Alicia Bell | GraceWorks Ministries
CEO of GraceWorks Ministries
Alicia Bell is the CEO of GraceWorks Ministries, a nonprofit serving thousands of neighbors each year with food, shelter, and support. She shares how GraceWorks grew from a collection of small community efforts into a unified movement grounded in faith and service.
The Challenge
When Alicia Bell stepped into leadership at GraceWorks Ministries, she inherited a 30-year-old nonprofit serving thousands across Williamson County. But with that legacy came modern challenges: How do you scale compassion? How do you build systems that serve more people without losing heart?
The Approach
Alicia led with humility and vision. She listened first—learning the organization’s ins and outs—then focused on scaling smart. Her mindset? Growth is necessary, but only when it makes space for others to thrive. She emphasized structure, systems, and servant leadership to unlock her team’s full potential.
What It Takes to Lead Well
For Alicia, effective leadership is rooted in clarity and trust. Whether nonprofit or for-profit, it’s about knowing who you serve and why it matters. Her advice: Build strong systems, trust your people, and stay mission-driven—even as you scale.
“ I do think that leaders who thrive earlier in their career, are leaders who trust and delegate. You need to know your organization as much as possible. You need to be in the details. You need to be present for every role. ”
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I am Alicia Bell, and I'm the CEO at GraceWorks Ministries. So Grace Works is a nonprofit community resource center where we provide food, shelter, and support for nearly 15,000 neighbors every year. So Grace Works was founded out of an organic need for unity. And so back in 1994 in a small town in Franklin, Tennessee, there were a lot of big hearts scattered throughout the community, trying to do small efforts here and there, a small food pantry, a small housing fund, um, a small closed closet.
And so it's a beautiful thing, but. What is incredible about our founding is that from all those small efforts tucked into different denominations, so different faith traditions, um, different reasons to maybe not come together, there was a spirit of unity that called all of these folks to come together and say, Hey, no matter what our differences are, we do agree that we're gonna love God and we're gonna love our neighbor.
And so we pooled all those resources together and created. Grace works. Growth and scalability in the nonprofit sector is unique. You face different challenges because people expect for for-profit organizations to grow and scale. That's how you survive. And the truth is that's the same for nonprofit.
Profits, key leadership skills that you need. The first and probably most important is to listen. To sit, to sit down, listen, evaluate, um, and strategize with as much information that you can gather. I do think that leaders who thrive. Earlier in their career, our leaders who trust and delegate, you need to know your organization as much as possible.
You need to be in the details. You need to be present for every role, but at the same time have that balance of stepping back and trusting and delegating. Some of the advice too that I've held really closely during my first year. Is the organization will only be as big thinking as its leader, right? So that's just always kept to push me of, you know, I know that there are team members here that are smarter than me in a lot of things, so I need to make sure that I just stay big enough, right?
And I make sure that our boundaries are broad enough for them to. Be as strong and as amazing as they are in their area. Grace Works Mission is neighbors serving neighbors by the power of God's grace. So we really do posture ourselves to welcome anybody who wants to be involved, to love their neighbor and make an impact on their community.
You can do that through donating your time. We have 350 regular volunteers and 70 team members here. So we love volunteers. You can do that by donating your resources, and you can also do that by donating your stuff. So this store that I'm sitting in here, it actually completely pays for our overhead plus some programming.
And so when you donate to Grace Works Ministries, you are truly making an intense impact on your community. So if you're a neighbor that's needing some of our food, shelter support services, just go to Grace Works. Help. And you can find all kinds of information there in multiple languages, or you're welcome to call us too at (615) 794-9055 and we'll get you started.
Why We Share These Stories
We believe that celebrating Tennessee’s entrepreneurs will inspire the next generation of bold thinkers, risk-takers, and community builders. Entrepreneurs don’t forget where they come from—and they carry the power to transform not just their businesses, but entire neighborhoods, towns, and local economies. See more entrepreneur stories from the Patton Foundation.
