In July at the 2018 Funders Institute, attendees gathered to share what they are learning about homelessness prevention, including what it is and how to work effectively with other systems to really end homelessness. The highly interactive day included a panel discussion, speed networking on what we’re each learning in our work, roundtable discussions, and opportunity to connect with multiple national leaders.

A priority of Funders Together to End Homelessness is to engage philanthropy in addressing racial disparities in housing and homelessness and advancing racial equity.  As part of ongoing effort to provide support and programming on equity, we've compiled resources that can aid funders in starting and continuing the conversation around this topic in your work. We will be updating this page with timely resources as they become available, so be sure to check back often!

Upcoming Learning Opportunities

2019 Funders Institute
July 22-24, 2019 | Washington, D.C.

Held in conjunction with the National Alliance to End Homelessness’s National Conference on Ending Homelessness, the Funders Institute will focus on advancing racial equity by removing barriers at the grassroots level, next steps for funders that have been engaged in racial equity work, keeping homelessness and housing stability at the center of upcoming political events by working with Congressional leaders, and how to support grantees and communities in addressing racial disparities. 

For more information or to register, visit the 2019 Funders Institute page.

Funders Together Resources

Learning Series and Webinars

Race Matters Institute Webinars 1-2 Debrief
Funders Together has been hosting a four-part webinar series, led by Race Matters Institute, that covers a range of tools for understanding the history of racial inequity in homelessness, conducting a racial equity impact analysis, and developing strategies to advance racial equity in your organization. In this video, Stephanie Chan, Director of Membership and Programs, provides a debrief of the first two webinars in the series.

SPARC Phase One Study Findings
In this webinar, Marc Dones and Jeff Olivet provided an overview of the findings from the Phase One Study released in March 2018 and shared what they mean for the field of homelessness.  

Blog Posts

Trust Building and the Process of Learning: Reflections from the Foundations for Racial Equity March Convening
On March 6-8, twenty-five funders from across the United States and Canada gathered in Portland, OR to kick off Foundations for Racial Equity (FRE), our two-year community of practice for funders who want to undo structural racism to end homelessness. We came together to learn and share resources on racial equity work in our organizations and communities, identify collective action steps, and build relationships and trust with each other.  

Prioritizing Racial Equity Through Experiential Learning
In the summer of 2018 the Butler Family Fund board and staff along with other Butler family members, traveled to Alabama to take their racial equity learning from behind conference room walls to an on-location “classroom” filled with the most qualified teachers – those with lived experience. Funders Together spoke to Martha Toll, Executive Director, and Anne Morin, Program Officer, about the events leading up to the trip, their experience and reactions, and how other foundations can incorporate immersive learning to further their racial equity journey.

2018 Funders Institute: Reflections From The Day
In July at the 2018 Funders Institute, attendees gathered to share what they are learning about homelessness prevention, including what it is and how to work effectively with other systems to really end homelessness. The highly interactive day included a panel discussion, speed networking on what we’re each learning in our work, roundtable discussions, and opportunity to connect with multiple national leaders.

What Funders Are Saying About Racial Equity and Homelessness
On February 7-8, 2018, the Racial Equity and Homelessness Summit convened to address the connection between racial inequity and homelessness with attendees from across the country. Kollin Min, Senior Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, who co-sponsored the convening with the Raikes Foundation, recaps the highlights of the two-day event and funders who were present share their thoughts, takeaways, and responses to what they learned at the summit.

CEO Reflections II: When Should Philanthropy Lead From Behind?
“How should we respond?” Funders Together CEO, Amanda Andere, asks the question of philanthropy in light of the tragic events in both Charlottesville and Texas in 2017.

An Equity-Based Approach to Fighting Homelessness
What does it mean for philanthropy to make a commitment to equity and its intersection with homelessness? Rosa Benitez of the Weingart Foundation dives in to how her foundation has been answering this question head on.

Why We Must Address Racial Inequity In Our Efforts To End Homelessness
Why is Funders Together to End Homelessness addressing racial inequity? Our CEO, Amanda Andere, explains how philanthropy's involvement in focusing on the structural issues that cause racial inequity can create a path to truly making sure homelessness is rare, brief, and one-time.

