[piano intro] - Hello, I'm Nido Qubein.

Welcome to "Side By Side."

My guest started a nonprofit that provides beds for children in need.

Today his nonprofit has 300 chapters in four countries and 276,000 volunteers.

Together, they have built more than 160,000 bunk beds.

Today, you and I get to meet Luke Mickelson, the founder and executive director of Sleep in Heavenly Peace.

- [Announcer] Funding for "Side by Side" with Nido Qubein is made possible by... - [Advertiser] We started small, just 30 people in a small town in Wisconsin.

75 years later, we employ more Americans than any other furniture brand, but none of that would've been possible without you.

Ashley, this is home.

- [Advertiser] For 60 years, the Budd Group has been a company of excellence, providing facility services to customers, opportunities for employees, and support to our communities.

The Budd Group, great people, smart service.

- [Advertiser] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally, thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.

[rock music] [pleasant music] - Luke Mickelson, welcome to "Side by Side."

I'm fascinated by your work.

In 2012, you began something called Sleep in Heavenly Peace.

What is it?

What do you do?

- Well, thank you for having me on the show.

Yes, Sleep in Heavenly Peace is a nonprofit that builds beds for kids, simply put.

You know, we found a need in my own hometown years ago, and discovered that that need was a lot bigger than just was happening in my own hometown.

So I figured, I knew there was something we could do about it, and that's when we started it.

And funny story, Sleep in Heavenly Peace is kind of an odd name.

You know, it started around Christmas time.

So I remember back in the day, you know, we'd just finished this project that my family and I did, and I remember my wife said, "So, what are you gonna call this project?"

And I said, "Well, I got a great idea.

How about Beds for Babes?"

And it was quickly turned down.

[both laugh] Not a good Google search.

- Yes.

Yes.

- But no, we landed on Sleep in Heavenly Peace, being that it was Christmas time, and, you know, "Silent Night."

It was just such a perfect opportunity, and really what we wanted our recipients, our children that we serve to feel like, sleeping like they're in heaven.

- Yes, and your hometown is Twin Falls, Idaho.

- That's correct, yes.

- And so you were in Twin Falls, Idaho.

You were working, you were making significant money, and what is it that clicked in your mind, that I'd like to shift direction and provide beds for children, effectively, who don't have beds?

- You know, it's a culmination of things.

You know, I lived in a small town.

I grew up there.

You know, there's only about 40,000 people in the town, and I was actually from even a smaller town close by called Kimberly that was about 4,000 people.

You know, and living in a small town, raised by a single mom, I think I developed a desire to really serve others, right?

When you know everybody in town and everybody in your high school, you kind of end up having to do that.

And I was a sports guy.

I played a lot of sports, and when you're from a small town, you have to play ball.

- You were a quarterback in high school.

- I did, I played quarterback the first couple seasons and my last senior year I played running back.

But you understand, if you could throw a ball and catch or do anything, you played sports.

[both laugh] So, I quickly developed a real connection with a lot of people in my own hometown.

I ended up serving a mission for my church when I was graduated, and really developed what my mom had instilled in me for many years as my joy for service.

And so, when I got home from my mission... - When you come home, you're a Mormon.

- [Luke] Correct.

- So you do, what, two years mission?

- That's right, yep.

- And you go to some foreign country or... - Well, I served in Texas Fort Worth, which covered most of Texas, so I was kind of a stateside guy.

[laughs] But again, served in the South and loved and appreciated the people in the South, and I really gleaned from their willingness to help and serve other people, and all this kind of built up to where I was in 2012, which was in a job.

I enjoyed my job.

I was in the process of buying the company with my brother from my stepdad, and, you know, it was great.

I loved the people I worked with.

But there was just this hole in my life at the time.

I was struggling a little bit from my faith as well as trying to go through life with three kids, and, you know, I was coaching all sorts of sports.

I was doing what I thought was really fulfilling to me, but always felt like there was just this hole that was inside of me.

And I remember one day we went to church.

I was in the congregation I went to, I had a calling called Young Men's President, and so I served basically the boys ages 12 to 16.

I worked on their spiritual growth, but also the activity of the Young Men's program, well, which was basically Boy Scouts, and so I was a leader over all the Boy Scout leaders at the time.

