A Franchise Nonprofit?

Jamie Trujillo bought a for-profit business, but wanted to reach the people who couldn't afford her services. So she made a radical change.

- MADELINE GARFINKLE

Can a single franchise location be transformed into a nonprofit?

That's what Jamie Trujillo wondered only two months after becoming a Challenge Island franchisee. The question came from her deep sense of mission. Trujillo had always been what she calls a "stereotypical teacher's pet," and spent 14 years working with an adult education nonprofit. Then she discovered Challenge Island, an afterschool STEM program for kids with 145 locations in the U.S., and became a franchisee in Albuquerque, New Mexico, in 2019. "It was an expansion of my calling," Trujillo says. But she soon found an age-old problem: Her programs were too expensive for the kids who needed it the most. Trujillo could think of only one solution to turn her business into a nonprofit. Challenge Island agreed to help her, and she is now the company's only franchisee with nonprofit status. Here, she explains how that decision unleashed her business's true potential.

Walk us through the process of getting nonprofit status.