A national network of funders supporting strategic, innovative, and effective solutions to homelessness

2016 Funders Institute

On Monday, July 25th, 2016, Funders Together to End Homelessness hosted its 4th annual Funders Institute. This event brought together funders from across the country working in their communities and nationally to prevent and end homelessness. 2016's Institute focused on what’s next for philanthropy in the field and moving from conversation to action.

 View the Agenda and Event Resources

This brought together members and guests to address emerging issues in our field and the role of philanthropy as risk takers and social justice leaders. We addresses and discussed issues that effect our efforts to end homelessness and specifically identified ways philanthropy can have a strategic impact.

We discussed such questions as: how do we carry our momentum from the Obama Administration to the next administration? In addition, how is homelessness related to the equity discussion happening in our country? As funders, what can we do to address these concerns both internally in our own organizations and externally with the individuals we serve?

We joined Funders Together because we believe in the power of philanthropy to play a major role in ending homelessness, and we know we have much to learn from funders across the country.

-Christine Marge, Director of Housing and Financial Stability at United Way of Greater Los Angeles

I am thankful for the local partnerships here in the Pacific Northwest that we’ve been able to create and nurture thanks to the work of Funders Together. Having so many of the right players at the table makes our conversations – and all of our efforts – all the richer and more effective.

-David Wertheimer, Deputy Director at Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation

Very often a lack of jobs and money is not the cause of poverty, but the symptom. The cause may lie deeper in our failure to give our fellow citizens a fair chance to develop their own capacities, in a lack of education and training, in a lack of medical care and housing, in a lack of decent communities in which to live and bring up their children.

-President Lyndon B. Johnson, 1964 State of the Union Address

Funders Together has given me a platform to engage the other funders in my community. Our local funding community has improved greatly to support housing first models and align of resources towards ending homelessness.

-Leslie Strnisha, Vice President at Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland

Our family foundation convenes local funders and key community stakeholders around strategies to end homelessness in Houston. Funders Together members have been invaluable mentors to us in this effort, traveling to our community to share their expertise and examples of best practices from around the nation.

-Nancy Frees Fountain, Managing Director at The Frees Foundation


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