Well, in our auxiliary meetings, they talked about this family that the church was helping, and it was a single, or not a single mom, but a mom that she drove bus for the school, and the dad was suffering from some illnesses that kept him from work, so they were just struggling.

In fact, they were in a section of my very, very small town that I had never even knew existed.

And they had a couple of kids and the church was helping 'em with food and rent and stuff like that.

But I found out that their kids didn't have any beds.

- [Nido] Didn't have any beds.

- No beds.

- So they slept on the floor.

- On the floor.

They had a couple blankets and pillows.

And my first thought was like, "Oh my gosh, is that even a thing?

Like certainly every kid's got a bed, right?"

And I don't know, it just, it stuck with me, and maybe because I was helping the kids and the youth, I was responsible for that.

- And you decided to provide beds.

Did you make the beds yourself?

- [Luke] Yeah.

- For this family, you made the beds.

- Correct.

- How did you make the beds?

You went to a lumberyard and bought lumber and- - Well, when I found out about the problem, I went to my Boy Scouts, right, and I said, "Hey, here's the problem," 'cause I said, "We're gonna take care of this."

And of course, I've never built a piece of furniture in my life, right?

But I thought, here's a great opportunity to take these young boys, get a Xbox controller outta their hands.

Let's put a drill in it and teach 'em something.

Now, I'd never built a bed before, but my daughter had slept in a bed that we bought many years ago, so I went back and measured it and figured it out and said, "Okay, I think I can do this."

And so I went to the store and bought the wood and brought these kids, and, you know, for two or three hours that week, we took these boys and built this bed.

- How do you make sure the bed is safe?

- Well, the construction of the bed was pretty unique in the fact that, you know, I copied one of the beds that we had, but I wanted to make sure it was, you know.

I didn't know what I was doing so I wanted to over-engineer it.

- Makes 'em sturdy, yeah, yeah.

- [Luke] To make it really sturdy.

- How much does it cost?

Now, of course, you have 300 plus chapters around the country.

You have some in North Carolina?

- Oh, quite a few, uh-huh.

- Quite a few in North Carolina, and these are people in groups who, what, raise money and make the beds and deliver it in their communities?

- Yep, when I built this bed, I not only found the joy of delivering a bed to a child that didn't have one, but I also found the joy and the need of the community wanting to find good service, good opportunities to volunteer.

I was shocked.

I remember an 84-year-old guy showed up one time to one of our builds where we take raw wood, and we run it through kind of like an assembly line, and at the end of it, we have our beds.

Well, I took this 85-year-old guy that was a carpenter his whole life and put him on the saw and four hours later, I kind of forgot about the guy [laughs] and showed up, and he was covered in dust, and I thought, "Oh my gosh.

I just killed this guy."

[laughs] But he was more happy.

- [Nido] And he loved it.

- Oh, he loved it.

And I quickly learned, you spend a Saturday, four hours on a Saturday to build beds.

I realized that the community really took after this and wanted it, and so all we did was provide a platform for people in other parts of their own town to do what we do, and that's how we do it.

- So now you've built 160,000 beds.

You have 300 chapters, 270,000 volunteers.

Where do you find them?

How do you get 'em?

- So, each chapter runs kind of independently.

They all operate under our 501[c][3].

But this was just gonna be a family Christmas project, right?

It never was gonna be- - But now it's a big thing.

- Right, right.

No anticipation or whatnot for it to be that, but it's what it turned into, and it turned there because of great men and women all across the country that wanted to provide the same service for their own hometown, and that service is, really, we have our chapter presence focused on three things, raising money, building beds, and delivering beds, those three.

- How does it cost you to build a bed?

- So each bed, we require a donation of $250 now.

- So someone gives you $250, and because you're using volunteers, you're able to deliver that bed to a child.

How do you find those children?

- So anybody can go to our website, shpbeds.org, and learn a lot about us.

You can gonna learn about us, learn about volunteer.

- [Nido] H?

- S-H-P Beds.

- Yeah, just like Sleep in Heavenly Peace.

- Bingo.

- It used to be sleepinheavenlypeace.org, but that was a huge... [laughs] - So shp.org?

- SHP Beds.

- Oh, shpbeds.org.

- Correct.

Yep.

So you can go on there and you can find your local chapter.

You can find events that we've got going on.

But the biggest thing is, is you can request a bed, and really the criteria is- - But how do they find out?

