GIVERS
JOE SCHMIDT
D
Entrepreneurial humanitarian
“Doing the right thing isn’t always safe,” says Joe Schmidt, 43, founder of Audacity Factory, a Raleigh nonprofit that applies business-world techniques to “world-changing” ideas in order to address underserved areas of humanitarian need.
Launched in November 2013, Audacity Factory’s initial focus is human trafficking. The cause has no clear enemy, Schmidt says, but is so horrific that “people run from” it. His organization is headed the other way. ENDcrowd.com, a crowdsourcing venture incubated by Audacity Factory, has raised nearly $90,000 for charities that serve victims of human trafficking. And now the nonprofit is raising money at screenings of In Plain Sight, a documentary about human trafficking, for six “aftercare” homes throughout the U.S. that serve its victims. Schmidt says his upbringing in rural Indiana prepared
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him for a career that applies entrepreneurialism to humanitarian causes. He describes his father as a serial entrepreneur; his mother as a world-traveling missionary. Schmidt keeps busy with pursuits on all fronts. He and business partner Tom Lotrecchiano recently self-published a book they co-wrote, Entremanureship. He has also helped grow Newhope Church, a Wesleyan church formed in Chapel Hill in 2002 that he says is now one of the 10 fastest-growing churches in the U.S., with 7,000 members and seven campuses throughout the world. The graduate of Ball State University also holds an photograph by ROBERT WILLETT