Member Resources

Reports, Guides, and Toolkits

Race Equity and Inclusion Action Guide
One way to achieve social change in an organization is to incorporate race equity and inclusion at every stage of work. The seven steps in this guide, from the Annie E. Casey Foundation, provide a clear framework for undertaking this important work. This tool adds to the resources already created by partners who have been working in the field.

New Resources Help Organizations Advance Race Equity at Every Step
The Annie E. Casey Foundation’s seven-step guide, Race Equity and Inclusion Action Guide, aims to help organizations advance race equity and eliminate systemic barriers en route to improving the lives of children and families. Now, in partnership with several leaders in race equity, the Foundation has created and compiled a new set of resources focused on helping social-sector organizations navigate every step of this seven-part journey.

Report and Recommendations of the Ad Hoc Committee on Black People Experiencing Homelessness

Blog Posts and News Articles

Meyer Memorial Trust: A Commitment to Equity Starts With Training

Raikes Foundation: The Power of Equity

Partner Resources

Reports, Guides, and Toolkits 

Supporting Partnerships for Anti-Racist Communities (SPARC) Phase One Study Findings
New research from SPARC documents that people of color are dramatically more likely than White people to experience homelessness in the US. The message is clear: to end homelessness, we must confront structural racism. The report offers strategies for organizational leaders, researchers, policymakers, and community members.

Why We Need to Talk About Racism and Family Homelessness
This Powerpoint from the Center for Social Innovation provides important background and data on the connection between racism and homelessness.

Integrating Racial Equity in Foundations, Governance, Operations, and Program Strategy
This paper from the Consumer Health Foundation provides an excellent overview of framework for organizing racial equity efforts within philanthropy.

The Road to Achieving Equity: Findings and Lessons from a Field Scan of Foundations That Are Embracing Equity as a Primary Focus
This report from Putnam-Consulting Group and Robert Wood Johnson Foundation provides a look at some of the efforts leading foundations are making, as well as the challenges they face. Based on interviews with 30 foundation leaders, this report explores the ways in which foundations are applying principles of equity within their own operations - from grantmaking, to investments, to human resources.

King County Youth of Color Needs Assessment

Learning Series and Webinars

Putting Racism on the Table
In 2016, WRAG launched Putting Racism on the Table, a learning series for philanthropy. The series, from January - June 2016, convened philanthropic CEOs and trustees to learn from experts on the many aspects of racism, including structural racism, white privilege, implicit bias, mass incarceration, and the racial mosaic of this country. 

Resources from the series are available on the WRAG website. 

Putting Grantees at the Center of Philanthropy
This series from the Stanford Social Innovation Review, in partnership with Grantmakers for Effective Organizations, focuses on grantee inclusion and provides perspective from both the philanthropic and grantee view on why and how making grantees the center of philanthropy can advance initiatives and help them succeed.

Blog Posts and News Articles

Homelessness, Racism, and Social Justice
Jeff Olivet, Center for Social Innovation, examines the connection between homelessness, racism, and social justice in this Huffington Post blog post.

Embracing Discomfort
Kathleen Enright, former President and CEO of Grantmakers for Effective Organizations explains why having conversations around racial equity is critical and will require us to be vulnerable if philanthropy is to succeed in addressing race and making positive changes in their communities.

Bolder grantmaking: Integrating Racial Equity Impact Assessments in requests for proposals
This blog from the Consumer Health Foundation focuses on the Foundation's revisiting of grantmaking protocols and a new practice to ensure that its investments are truly impacting communities of color.

How Philanthropy Can Work to Give All Black Men an Opportunity to Succeed

Other Resources

Center for Social Innovation SPARC Initiative
SPARC is an initiative of the Center for Social Innovation in partnership with The Bassuk Center on Homeless and Vulnerable Children & Youth. With support from the Oak Foundation and others, the SPARC team is launching a multi-city initiative to conduct qualitative and quantitative research, hold public discussions and forums, train providers and activists, and collaborate with leadership in systems of housing, health care, education, and criminal justice.

Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity
The Philanthropic Initiative for Racial Equity provides publications, resources, and programming that can aid as you look to advance racial equity through your foundation. The goal of the initiative is to "increase the amount and effectiveness of resources aimed at combating institutional and structural racism in communities through capacity building, education, and convening of grantmakers and grantseekers."

Unite4Equity
Unite4Equity is a Change Philanthropy campaign focused on promoting equity in philanthropy as an investment of social and financial resources in policies, practices, and actions that produce equitable access, power, and outcomes for all communities.