A child who's in need, how will that child find out that they can get a bed through you?

- This is the challenge.

When we first started- - You work through United Way, for example.

You work through local nonprofits, through school systems.

- We do, yeah.

A lot of school advisories or counselors, you know, a lot of the service providers- - They refer these families to you.

- Correct.

Yeah.

But I'd say most of our references come from either word of mouth or people see or hear something on a program like this, where they realize child bedlessness may not be a real word, but it's a real problem.

It's a problem our country that people don't even know existed.

- Now, we're not talking about homeless people, right?

- Correct.

No.

- [Nido] We're talking about people who are living in homes.

- Absolutely.

- And maybe the parent works, maybe they have one-parent household, but literally the kids don't have a bed to sleep on.

- That's right.

- So, this is very fascinating.

Do people just give you money and not want to volunteer, or are you obligated to volunteer?

- No, no.

Not at all.

- [Nido] You can do either or both.

- Correct.

You gotta remember, I'm a farm kid from Idaho, right?

I love to work, but I love to help and provide other people with the same opportunity.

- So when you provide the bed, is it just the frame?

Is it a pillow and a cover and a mattress?

- Correct.

So your $250 covers the whole gamut.

We wanna make sure when we deliver this bed to this child, and oftentimes they do, they can sleep in it right then.

So we provide the whole frame, mattress, bed, pillow, sheets, the quilts, the whole nine yards.

- I see, I see.

So that's fairly inexpensive to do all of that for $250.

- Typically, I mean, just mattresses today alone are well over $100, let alone sheet sets in the frame and all of that.

So they're normally around $500, and when you're a struggling family, where, you know, food, clothing, shelter, the three big ones, are something, a challenge, then beds become a luxury, and I just don't believe luxuries, a bed should be a luxury for a child nowadays.

- Yeah, well, I agree with you.

So explain to me the logistics of all this.

You have a central warehouse somewhere where you buy wood in large supply and beds in large supply and store it, and then deliver it to these chapters.

How do you do that?

- That sounds fabulous, but no.

Each chapter operates within its own self.

So we train them and the chapter presidents, where to find good opportunities.

Lowe's Home Improvement is our national sponsor, our largest national sponsor.

We work with their stores all over the country where chapter presidents can go in.

They buy their wood.

They either deliver it that day to the build site, and we're mobile so we can build in a parking lot.

Some chapters across the country have warehouses that they can build inside of, but they store their own beds.

The chapter president and their core team schedule deliveries.

They do it all themselves.

- So what is that you provide?

You provide a 501[c][3] where people can contribute money, and you provide guidance on how to build a bed?

Do you have like a video or instructions?

- Good question.

So if you were a person in your own hometown that would like to help the children in your hometown by building beds, providing, you know, the service we provide, we do a chapter president training.

So they come to Utah and we train them not just how to build beds, but really we're kind of training 'em how to run their own company, you know, 'cause we provide P&Ls, we provide insurance and programs and softwares and trainings.

- [Nido] You set them up.

- We do, you know, and I think it's really important.

Back in the day, again, like I said, I'm a farm kid from Idaho, right?

When I approached this in the light of being a nonprofit, which was never the intention, my first thought was, okay, I don't wanna be a big old nonprofit where people just donate their money to one place and they have no idea where it goes to.

I wanted to set it up to make sure that you, the donor, knows exactly where your dollar goes.

Not only that- - [Nido] In your community.

- That it stays in your community, right?

So we're very transparent.

- All of your chapters are in the US?

- No, we're actually in four different countries.

Canada, Bahamas, and Bermuda, and of course, the United States.

- I see.

How much does it...

I'm trying to figure out, it costs $200 to deliver the bed, but a family could have three children.

Will you give them three beds?

- Absolutely.

We've had some homes where we've delivered five bunk beds, which is 10 beds.

And really the only criteria is the child's age three to 17 and we can place the bed inside a home, and we've gotta be able to set it up.

We don't drop beds off.

We don't put 'em in a garage or a shed.

We have to put 'em in a room so that- - Where you know someone is actually using it.

- [Luke] Correct.

Yeah.

- Yeah.

What's your biggest challenge in this work?

- Oh, continual support to our chapters.

You know, when you look at it, and I've started and stopped many businesses, but each chapter in its own is almost like its own little business, almost like a franchise.

