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

Tony Richardson

President, The George Gund Foundation

Funders Together Board Chair

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Anthony Richardson became president of The George Gund Foundation in 2022. Prior to joining the Foundation, he served as executive director of The Nord Family Foundation in Amherst, OH, where he previously served as an associate director and program officer. Before working in philanthropy, Anthony held positions in the private sector, K-12 education, higher education, and government. 

In 2011, he was elected as a councilmember-at-large in the City of Lorain, becoming one of the youngest people elected to a citywide seat. During his second term, Anthony served as chair of the police, fire, and legislative standing committee, and sponsored legislation to increase hiring goal percentages for racial minorities and women on city projects. In 2012, he served as the civic and political chair for the Lorain City Schools Levy Committee, which helped the school district pass its first new levy for operating dollars since 1992. Later that year, Anthony was invited by the Obama Administration to attend a “Working Meeting on Fiscal Cliff” at the White House.

In 2017, Anthony was appointed by Ohio’s Superintendent of Public Instruction to serve as chair of the Lorain Academic Distress Commission, a joint local and state committee established to turnaround the Lorain City School District. He is a recipient of Philanthropy Ohio’s 2017 Emerging Philanthropist Award, and his work has been featured in The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Stanford Social Innovation Review, and The Center for Effective Philanthropy. 

Anthony serves as a board member for Funders Together to End Homelessness, National Center for Family Philanthropy, Philanthropy Ohio, The Center for Effective Philanthropy, and The Corella & Bertram F. Bonner Foundation. 

He holds a bachelor’s degree from Oberlin College and a juris doctorate from The Ohio State University’s Michael E. Moritz College of Law.

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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