The University of Alabama School of Law Profiles in Service Series
Millard Dean Fuller
Millard Fuller, a 1960 graduate of the University of Alabama School of Law, co-founded one of the most well-known and successful nonprofit Christian organizations in the world, Habitat for Humanity International.
Fuller, who received his undergraduate degree from Auburn University, began his legal and business career in pursuit of monetary success – but after becoming a millionaire at the age of 29, he drastically changed directions and set out down a different path. Fuller and his wife, Linda, gave their possessions away to charity and began working with Dr. Clarence Jordan at Koinonia Farm, a Christian community near Americus, Georgia. The Fullers helped to initiate projects to aid the poor. One focused on affordable housing. Modest homes were built primarily by volunteers on a nonprofit basis and sold to low-income families, who paid no interest on the mortgages. The families were expected to invest their own “sweat equity” by helping to build their own homes and the homes of other families. This model became the basis for the Fullers’ founding of Habitat for Humanity in 1976. By 2005, 200,000 homes had been built for a million people in 90 countries. That same year, Fuller founded a similar housing ministry, The Fuller Center for Housing.
Fuller earned dozens of prestigious awards during his lifetime, including the Martin Luther King, Jr., Humanitarian Award, Professional Builder magazine’s Builder of the Year Award, the Bronze Medallion from the Points of Light Foundation, and the Presidential Medal of Freedom, the nation’s highest civilian honor. In bestowing this award, former President Bill Clinton called Habitat “…the most successful continuous community service project in the history of the United States.”
Fuller passed away suddenly in February 2009 at 74. The University of Alabama School of Law is proud to count Millard Fuller among our most distinguished alumni.