“So you want to launch an OnRamp in your community? Here’s how!”
So begins one of the most important projects in our charity’s history. Over the last few years, so many charities, schools, and churches outside of the Brazos Valley have reached out to us to nominate hardworking people-in-need to our program. It grieves us to have to say, “we can’t serve you yet.” There are a few exceptions: OnRampDFW and OnRampCoastalBend can serve their respective communities, and our partners 3in1 Mechanical Ministries and Gods Garage can serve some in the Houston area. But outside of that, there’s no one. San Antonio, Austin, Waco/Temple… nothing. Tulsa, Kansas City, Denver, Washington DC… nothing. This should not be.
OnRamp hopes to inspire, train, and launch teams throughout the country to plant OnRamp ministries in their communities! To this end, we are working on the following:
Build a Launch Playbook, a single repository of all the policies, procedures, documents, trainings, and assets needed to launch a new OnRamp anywhere. We hope to have version 1.0 complete in the next six weeks. We may even train an AI virtual assistant to help new OnRamp volunteers use this extensive resource!
Host our first (hopefully annual) All-OnRamp Conference, inviting the DFW, CB, and 3in1 teams mentioned above to join us in College Station for a weekend of encouragement, prayer, training, problem-solving, planning, and resourcing.
Launch an OnRamp National organization to carry this expansion work forward. I (Blake) will likely dedicate more and more of my time to this effort. I hope to catalyze the launch of OnRamp-type ministries throughout the U.S. in this next phase of my life :-)
OnRamp Launch Playbook version 1.0 coming together fast!
What is needed to make this dream a reality. First, prayer. We need something only God can provide: passionate, Christ-following volunteer leaders in each community we hope to expand to. These volunteer leaders don’t need to know much about cars, but they do need to love people-in-need. They would be our boots-on-the-ground in each location to help identify, screen, and serve clients, raise funds, coordinate with local charities and churches, manage the books, and coordinate with our national office. If you know of potential people like that, particularly in the San Antonio, Austin, Temple, Waco corridor, please let us know!
Second, we will need a few philanthropic “venture capitalists” to help get the national office off the ground. We don’t want this expansion effort to take ANY funds that currently go to our Brazos Valley OnRamp ministry. There are still so many deserving, hard-working clients to serve here! So this would be a new investment, ideally from people who want their charitable giving to make a national impact that will outlive them. I’m talking about people who think like venture capitalists, but are willing to trade monetary profit for eternal impact. My shoot-the-moon hope: a few of these philanthropic venture capitalists would commit together to donate $250k a year for three years to launch OnRamp National. Maybe that’s a pipe dream… but just imagine the impact for Jesus we could have if the 220 clients we’ve served in His name in the Brazos Valley were replicated in every city in Texas… or even every city in the United States. Tens of thousands of families struggling to get to work, the doctor, or their kids to school would suddenly have HOPE provided in the name of Jesus. That seems like a worthwhile dream to me! Let me know if you agree.