🌱 How Do You Use Real Estate to Fund a Bigger Mission?

[Joshua Hardin]

Lately I’ve been thinking about how real estate can do more than build wealth — it can sustain missions and protect legacies.

Here's an example that inspired me: there's a ranch in Tunnel Hill, Georgia that's been serving children, veterans with PTSD, and families through equine therapy since 2010. Their land already heals, but they're exploring how to use a short-term rental (STR) on the property to:

• 🌱 Protect their land and programs
• 🧱 Create mission-aligned income
• 🚪 Multiply their impact for generations

That got me asking myself: how many of us are using real estate as a tool not just for ourselves, but for something bigger?

👉 I’d love to hear from the community:

• Have you ever seen (or done) something similar — using STRs, rentals, or other strategies to sustain a mission, nonprofit, or family legacy?
• What worked, and what didn’t?

Excited to learn from your experiences and perspectives.

— Joshua Hardin | Chattanooga, TN

[Rik Hunter]

It's a great question and attitude that I wish more landlords had. If you have the ability to own a rental property, you're better off than so many, and I think that comes with the responsibility to do good by those renting from you. It's something you pass onto your renters and to those in your family. 

It might simply be small things like making repairs in a timely manner, but even that matters. 

I had some buyers looking at homes and complaining about how their landlord wouldn't fix things, for example, the pneumatic screen and storm door closer. They took it upon themselves to buy and replace the broken one. That just should never happen.