On February 25, funders coming from as far away as Alaska, Hawaii, and London convened in Los Angeles during our 2025 Funders Forum. Held a little over one month since the Presidental inauguration, the Funders Forum provided a space for attendees to be in community with each other and engage in candid dialogue about what is needed in this moment and how philanthropy should be showing up.

Over the course of the day, attendees heard from movement leaders and interacted with peers. Major themes arose included the need for philanthropy to be bold as racial justice efforts face constant threats, the importance of seeding and ceding power to communities that are most impacted, and how to connect the dots between local and national movements for housing justice.

Showing Up with a Steady Hand: Ann Oliva’s Opening Remarks  

Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, provides opening remarks to attendees to ground us in the conversations to come.

Funders Together board members, Kristin Aldana-Tada and Andrea Iloulian, welcomed attendees to Los Angeles and shared highlights from LA County’s work to end homelessness. Ann Oliva, CEO of the National Alliance to End Homelessness, share reflections about the moment we find ourselves in and how the Alliance is supporting Continuums of Care (CoC), frontline staff, and mobilizing communities to engage in advocacy. She shared that influencing Congress, including with Republican legislators whose districts rely on Medicaid, is our best chance to block harmful policy. She also described new initiatives they’re undertaking at both the grass tops and grassroots to bridge efforts and create a stronger movement. 

In all of this work, the Alliance is leaning on its core values: inspiring faith that ending homelessness is possible; leading with love, equity, and respect; and bringing people home. At their conference, they aimed to cultivate joy and encouragement for an audience of mostly-federally-funded service providers who endure unfathomable stress.  

Ann reflected on where philanthropy can be most supportive in this moment, including filling widening funding gaps, convening local stakeholders across sectors, and making connections with communities the Alliance isn’t yet reaching. And, because many funders are avoiding risk by winding back their commitments to equity, she concluded by imploring philanthropy: do not comply in advance. “We need you to lead in this space.”  
 
View the recording and resources for the welcome. 

Advancing Housing Justice through Local and National Policy and People Power 

(Left to right) Stephanie Chan, Chief Strategy Officer and Acting CEO of Funders Together, moderates the plenary with Rasheedah Phillips of PolicyLink, Joanna Jackson of Weingart Foundation, and Jawanza Williams of VOCAL-NY.

Our plenary session, Advancing Housing Justice through Local and National Policy and People Power, underscored the critical need to bridge grassroots movements with national policy efforts to drive systemic change. Against the backdrop of the devastating January 2025 fires in Los Angeles, speakers highlighted how intersecting crises—climate disasters, housing insecurity, and racial injustice—demand bold philanthropic action.  

Rasheedah Phillips, Director of Housing at PolicyLink, emphasized the importance of enshrining housing as a human right through tenant protections, social housing, and reparative policies. Speaking about people power, Jawanza Williams, Managing Director of Organizing at VOCAL-NY, underscored the critical nature of organizing beyond policy advocacy and urged funders to support long-term visioning and power-building strategies. Joanna Jackson, President and CEO of Weingart Foundation, reinforced philanthropy’s responsibility to sustain movements that advance racial and economic justice, particularly in the face of legislative rollbacks and political uncertainty.  

The session was a powerful call to action for funders to move beyond narrative change and invest in structural transformation that builds collective power for housing justice. To meet this moment, philanthropy must go further by investing in infrastructure that sustains grassroots movements for the long haul through multi-year, flexible funding that allows advocacy and organizing groups to build power and develop long-term strategies. Funders should also deepen relationships with movement leaders, ensuring their strategies are informed by those on the frontlines, while using their institutional influence to advocate for policy shifts that embed housing as a human right. 

View the recording and resources for this session. 

 
Celebrating Wins and The Importance of Hope 

Zach Lou of the California Green New deal speaks to attendees about the wins the coalition has experienced and where efforts are leading them next.

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. This Impact Fest session created a space for attendees to meditate on hope by hearing about important and joyful work happening in the midst of uncertainty and pain.  

Zach Lou, Coalition Director, California Green New Deal Coalition kicked off the Impact Fest by sharing the strides the coalition is making, specifically through the LA for Resilient and Healthy Homes (LARHH) and the win they secured in fighting back against “renovictions” due to remodels from building decarbonization. This win inspired the creation of a statewide campaign to advocate for policies aimed at ending renovictions. 

Jazmin Segura, Director of Strategic Initiatives, Housing Justice, Common Counsel Foundation, focused on how the Fund for an Inclusive California leans into values-based philanthropic practices by prioritizing authentic relationships, intentionally shifting power to a co-governing body of community partners with decision-making power over grantmaking and the Fund’s strategic direction.  

Sean Dollard highlighted how a community-led investment to the Globeville Elria-Swansea (GES) Coalition’s Tierra Colectiva Community Land Trust led to a transformative mixed-use affordable housing project that was focused on the community’s needs and desires, having an impact that will last generations. 

These celebrations of wins in the work for housing justice are a call to philanthropy to invest not just in what feels comfortable, but also in what is possible when we lead with justice, joy, and hope. 

View the recording and resources for this session. 

An Attendee’s Reflection 

“I am so grateful for the opportunity to join the Funders Together to End Homelessness Funders Forum to meet so many amazing people engaged in this work and learn what funders are doing across the country. One theme that resonated for me throughout the day was the call to balance meeting current needs with long-term visioning. Whether that is investing in grassroots service organizations that are developing community leaders or considering how supporting a housing developer in a current deal will build capacity for the next one, philanthropy can accelerate our impact by looking for the connective tissue between now and the future and setting the conditions for the future we want to achieve.” 

- Jocelyn Beh, Program Officer for Housing & Economic Vitality, The Oregon Community Foundation