If It's Tugging at Your Heart, That's Your Sign: What Founding a Nonprofit Taught Me About Purpose-Driven Leadership
How one woman's conviction turned into a movement to restore childhood joy and transform school safety through purpose-driven leadership.
If It's Tugging at Your Heart, That's Your Sign:
What Founding a Nonprofit Taught Me About Purpose-Driven Leadership
By Amy Schell, Founder & President, Foundation for Safer Schools
Remember when the biggest fear at school was a pop quiz?
For so many of us, school worries meant a forgotten homework assignment, a spelling test, or figuring out where to sit at lunch. Today's students carry something much heavier.
Three years ago, I watched children walk into school carrying a fear no child should ever have to bear: fear of what might happen inside the building that was supposed to be the safest place in their world outside of home.
I watched teachers and staff who love those children shoulder the responsibility of keeping them safe, often without the training, resources, or support that responsibility requires.
I had spent more than two decades as an insurance executive, building teams and territories across multiple states. I understood risk. I understood protection.
What I did not have was experience in nonprofit leadership, a curriculum, or a playbook.
What I did have was a conviction that childhood joy was being stolen—and that someone needed to do something about it.
So, I founded the Foundation for Safer Schools.
Here is what building it has taught me about leadership, and what I believe every woman with a mission in her heart needs to hear.
You Do Not Need Permission to Solve a Problem
The single biggest barrier I see holding back capable women is the belief that someone else is better qualified to act.
We wait for the expert, the committee, or the invitation.
Here is the truth: the invitation is the problem itself.
When I started the Foundation, I was not a school safety expert or a prevention specialist. I was someone who saw a gap between what schools needed and what they could access—and I refused to look away.
Everything else—the programs, partnerships, and funding strategy—was built by asking questions, listening to educators, and doing the work.
If you see a problem no one is solving, that is not a reason to step back.
That is your opening.
The Most Powerful Word in Nonprofit Work Is "Activate"
Early on, we made a decision that shaped everything: we would not duplicate existing resources.
We would activate them.
Communities are full of powerful programs that schools have never heard of: confidential student reporting systems, professional safety training partners, and grant dollars that go unclaimed every year simply because no one connected schools to those resources.
The tragedy is not a lack of resources.
It is a lack of connection.
So, the Foundation became the connector.
We partner with organizations doing exceptional work and bring those resources to the schools that need them, alongside safety assessments, prevention education, and grant application support.
In 2026 alone, this approach has helped secure more than $380,000 in grant and private funding for schools and prevention programming, and it has brought our teams in front of hundreds of students, teachers, and administrators.
The leadership lesson extends far beyond nonprofits: you do not have to build everything yourself.
Sometimes the most valuable thing a leader can do is stand in the gap between a need and a resource and make the connection no one else thought to make.
Purpose Is a Strategy, Not a Slogan
Our mission is to restore childhood joy—one student, one school, one community at a time.
That is not a tagline we created for a brochure. It is the filter for every decision we make, and it works because it is built on three pillars:
Awareness creates time.
Recognizing the warning signs of a potential safety threat creates the opportunity to intervene before a crisis occurs.
Preparedness saves lives.
From emergency response planning to teaching students practical decision-making frameworks, preparation ensures schools and students know what to do when it matters most.
Education empowers action.
Knowledge without action changes nothing. We give students and staff the confidence and skills to protect themselves and one another.
When your purpose is that clear, decisions become easier.
Partnerships either advance the mission or they do not.
And the people around you—staff, volunteers, donors, and school leaders—can see exactly what they are joining.
Clarity of purpose is not soft.
It is one of the most practical leadership tools I have ever used.
Trust Is Built in the Follow-Through
Schools do not open their doors for polish or credentials.
They open them for authenticity, and they keep them open because of follow-through.
Some of the Foundation's most meaningful moments have not been the large grant announcements. They have been the quiet ones: a superintendent who calls because they know something will get done, a principal willing to share a testimonial, or a community that shows up for an awareness event because the last one mattered.
Multi-year district partnerships are not won in a single pitch meeting.
They are earned one kept promise at a time.
I learned this in my corporate career, and it has proven even more true in mission-driven work: people do not follow perfection.
They follow people who show up, tell the truth, and do what they say they will do.
Your Two Worlds Are Not in Competition
Women are often told to pick a lane: corporate or cause, ambition or service.
I have never accepted that, and my career is proof that you do not have to.
My executive background gave me the skills the Foundation relies on every day: building teams, managing budgets, negotiating partnerships, and communicating results.
And the Foundation has made me a better executive, because nothing sharpens your leadership like work where the stakes are children's lives and the currency is trust.
If you are a professional woman wondering whether you have room in your life for a mission, I would gently challenge the question.
You may find, as I did, that the mission makes room for you—and that it calls upon every skill you have spent your career developing.
The Joy Is the Point
The threats facing students are real and escalating, and schools are being asked to address them with limited budgets and exhausted staff.
I will not pretend otherwise.
But here is what gives me hope: communities are more ready to act than I have ever seen.
When we walk into a district with funding, training, and genuine partnership, we are not pushing against a locked door.
People want solutions.
Every child deserves to walk into school excited about the day ahead, not worried about what might happen.
That is what we are working toward—one student, one school, one community at a time.
And if there is a problem in your community that keeps tugging at your heart, that is your sign.
Do not wait for an invitation.
Do not wait until you feel ready.
Build the thing that does not exist yet.
Childhood joy can be restored.
I have watched it happen.
And there is a place in that work for you.
Amy Schell is the Founder & President of the Foundation for Safer Schools, a 501(c)(3) nonprofit serving schools across the Inland Northwest through school safety training, violence prevention education, emergency preparedness, and grant funding support. Learn more at foundationforsaferschools.org.