And to support those men and women that have taken that role of chapter presidency and all their core team, to provide them with better education, better support, you know, nonprofits, like any company, we operate within regulations, trying to make sure that all those chapters operate safely within regulations that we're required to follow is always a challenge, you know?

But really, it's really trying to support them so they can support our mission.

Our mission is no kid sleeps on the floor in our town, and we always say, we wanna make our town everybody's town, and there are some challenges doing that, but it's extremely rewarding.

- Mm-hm.

And you went to Idaho State and studied business, is that right?

- I did, uh-huh.

Yes.

- What was your very first business?

- Oh, great question.

[laughs] Well, when I got home from my mission, I went to work for my stepdad at a water treatment company.

And I remember my first business idea was water filtration.

I wanted to start this little reverse osmosis home residential reverse osmosis machine, which is back when there wasn't really around like they are today.

That was my first business venture that I went into.

It was fun for- - Did you sell that from door to door?

- That was our intention.

Yep.

Exactly.

It never really got off the ground.

But it wasn't until later on that I started, in line with water treatment I started a bacteria company where we sold bacteria to waste treatment facilities.

I started a property management company where we did storage for RVs and boats and things of that nature, you know, so.

- You're a small business guy.

You understood how to do that.

The biggest chapter you have would make how many beds in a year?

- So, we always view our chapters' success by not how many beds that they build, but just by how many people they get involved and... - How many people volunteer.

- Correct, but since you asked, one of our largest chapters, they build about 2,000 beds a year.

- Really?

- Yeah, but our average chapter builds between 100 and 200 beds a year.

- Really?

That many.

How long does it take to construct a bed?

- So when a chapter president organizes a build date, and our build date coming up, we have a national build date called Bunks Across America, and each chapter, they can build whenever they want when they have the donation sponsored by a corporation or whatnot.

Each chapter will set up a build, and again, we start from raw lumber and we push it through this assembly line, and at the end of the assembly line, you have pieces to create a single twin bed.

- So how many people does it take to build a bed, this assembly line?

- It's the beauty of way we do things is we can take 10 or 200.

- But you have to have at least 10.

- Oh yeah.

You know, you could do it less.

It just takes you a lot longer, right?

But we've had some builds where there's multiple chapters there, six or seven chapters, and we can build a bed from start to finish in 32 seconds.

- 32 seconds?

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- Wow.

- Yeah, we build 400.

The most we've ever done in one day is 412 beds at a Lowe's event.

We had about 450 volunteers, seven chapters, and we built, it was like 31.7 seconds for a bed.

- So they raise the money locally, and then they use that money to go buy the blanket and the sheets.

You don't do like a wholesale efficiency program where you buy 5,000 mattresses at one time.

- Sure.

We have our sponsors and other organizations that we partner with.

I lived in Twin Falls, Idaho, right?

So when we started getting bigger, we had a lot of the opportunity to go and say, "Hey, we need 5,000 mattresses."

So this bulk buying discounts really helped us.

The challenge we faced then was, well, now we have chapters- - [Nido] Warehousing.

- Well, warehousing, yeah.

We had chapters all across the country.

We didn't have money for a warehouse and shipping.

- [Nido] You have to ship.

- Shipping to Miami from Twin Falls, Idaho, is not smart, so I moved out here to Mooresville, North Carolina, which is pretty central, and we acquired a 12,500-square-foot warehouse and now we ship, 85% of our mattresses are here on the East coast 'cause 85% of our chapters are over here, so we ship, you know, that 40,000, 50,000 beds that we do a year, we ship mostly out of the East here.

- I see.

How do you support yourself in the organization?

They raise the money, they spend it on making the bed very affordable.

$250 all in.

But you have an organization.

You have an overhead.

You have to live.

You have a family.

How do you do that?

- That's a great question.

You know, people have this misconception about non-profits.

Well, non-profits, the only difference between a for-profit and a non-profit is I don't have to pay taxes [laughs] for the organization.

But we still have to run it like a business, and I think that's where some of the benefits I provide it is being entrepreneurial.

You know, you have to think of it and look at it as a business.

Well, from the very beginning, again, I wanted to make sure each chapter and the people that donate money knows that that money goes to the chapter, but we have to pay for overhead.

We gotta pay for insurances, we gotta pay for registrations, all this.

