How the Visible Fund turned six weeks and $30,000 into a home for a divided town
The team in Bulgaria had six weeks to come up with $30,000.
Margie and her husband Keith are both teachers, and for years they have worked alongside local leaders in Tulovo, a small town where Roma and Bulgarian families live side by side but rarely sit at the same table. When they first arrived, they noticed the young people. Teenagers weren't finishing high school. They saw no future beyond field work. They had stopped dreaming. So the team started there.
They needed a place to do that work every day, not once a week. Just before COVID, they began renting an abandoned building in the center of town, and with the help of the youth they named it The Gathering Place. It became the spot where kids and teens were welcome - especially Roma kids, who are rarely welcome anywhere - and where they began to discover that God had given them gifts worth sharing with their community.
The building needed a lot of work, and the owners weren't going to fund it. So Margie wrote them a letter: if you ever decide to sell, give us the first chance. About a year and a half later, driving in her car, she got the call. They were ready to sell, and she had first opportunity.
“I remember saying yes. And then as I hung up the phone I thought, ‘Now where is that money going to come from?’”
The math was hard. Margie's supporters come largely from a farming community - generous people, but no one could fund a $30,000 need in under 6 weeks. One longtime supporter, who had urged her from the beginning to buy rather than rent, stepped up with the down payment. That still left a gap - and a deadline. As an American living abroad, she had no access to local financing.
This is a moment we see again and again in communities around the world. The local leaders are ready. The opportunity is real. It's clear that God is moving. And money is the last barrier standing between a team on the ground and lasting change in their community.
That's why One Collective created the Visible Fund.
What is the Visible Fund?
The Visible Fund is One Collective's impact fund. It puts charitable giving to work the way an investor would - backing Christ-centered social enterprises led by trusted local leaders in some of the hardest places in the world. Each venture is evaluated for sustainability and long-term community impact, and as investments are repaid, the same dollars are recycled into the next one.
A dollar given today can support ministry for years to come - reducing dependence on donations and empowering local leaders to shape their own futures.
Fund impact snapshot since establishment in 2020:
“The Visible Fund was a really crucial part of the whole process. It gave the people we’re working with confidence - knowing our organization is behind us, participating in a very tangible way. And the fact that we’re repaying it - it’s a partnership.”
The Gathering Place wasn’t a typical Visible Fund investment - a building, not a social enterprise. Still, the logic was the same: bridge the gap with a clear plan for repayment, so the money could go on to serve other communities.
Margie made the purchase. Then she did what she said she would do. Over the next few years, through year-end campaigns, monthly prayer meetings, and a steady stream of videos and updates, her supporters gave what they could, and the Fund was repaid in full.
Local people gave too - mostly in time, skills, and sweat. Teenagers worked on the building alongside the adults. “I think that’s always important,” Margie says, “when the local people are contributing.”
Students from Tulovo
A street from the Roma Community in Tulovo
So what has changed? The interior has been renovated room by room, most recently the kitchen - which matters more than it sounds. In a town still divided along ethnic lines, hospitality is the work. The Gathering Place now hosts community meals and “community coffees” where Roma and Bulgarian neighbors of every generation sit down together and talk. And the young people who once saw nothing ahead of them are now pitching micro-business ideas for how the building could become a hub for small enterprise in Tulovo.
Margie's supporters would have raised that $30,000 on their own. They just didn't have six weeks. That is exactly the gap the Visible Fund exists to close - and because Tulovo paid it back, those same dollars are already at work creating change in our world.
Listen to the full conversation
In this 18-minute conversation, Margie sits down with Michael Proctor to tell the whole story: arriving in Tulovo, the teenagers who had stopped dreaming, the letter to the building's owners, the phone call and the six-week scramble, how the Visible Fund bridge worked and was repaid, and what The Gathering Place has become for Roma and Bulgarian neighbors alike.
Margie on the Visible Fund · 18 min
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