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

2025 Funders Forum Agenda

Return to the main Funders Forum webpage

Disclaimer: This agenda is in development and is subject to change without notice. This agenda reflects our current planning and may shift depending on the state of current affairs, speaker availability, and other external factors. 

Read more about our speakers in our speaker biographies.

Agenda Last updated: 2/5/2025

Tuesday, February 25

8:15am PT

Registration Check-In and Breakfast 

Enjoy breakfast and networking before the convening officially starts.

At check-in, please present a picture of a negative COVID-19 rapid test that you took the morning-of. COVID-19 tests will be available for those who don’t have proof of a negative test result.  

9:00am PT

Opening Remarks

Funders Together board members Kristin Aldana-Taday and Andrea Iloulian will welcome participants to the Funders Forum and to Los Angeles before attendees hear from Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness.   

Speakers:

  • Kristin Aldana-Taday, Program Officer, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation
  • Andrea Iloulian, Senior Director, System Optimization and Communications, Homeless Initiative and Affordable Housing - LA County CEO 
  • Ann Oliva, CEO, National Alliance to End Homelessness

10:00am PT

Opening Plenary: Advancing Housing Justice through Local and National Policy and People Power 

With a change in federal administration, an ever-changing political landscape, and waning commitments to racial justice, the path to housing justice requires strengthening movements and connecting the dots between local and national policy, various housing justice advocacy and organizing efforts, and homelessness with other issue areas. And, with the January 2025 fires in Los Angeles that destroyed entire communities and displaced hundreds of people, we are at a moment where how we show up now – at the local, state, and national level – will have implications for generations to come.  

Featuring insights from movement leaders and grassroots organizers, this plenary will focus on how we connect the dots between local and national movements advocating for social housing, tenant rights, and multi-issue decriminalization policies. We’ll discuss the impact of the January 2025 fires in Los Angeles on displacement, housing, and recovery efforts. Panelists will also share their thinking about philanthropy’s critical role as a continued champion for racial justice, and how funders can use their resources to build collective power that transcends individual efforts. 

Speakers: 

  • Jawanza Williams, Managing Director of Organizing, VOCAL-NY 
  • Joanna Jackson, President & CEO, Weingart Foundation
  • Rasheedah Phillips, Director of Housing, PolicyLink
  • (moderator) Stephanie Chan, Chief Strategy Officer and Acting CEO, Funders Together to End Homelessness

11:15am PT

Funder-to-Funder Discussion: Connecting the Dots 

Attendees will have an opportunity to connect with other funders and respond to discussion prompts connecting the federal Administration transition, local and state policy, and grassroots movement building.  

12:00pm PT

Lunch

Lunch is provided onsite. This is unstructured time to network and connect with your peers.

1:00pm PT

Case Consultations

Join us for case consultations, which past attendees have rated as one of the most valuable parts of the Funders Forum. Case consultations are structured table discussions designed to showcase what funders across the country are doing to advance housing justice and for participants to share feedback, insights, and resources. Attendees will have the ability to choose the case presentation that most interests them during this session and walk away with new connections and ideas for their own work.

2:25pm PT

Impact Fest: Celebrating Our Wins

Faced with a barrage of unjust policy changes, attacks on racial justice initiatives, homelessness numbers trending upward, natural disasters that displace hundreds of people, and a never-ending news cycle highlighting the precarity of everyone’s ability to survive, it is all too easy to fall into cynicism and despair about how to actualize the just and liberated future we hope to see.  

However, as Kelly Hayes and Mariame Kaba write in Let This Radicalize You: Organizing and the Revolution of Reciprocal Care (Haymarket Books, 2023), hope is not just something we feel but a practice and discipline we enact in the world. They write in their book, excerpted with permission for Nonprofit Quarterly Magazine that “this practice of hope allows us to remain creative and strategic. It does not require us to deny the severity of our situation or detract from our practice of grief. To practice active hope, we do not need to believe that everything will work out in the end. We need only decide who we are choosing to be and how we are choosing to function in relation to the outcome we desire, and abide by what those decisions demand of us.

During the Funders Forum’s inaugural Impact Fest, we’ll share stories of success from the field to inspire attendees to practice hope as a discipline and to remind all of us to celebrate our wins as we work toward our north star of housing justice.  

Speakers: 

  • Jazmin Segura, Director of Strategic Initiatives, Housing Justice, Common Counsel Foundation 
  • Sean Dollard
  • Zach Lou, Coalition Director, California Green New Deal Coalition

3:45pm PT

Closing Remarks

4:30pm PT

Funder Networking Reception

This off-site networking reception is an opportunity for attendees to deepen the relationships they built throughout the day.  

Please note: This networking reception is only open to Funders Forum attendees. Non-Funders Forum attendees will not be allowed entry.

 


Showing 1 reaction

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


Sign in with Facebook, Twitter or email.