Grantmakers for Effective Organizations Equity Statement

On February 7 and 8, the Racial Equity and Homelessness Summit convened to address the connection between racial inequity and homelessness with attendees from across the country.

Kollin Min, Senior Program Officer at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, who co-sponsored the convening with the Raikes Foundation, recaps the highlights of the two-day event and funders who were present share their thoughts, takeaways, and responses to what they learned at the summit.

I was recently asked what was the most meaningful part of my work with Funders Together. Without hesitation, I answered with what I reflect on daily: I am blessed to be among people who tirelessly work for their community, our country, and, most importantly, people they may never meet; because they believe ending homelessness is imperative to our humanity. That housing is not only a basic right, it is the pathway to opportunity.

November 2017

At Funders Together, we make it a goal to share the work of funders across the country so you can learn what's working and adapt these strategies to your own community. One way we do that is through our Featured Members. Some are featured because of their innovative grantmaking. Others are featured because they are making connections and bringing new people into the conversation about ending and preventing homelessness. Still others are featured because they are challenging the very systems that allow homelessness to persist. In each case, our Featured Members are an integral part of the solution to homelessness.

The Meyer Memorial Trust works to dismantle barriers to equity in education, housing, and the environment and to improve community conditions so that all Oregonians can reach their full potential. We spoke with Elisa Harrigan, Affordable Housing Initiative Program Officer, about Meyer’s focus on homelessness and dedication to equity. 

1. We appreciate you taking the time to talk to us. Could you explain a little bit about what Meyer Memorial Trust does and in what capacity it is involved in homelessness issues? How did Meyer go about making this a priority?

Meyer Memorial Trust is a private foundation established in 1982 by profits from the sale of Fred G. Meyer’s eponymous chain of retail stores. We are currently the third largest foundation in Oregon, with over $700 million in grants and program investments.

Meyer was founded as a generalist foundation, where an organization could request funds based on what was needed and when they were ready to submit a request. Then, a few years ago, we went through a strategic redesign that was informed by our equity journey. We decided that, in order to have impact in Oregon and to see that all Oregonians have equitable access to needs being met, we had to rethink our grantmaking strategy.

From this journey, we established four portfolio areas:

• Building Community
• Equitable Education
• Healthy Environment
• Housing Opportunities

While we had already focused shifted funding towards these areas, our strategic planning officially named these and allowed us to concentrate our grantmaking where it was needed most, communities impacted by inequities.

Our homelessness grants primarily fall under our Housing Opportunities portfolio. About a dozen years ago, our trustees noticed an increase in applications related to housing and homelessness. While this was an issue Meyer has always funded, it was decided that Meyer needed to take a deeper dive into housing and study best practices in the field to understand how to address this effectively and efficiently.

Even though many public and private funders were supporting a variety of efforts, as a community, we were just holding the line - homelessness was still increasing.

We created the Affordable Housing Initiative to create a deeper impact by exploring innovation, systems change, and leveraging resources to meet housing needs across the state. The first five years went well: we discovered that we could be more effective with dedicated staff with significant affordable housing experience to build better relationships within the field to truly move the needle on affordable housing. We talked with key community partners to inform us on how to move forward. These implementations allowed us to examine what it was going to take for each project to drive innovation, come up with emerging best practices, and evaluate strategies that will allow us to keep up with the market and current environment.

We are currently finishing up our second round of the initiative which included $15 million, dedicated over five years. The current funding strategies for the initiative include demonstration and pilot projects working on: preservation of at-risk, project-based Section 8 properties; rent-restricted portfolio strengthening; manufactured housing park coops and repair programs; development cost containment; leveraging private market units; and systems alignment, advocacy, and investments using our corpus.

We plan to continue to forge ahead with this work, as our trustees are extremely passionate about this issue. They are deeply involved and aware of what is going on in their own communities and are incredibly supportive of staff taking the lead to look at how we can make an impact to address housing needs, eviction prevention, homelessness reduction, and how to provide support through the housing continuum from the rental sphere to transitioning out of homelessness.

2. On your website, you call out Capacity as a grantmaking area under the Housing Opportunities priority. Can you expand on why this is important and some ways you’ve supported capacity building for your grantees?

