Clint Borgen Q&A Interview
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- Poverty
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From the organizations culture to its approach, Clint Borgen reveals everything you’ve ever wanted to know about The Borgen Project.
The Borgen Project has been one of the most effective nonprofits at utilizing the Internet. How has that impacted the organizations work? We wouldn’t exist without the Internet. Operating with a small budget, the web has allowed us to mobilize thousands of people and get the issues in front of millions more.
What component of The Borgen Project’s operations are you most proud of? We’re incredibly lean, mean and efficient with our funding. We don’t have much, be we know how to get a lot of mileage out of every dollar that is donated.
What prompted you to start an organization like The Borgen Project? Kosovo. A couple of years after high school, I volunteered in the refugee camps as the war and genocide was coming to an end. It was obviously disturbing to see people living under those conditions, but I was equally bothered that Congress and the White House weren’t doing more to address that humanitarian crises and others like it. There’s a big gap between what the U.S. public thinks is being done to address these issues and what’s actually occurring. I saw a definite need for an organization that could create political pressure in the U.S and help shape a foreign policy that is more focused on reducing global poverty.
The story behind the ordeals you went through to start the organization and keep it running have generated a lot of interest in the cause. In your words, describe the development of The Borgen Project? I started developing it after college, but I had no money and no connections and it looked like a fairly doomed endeavor. However, I’m a big believer that opportunities come in unlikely places and for me the opportunity to get funding for launching the organization and having time to develop it, came in the form of a fishing vessel docked in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. I grew up in Anacortes, WA, which has strong ties to fishing in the Bering Sea and I was able to get a job living on a fishing vessel up there. I was basically hired to live on the boat while the crew was gone during the winter and make sure the boat didn’t sink or get broken into.
I had my laptop setup on the boat’s kitchen table and a phone line running from the dock down to my computer connected me to the outside world with dial up Internet. The Aleutian Islands are one storm after another, so the boat was usually swaying from the wind and waves. Where I worked was below the water line, so there was usually the sound of water splashing against the boat and ropes creaking as the boat swayed.
From that make-shift office on a fishing vessel in Alaska, The Borgen Project was developed and launched. The website was designed, the paperwork was completed, and a whole lot research was done. My first stint in Dutch Harbor was from October 2003 to January 2004 and then I went back a couple of more times. I basically worked on The Borgen Project from morning until I went to bed, with of course the occasional stop at the local watering hole. It was dark most of the day and from inside the vessel I had no windows or sense of what time of day it was anyways, so it was the perfect conditions for the insane hours needed to independently launch an organization.
After a year of stints in Alaska, I moved to Seattle and that was when it started to transform from being one man’s project to having other people involved and it becoming a fully functioning organization.
You’re fairly private, has it been difficult operating in a more public arena? I’m learning to appreciate it, but the first couple of years I was really outside of my comfort zone. I was shy growing up and even voted most bashful in high school, so having attention drawn to me and feeling overexposed was a necessary evil for building a base and creating the platform I now have to meet with U.S. leaders.
The Borgen Project has been one of the most effective nonprofits at utilizing the Internet. How has that impacted the organizations work? We wouldn’t exist without the Internet. Operating with a small budget, the web has allowed us to mobilize thousands of people and get the issues in front of millions more.
What component of The Borgen Project’s operations are you most proud of? We’re incredibly lean, mean and efficient with our funding. We don’t have much, be we know how to get a lot of mileage out of every dollar that is donated.
What prompted you to start an organization like The Borgen Project? Kosovo. A couple of years after high school, I volunteered in the refugee camps as the war and genocide was coming to an end. It was obviously disturbing to see people living under those conditions, but I was equally bothered that Congress and the White House weren’t doing more to address that humanitarian crises and others like it. There’s a big gap between what the U.S. public thinks is being done to address these issues and what’s actually occurring. I saw a definite need for an organization that could create political pressure in the U.S and help shape a foreign policy that is more focused on reducing global poverty.
The story behind the ordeals you went through to start the organization and keep it running have generated a lot of interest in the cause. In your words, describe the development of The Borgen Project? I started developing it after college, but I had no money and no connections and it looked like a fairly doomed endeavor. However, I’m a big believer that opportunities come in unlikely places and for me the opportunity to get funding for launching the organization and having time to develop it, came in the form of a fishing vessel docked in Dutch Harbor, Alaska. I grew up in Anacortes, WA, which has strong ties to fishing in the Bering Sea and I was able to get a job living on a fishing vessel up there. I was basically hired to live on the boat while the crew was gone during the winter and make sure the boat didn’t sink or get broken into.
I had my laptop setup on the boat’s kitchen table and a phone line running from the dock down to my computer connected me to the outside world with dial up Internet. The Aleutian Islands are one storm after another, so the boat was usually swaying from the wind and waves. Where I worked was below the water line, so there was usually the sound of water splashing against the boat and ropes creaking as the boat swayed.
From that make-shift office on a fishing vessel in Alaska, The Borgen Project was developed and launched. The website was designed, the paperwork was completed, and a whole lot research was done. My first stint in Dutch Harbor was from October 2003 to January 2004 and then I went back a couple of more times. I basically worked on The Borgen Project from morning until I went to bed, with of course the occasional stop at the local watering hole. It was dark most of the day and from inside the vessel I had no windows or sense of what time of day it was anyways, so it was the perfect conditions for the insane hours needed to independently launch an organization.
After a year of stints in Alaska, I moved to Seattle and that was when it started to transform from being one man’s project to having other people involved and it becoming a fully functioning organization.
You’re fairly private, has it been difficult operating in a more public arena? I’m learning to appreciate it, but the first couple of years I was really outside of my comfort zone. I was shy growing up and even voted most bashful in high school, so having attention drawn to me and feeling overexposed was a necessary evil for building a base and creating the platform I now have to meet with U.S. leaders.
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