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

Group Agreements

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As a group, we came up with the following group agreements to create a brave, open, and honest space for us to show up authentically and support one another.

Showing Up as an Individual

  • Bring your whole person 
  • Be present 
  • Acknowledge your privilege
  • Respectful disagreement is okay
  • Be accountable to the group
  • Be an ally 
  • Lean into discomfort for the sake of learning 
  • Have fun 

Creating a Brave and Bold Space

  • Honor confidentiality 
  • Provide background on group connections (when necessary)  
  • Ask permission before sharing stories that were told in small group conversations with the larger group
  • Assume best intent and address impact
  • First draft; oops, ouch, & snaps
  • Tolerate failures 
  • Don't yuck my yum

Being an Engaged Participant

  • Step up and step back 
  • Land the plane (make your point and allow time and space for others to speak) 
  • One diva, one mic 
  • Listen actively 
  • Ask hard questions 

How do these group norms change based on people's race, ethnicity, socioeconomic status, and backgrounds?

 

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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