and nonprofits.

Take Home Message: It’s never too early or too late in life to follow a dream. All it takes is unmatched passion, unwavering persistence and the willingness to embrace “your kind of crazy”.

Live the dream…give back,

Ryan