In philanthropy, it is considered a best practice to provide funds for capacity. This is something we believe in and want to provide support towards. We believe organizations needs to be able to grow and strengthen their internal capacity and systems in order to effectively carry out the programs. If the opportunity is there to support in this way, it makes sense for us to provide that opportunity.

Our capacity building grants range from smaller grants ($5,000 to 10,000) or they can be around $150,000 over two to three years. Focusing in this space can be tricky, but it is important work! We are hands on in working with organizations on what they really need and our program staff are very engaged to help structure a plan around actually building capacity. We ask our grantees to have a sustainability plan; often we structure our funds in a way that they are scaled down in order to emphasize the importance of creating sustainable programs.

We also find capacity building extremely important in diversity, equity, and inclusion work. For organizations that want to include this work internally, we encourage them to come to us for funding towards training and creating policy, manuals, and/or guidelines around it. It is particularly important for organizations focused on housing stability, as they need to provide and plan for changing demographics among their communities, and being responsive to that gives the best opportunity to reach populations who are most vulnerable. Using this equity lens provides better services, furthering reach of populations, and restructuring of organizations to accommodate for changing communities.

One example of a recent grantee included an organization focused on supporting seniors to transition from homelessness into stable, safe, and affordable housing or to prevent homelessness due to fast-rising rents. This organization came to us for capacity building to expand their successful program to be culturally competent and accessible to communities of color. They were finding that, although they were successful, their open-door approach to just serve who comes in the door was not serving as many Latinx, African American, and Native American people whose needs in this space were not being adequately addressed given the statistics of poverty and homelessness. Funds toward capacity building will allow the organization to serve these populations better by expanding the program and staff to make sure needs are being met with targeted approaches and cultural competency training. The program will need to grow, and then the organization will need to work to sustain the growth.

3. Meyer has also prioritized addressing equity in its grantmaking (which we applaud!). Let’s talk about the journey to making this a priority and how it is weaved into your homelessness grantmaking.

Around 2000, several local culturally-specific organizations put together a report that found that philanthropy wasn’t funding equitably. The percentage of dollars that were being awarded to culturally-responsive organizations were far less than where it should it. It was our job as a funder to first acknowledge this truth and then confront it.

We had always been a generalist funder with an “open door policy”, where any organization could come to us with a need and we would evaluate it, then provide the funds. But this report caused us to think about how we are doing our grantmaking and its alignment with promoting our mission, which actually has “equitable” in it. It was (and is) important for us to be living our mission, so it was time to be more active in addressing equity.

We knew we needed to start by asking organizations to tell us more about the demographic makeup of their internal structures and what policies were in place to address equity. But we also acknowledged that we needed to do this at Meyer first as part of our commitment to actively live our mission.

We went through a series of internal equity training sessions and retreats to learn about history and how it applies to our work. We also created an equity committee, as well as sub-committees that each address certain topics that allow staff to focus on different areas within the equity space. Today, our annual evaluations include a component where we evaluate ourselves on a variety of activities we engage in that are equity based.

We also get together as a group to watch short films around equity and inclusion, then talk about the topic and how we can bring it into our work. In addition, guest speakers are a large part of our learning journey as it gives us a different perspective. All of this is part of a process of making our environment as inclusive as possible.

It is important to stress that these learning opportunities are not an “add on” to our day-to-day work, it is our day-to-day work.

We are still on our equity journey and have a long way to go. But we are committed to moving forward. We are currently updating our equity statement and looking at our makeup as a foundation through a demographic survey. In fact, our staffing looks very different than it did even a few years ago. Before, it was predominately white, middle aged, and middle to upper class with higher educations. Now, we have a mix of both ethnicity and race, a broader range of ages, people from different walks of life, some staff with families with children and some without, etc. We’ve created new positions at the leadership level and hired excellent people of color, which has had a profound result as more people of color have wanted to apply for other positions at Meyer. There are multiple layers to the hiring process that are now addressed and the foundation looks different because of that, which allows us to have a different perspective in our grantmaking.

As for our grantmaking, it made sense that all four portfolio areas needed to have an equity lens. We had to ask ourselves if we were hitting the geographical spread we wanted. What about demographics or communities? What are the organizations we are funding that have a commitment to equity already? How are we spread across the area such as rural versus urban?

