Policy for Funders

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

Policy for Funders

Featured Resource:

Funders Together Policy Priorities

We believe philanthropy has a voice in addressing homelessness and advancing solutions to prevent and end it with Congress and the Presidential administration. As Funders Together to End Homelessness works with the Administration, together with our national partners, we are focused on continuing to make preventing and ending homelessness a bi-partisan priority. In this resource for funders, we have outlined our policy priorities as well as compiled partner resources on working with local and national government officials.

Funders Together Resources

Advocacy Resources

As part of an ongoing effort to provide support and programming on advocacy, we've compiled resources that can aid you in starting and continuing the conversation in your work to prevent and end homelessness.

The Legal Limitations on Lobbying

Funders can and should be advocates for policies and funding streams that can end and prevent homelessness. Understand the legal restrictions on private foundations’ advocacy efforts with this resource.

Other Resources

Bolder Advocacy: An Initiative of Alliance for Justice

A Foundation’s Guide to Advocacy

Published by Council on Foundations, this report explains “lobbying” versus networking and includes a step-by-step guide to contacting policymakers.

Barr Foundation and MASSCreative's Webinar: Political Advocacy 101

Leveraging Limited Dollars: How Grantmakers Achieve Tangible Results by Funding Policy and Community Engagement

This report from the National Committee for Responsive Philanthropy discusses best practices and the impact of philanthropic dollars devoted to advocacy.

View blog posts on advocacy

Please contact Amanda Andere or Lauren Bennett if you would like to discuss advocacy issues further.

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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