So we take a flat 10%.

So, simply put is our overhead or our managerial expenses are 10% that we pull from a donor.

I wanted the little old lady who donated $100 to the local chapter knows that $90 of their $100 stays in her community.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

Which is a good national average.

I mean, usually nonprofits are measured by how much overhead comes out of the donation.

- In 2014, Forbes Magazine did a brief article on managerial or management versus program expenses, and the national average was 32%.

- [Nido] Really?

- Yeah.

The national average was 32%.

28% was what the public felt was fair in this survey.

We always wanted to operate less than 20%.

On GuideStar charity watchdog, some of these national charity organizations, to get like the highest transparency, highest rating, you need to have less than 20% managerial.

- So you have a significant budget for the organization, right?

- [Luke] Yeah.

- Roughly 160,000 beds multiplied by $25.

That would be your budget, effectively.

- Pretty close, yeah.

- And you can pay for the warehousing and all of that stuff from it.

So this is not just the philanthropic work, but this has a sense of stewardship to it.

You were moved by the fact that somebody had a need and you stepped up and stepped out to help that need happen, and I suspect that the greatest part of your work is the fulfillment these volunteers feel by actually making something and seeing a family benefit from it in a meaningful way.

I'm touched by the fact that 85% of your work is on the East Coast.

I wonder how much of that is in North Carolina.

- You know, it's a good question.

We probably have around 12 chapters in North Carolina, 10 or 12 chapters.

We grow pretty rapidly.

We grow about 60 chapters a year over the last four years.

So we operate just north of 360 chapters right now.

Some are active, some aren't, but we grow pretty rapidly, and most of it, probably because of density and population here on the East Coast, is where a lot of our chapters grow from.

And being in the South, very religious, although we're not necessarily tied to any religion or religious organization, we know most of the people that volunteer their time come from a very religious background and inspired from that.

- And you're saying 2.2 million children in America under the age of 18 do not have a bed.

- It's actually, the percentage, and there's really no statistic doctor about how big the problem of child bedlessness is, at least not national statistics.

The only one we have is kind of what we've put together over the last 11 years, and it's 3% of the total population.

So if you're in a town of 100,000 people, there's 3,000 plus, 3,000 kids that are sleeping either on the floor, on a couch, multiple kids in multiple beds, or with their parents.

- Yeah, yeah.

- [Luke] They don't have a bed of their own.

- Does the federal government or state government get involved at all?

- You know, that's a great question.

The answer is right now, no.

Only because I don't think they know how big the problem is.

I mean, if we as the public haven't recognized it, I mean, I didn't have any idea, and most of our chapter presidents, when they first hear about it, have no idea that child bedlessness is an issue.

Of course, the government wouldn't know either.

We've been able to rattle some trees and knock a couple of fruit down where we have some agencies, Florida, Michigan, some of these states that are starting to recognize that this is a real need.

And so we hope to shout a little louder and hopefully get some help there, 'cause, you know, building beds for kids is honorable, I think.

But aside from all that, it's a great need for our children.

You know, if kids, there's a lot of statistics, a lot of studies been done about lack of sleep in adolescence and the development of, you know, early autism or social anxiety or things of that nature, a lot of health benefits that come from having good night's sleep, and just, and we've seen kids thrive, their confidence level, their ability to communicate their moods, and behaviors not just at home, but in school when it comes from not just a good night's sleep, but the ability to have ownership of something.

- [Nido] A feeling of peace and family and love.

- Absolutely.

- Luke, you are helping a lot of people sleep in heavenly peace.

I hope you sleep in heavenly peace.

It's a wonderful program you have, and I thank you for being with me on "Side by Side."

- [Luke] Thank you.

[pleasant music] - [Announcer] Funding for "Side by Side" with Nido Qubein is made possible by... - [Advertiser] We started small, just 30 people in a small town in Wisconsin.

75 years later, we employ more Americans than any other furniture brand, but none of that would've been possible without you.

Ashley, this is home.

- [Advertiser] For 60 years, the Budd Group has been a company of excellence, providing facility services to customers, opportunities for employees, and support to our communities.

The Budd Group, great people, smart service.

- [Advertiser] Coca-Cola Consolidated is honored to make and serve 300 brands and flavors locally, thanks to our teammates.

We are Coca-Cola Consolidated, your local bottler.