We are in our second year of this new funding strategy, and it can be tough because there are some organizations that we have funded for years that are no longer a proper fit because of this lens, but we are also seeing the opportunity to fund other organizations increase, including organizations led by marginalized communities and people impacted by the issues they are working to change.

Within our Affordable Housing Initiative, we were encouraged to apply and explore an equity lens outside of our regular grantmaking. We took some risks and experimented – some have gone well, some have not. We found there to be confusion among grantees around what it meant to actually address equity. The first couple of years, we asked about equity policies and/or practices and almost all of the applications came back saying that they followed fair housing laws, which isn’t equity, but these organizations considered it to be just that.

We knew we had work to do to. We did a lot of work within the field to explain what we were looking for and provided examples of organizations that were applying equity to their practices. While we are flexible about where organizations can be with their equity work, we need them to be on the spectrum, and that meant we needed to educate them about what that meant and provide funding for them to work on creating and applying an equity lens.

4. Are there any specific steps you took that you would recommend to other foundations looking to get into this work?

If your foundation is looking to address equity and inclusion, the best thing to do is just to get started! I know that is easier said than done, but you have to have the hard conversation about where your funding is going. Philanthropy needs to look at the geographical scope of the communities we fund.

It isn’t just about diversity. You need to figure out what makes the most sense for your foundation and just because you increase your diversity internally, it doesn’t mean that it is inclusive or there is true equity. But, you have to start somewhere and these hard conversations help us think about different ways to do our work better. There are a lot of mistakes that are made, but it is important to keep moving forward and take risks. We feel that we can already see the impact we have had on Meyer, as well as the nonprofit field and foundations in Oregon.

We are always more than happy to talk to other foundations about this work, so please reach out! Part of our work is to talk openly and candidly about this in order to help others on their journey. In fact, we’ve recently received a NCRP Igniting Change award for this very topic.

5. At our 2017 Funders Institute, Meyer spoke about its role in advocacy. What are some unique ways you’ve focused on advocacy? What advice do you have for a foundation who is new to this space and looking to become more engaged in advocacy efforts?

Advocacy is a relatively new area for Meyer. But for us, it isn’t just about funding it – it’s about being actively engaged, which is something we’ve been more focused on in the past handful of years. It can be a hard area to get into, but being open minded and creative makes the process more effective.

I think it is important to note that advocacy is not just lobbying! Sometimes in philanthropy, it seems we get stuck on the fact that we “can’t do advocacy,” when in reality what foundations mean is that they cannot participate in direct lobbying. But advocacy is far more than that and, if you really analyze it, most foundations are already funding elements of advocacy in the form of research, data collection, grassroots base building, etc.

Meyer has a specific funding strategy for housing advocacy. We accept RFPs specifically for this and leave the door open on what type of advocacy organizations want to take on – campaign work, community organizing, policy research, messaging, local or statewide issues, etc. Flexibility is key!

One example of this flexibility was funding towards the creation of a video about how employers in a community support affordable housing because they were having issues with staffing their businesses due to lack of housing for their employees. That voice had a big pull within a conservative community and, in the process, it helped stress the need for affordable housing and who it was impacting – which was the community as a whole.

Through our RFP process, we gather grantees as a cohort to participate in shared learning opportunities. This allows them to learn from peers in different communities to hear about various projects and how to get connected at the local, state, and federal levels. Some are new to advocacy work while others are more experienced, so this variety creates a really dynamic environment that is ripe for learning and then, in turn, acting.

We fund organizations and groups that work with specific populations – think seniors who want to learn about housing and aging in place. By providing them with a grant to learn and build up skills and knowledge around housing, they are now able to sit on committees and bring in that expertise around housing.

As a foundation, we also go beyond grantmaking by allowing our program staff to sit on advisory boards and committees because people tend to listen to philanthropy. This tactic has proven to be very impactful. We can share with the committees what areas we have been funding based on what the needs are. It is a great way to engage in advocacy through education because we are sharing our expertise and the bird’s eye view of what is happening in the state or in specific communities based on the applications we are receiving. Aside from being influential, it helps us learn by asking questions and gain a better understanding of where various groups and communities are at in terms of housing issues.

One of the great things about advocacy is the concept of leveraging resources. We are always interested in collaborating and finding ways to make our investments go further in the community. By funding organizations to campaign for more public resources towards affordable housing, we are able to leverage those public dollars, which is something we are always looking to do. By providing a small grant between $10,000 to 25,000, we can see a windfall of $10 million based on the work those organizations did through the campaigns.

6. How can groups like Funders Together support the work of foundations like yours?

The connection to other funders that are in this space is crucial to our work. Meyer is the only foundation in Oregon that has a funding strategy specific to housing. Others fund it, but it isn’t an identified priority or a strategy. The funders we’ve met through Funders Together have given us insight on emerging practices and what they are seeing in their communities, and we’ve also identified some projects that we might want to experiment with here in Oregon. These types of conversations are extremely helpful because, as expensive as housing is, we could spend all the money we have and not move the needle forward without the collaboration and insight from other foundations.

I think having more data or research on emerging topics and best practices would be helpful in the future. We can do research and play the convening role in our own area, but having a national lens on it would benefit our work as well. The continuation of highlighting effective ways for funders to play a role in addressing homelessness and housing is appreciated and we look forward to the programming focused on this.

Meyer Memorial Trust has been a member of Funders Together since 2017. Take a look at our other members here and our entire network here.

Interested in past featured member profiles? Check out our archive here.

“How should we respond?” Funders Together CEO, Amanda Andere, asks the question of philanthropy in light of the recent events in both Charlottesville and Texas.

What does it mean for philanthropy to make a commitment to equity and its intersection with homelessness?

This year's Funders Institute was held in conjunction with the National Conference on Ending Homelessness in Washington, D.C and followed a new format. In addition to our 1-day Institute, the event continue through the National Conference on Ending Homelessness. Each day featured workshop sessions planned by Funders Together with content and discussion exclusively for private funders. Below is the agenda for the Institute outlining the various sessions that were offered along with resources that supplemented the topics covered.

November 2016

At Funders Together, we make it a goal to share the work of funders across the country so you can learn what's working and adapt these strategies to your own community. One way we do that is through our Featured Members. Some are featured because of their innovative grantmaking. Others are featured because they are making connections and bringing new people into the conversation about ending and preventing homelessness. Still others are featured because they are challenging the very systems that allow homelessness to persist. In each case, our Featured Members are an integral part of the solution to homelessness.

The HealthSpark Foundation is a private, independent foundation providing support to organizations that serve the unmet health and/or human service needs of residents living in and organizations serving Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. We spoke with Russell Johnson, President and CEO of HealthSpark Foundation, about the Foundation's systems change approach to population health and, ultimately, preventing and ending homelessness. 

1. Thank you so much for taking the time to talk to us today. Could you explain a little bit about what HealthSpark Foundation does and in what capacity it is involved in homelessness issues?

To understand what HealthSpark Foundation is, we need to go back to where we started. We were founded in 2002 as the North Penn Community Health Foundation with a $39 million endowment, generating approximately $1 million for grants on an annual basis.  Early on, the foundation invested in nonprofit capacity building, but mostly served as a responsive health and human service focused grantmaker. Our work soon highlighted that capacity building grants were scarce, that few foundations offered this type of grant and that the need was large. In 2012 the board adopted a new strategic plan that focused on opportunities to address the challenges of poverty through investments in changing systems – including continued support for nonprofit capacity building initiatives. 

Our investments supported nonprofit organizations seeking to introduce and/or enhance their data collecting tools and analysis; helping recruit, train and maintain skilled staff; and using data to guide and focus the allocation of resources to achieve desired goals and community impact. We promoted the use of evidence-based case management tools help produce quality outcomes. Staff training and implementation of these tools represented significant areas of our grant making. There is value in independent research of outcomes, so investing there was, and continues to be, a priority for the foundation.

We helped to start and continue to serve on the leadership council of a public/private partnership initiative called Your Way Home Montgomery County (YWH). YWH was established as the county's coordinated housing crisis response system for residents experiencing homelessness. HealthSpark Foundation took the lead in supporting research of best practices. Once a framework for systems change was developed, HealthSpark also invested in targeted capacity building for providers and scaling the impact of YWH with support to create a website, implement a marketing and communications strategy, establish a development team to raise money from other foundations, conduct a formative evaluation of our early work and support the costs of several pilot projects designed to test out new models of service delivery.

Prior to YWH, our community’s approach to addressing homelessness was designed and influenced by HUD rules and guidelines. Yet HUD lacked an understanding of the resources and challenges in our community. HealthSpark’s leadership convinced the county to reorient its relationship with HUD, shifting from a model focused on compliance to operations designed to leverage local knowledge and resources that remained informed by HUD guidelines. Through YWH, our community designed a plan that made sense to local stakeholders and preserved HUD’s investments in our work. The organizational structure of YWH provides a single umbrella for county government, philanthropy, providers and other community stakeholders to come together and work as one aligned system addressing the needs of those experiencing homelessness.

2. HealthSpark Foundation recently underwent a rebranding. Can you explain why this was important for your work and the foundation’s mission?

Originally, as the North Penn Community Health Foundation, our board wanted to maintain a connection and legacy to the source of our endowment:  the local community nonprofit hospital. The board wanted to preserve and invest only in the local community, commonly referred to as North Penn. However, as we started to focus more on capacity building and systems change, the board realized that providers served a broader community and their revenues were driven by county government contracts. The board came to understand that our disciplined focus on a small geographic area was inhibiting our ability to achieve scale and the desired community impact.   

Our efforts to expand our impact to all municipalities within Montgomery County was hampered by the geographic portion of our name. Many mistakenly thought we worked only in the North Penn community, while others thought we worked throughout northeastern Pennsylvania. Moreover, some nonprofits and foundations thought we raised money, as would be typical of a “community foundation.” We are, in fact, a private foundation that does not engage in fundraising so this too created confusion and distracted from our intent and mission.

In January 2016, we officially launched our new name and identity: HealthSpark Foundation – investing in healthy communities. Our new logo is a dandelion, a medicinal plant, with one seed going off into the wind, which reflects our efforts to “seed great ideas.” Our investment in our new identify/brand has been worthwhile, opening new opportunities to partner and learn.    

3. The HealthSpark Foundation takes a “systems change” approach to your grantmaking. Can you explain why you feel this is the right strategy and if/how that has impacted the outcomes of your grantmaking?

Our work with nonprofits and feedback from consumers has taught us that many of the service delivery systems are segregated and inefficient. Federal and state funding sources have historically contributed to this segmented approach to financing programs and services. However, there is a growing interest in our county to leverage block grant opportunities and to dismantle redundant and cumbersome intake and service delivery models that have historically segregated services. This new interest and commitment views the consumer as a whole person rather than someone with a specified need who fits into a funded program. Opportunities for public/private partnerships and collaborative efforts have been enhanced and new, more cost-effective programs and services are evolving that are producing better results for both consumers and the community. 

As these collaborative conversations were taking place, HealthSpark Foundation identified an investment opportunity to help the provider community learn about and use evidence-based case management tools. The YWH leadership identified these tools and the public/private partnership implemented regular trainings and established a learning collaborative to help build and sustain the capacity to use them. HealthSpark created and supports this learning collaborative where providers refine their skills and talk about various issues and challenges they are experiencing.

Investments in research, capacity building, learning collaboratives and more have been worthwhile, but our systems change approach has not been easy to implement. Through the collective support and efforts of the public/private partnership, we are slowly convincing providers, landlords, employers, other community service providers and foundations that this approach is making a significant difference in the lives of people experiencing homelessness. Providers, other foundations and consumers have joined to tell their stories. For example, the YWH website and annual community meeting highlights stories of consumers who have benefitted from rapid re-housing. Landlords are also talking about the value of the supportive partnerships forged by YWH’s housing stability coaches and housing locators. These professionals are helping to mitigate disruptive tenant behaviors and encourage positive communications and constructive relationships between tenants and landlords. Funders have joined together creating a pooled fund that housing stability coaches can use to assist consumers in overcoming financial barriers to secure housing. The YWH coordinated entry program, now in its third year, is reducing waiting lists for shelter services by assessing consumer vulnerability and diverting some seeking shelter services to more appropriate resources that preserve existing housing. 

4. Homelessness is a symptom of a larger issue and the intersectionality between homelessness and other issue areas is crucial. How would you encourage other foundations who don’t see themselves as primarily involved in homelessness to focus more on it?

Population health is a relatively new concept. But this approach has proven to be exceptionally helpful as we build partnerships and continue our work. We use this framework to engage other funders who may define their role and mission in ways that don’t reference “homelessness.” We look for funders interested in promoting the well-being and success of communities through economic development, education, access to health and other human services, food and nutrition, job training and employment, child care and more. When all these “systems” work well, the overall health of the population is healthier and stable. We have been successful in building awareness that investments in these areas can help homeless individuals and families achieve success – again the theme of integrating systems and resources to overcome the barriers that living in poverty impose on homeless people. HealthSpark welcomes opportunities to explore various partnerships that might help leverage our individual efforts and together achieve a collective impact greater than the sum of its parts. This message now resonates with more than a dozen philanthropic partners that support YWH. 

5. Advocacy can seem a bit untouchable or unobtainable to many funders. What role does advocacy play at the HealthSpark Foundation? Do you have any insight on successful strategy or challenges to be aware of when participating in advocacy?

We know and understand advocacy can take various forms. As a private foundation, we have some limitations imposed by the IRS. Nonetheless, our board supports many advocacy and educational efforts targeted to building awareness around best practices. We often contribute time to share our stories with others in Pennsylvania and occasionally at national gatherings. We educate our funder colleagues, elected officials, providers and sometimes even consumers on what is working in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. We also advocate by sponsoring research and publishing the results, disseminating articles and hosting site visits.

6. Funders Together is starting to look more at employment and economic security as an important part of ending homelessness. What, if anything, has your foundation done to address this intersection?

We are just beginning to learn about Employment First and other employment strategies. We recognize that access to an adequate household income enhances housing stability. We have invested in a comprehensive benefit enrollment service and recently introduced the SOAR program to our community. 

We recently provided grant support to establish a Catalyst Kitchen program in our community. This program is currently being piloted to help a small cohort of individuals without existing job skills or recent employment histories to quickly learn basic culinary arts skills and then to enter the workplace. The food service industry is robust and growing in Montgomery County and through this investment we are hopeful that some homeless families will build careers in this industry. 

Through the YWH leadership council, we are also partnering with the county’s Department of Commerce and the state’s Department of Human Services to explore how we can work together to support the efforts of people with significant barriers to enter the workforce more quickly and remain employed. The Employment First program may become a focus for this work, but for now HealthSpark intends to focus on building awareness of opportunities through researching best practices, hosting site visits and sending key leaders to conferences to enhance their own learning.

9. How can groups like Funders Together support the work of foundations like yours?

We joined Funders Together to End Homelessness to connect with other funders, further our knowledge and ultimately increase our impact. While members for only a few short months, FTEH has helped us to create new relationships and connected us with other funding innovators. We also have appreciated the recognition of our own work while inspiring us to continue learning and building a sustainable system that seeks to make the experience of homelessness brief, rare and non-recurring.   

One specific opportunity that we have found incredibly important and enlightening was the 2016 Funders Institute’s focus on racial inequity in homelessness. The HealthSpark Foundation board has long embraced the concepts of diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI). Recently, three of our board members participated in a regional learning collaborative hosted by Philanthropy Network of Greater Philadelphia convened to inspire foundation leaders to engage in this type of work. This group acknowledged HealthSpark Foundation’s DEI leadership in our region. HealthSpark staff has also engaged with other funders to learn and share strategies for board and staff development and DEI work with grantees and other community partners. Our staff has been encouraged to serve on other community organization task forces and boards as well.   

We encourage discussions and exploratory conversations about the use of data to help identify learning and investment opportunities. We are urging our YWH colleagues to publicly disclose client demographic data. A second strategy is to engage the provider community to critically explore whether existing programs and services are welcoming and appropriately supportive of the diverse needs of consumers. We are hopeful that this information will spark DEI conversations among funders and the provider community to explore enhancing provider leadership and capacity and seeking new DEI strategies to improve access to and service for a more diverse population of consumers. 

HealthSpark Foundation would welcome conversations with other funders working in smaller communities. We value learning about the accomplishments of all communities, and particularly value learning how smaller communities with populations of less than one million residents can work together to leverage and learn from one another.

HealthSpark Foundation has been a member of Funders Together since September 2016. Take a look at our other members here and our entire network here.

Interested in past featured member profiles? Check out our archive here.

Why is Funders Together to End Homelessness addressing racial inequity? Our CEO, Amanda Andere, explains how philanthropy's involvement in focusing on the structural issues that cause racial inequity can create a path to truly making sure homelessness is rare, brief, and one-time.