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

Calling All Funders Interested in Veterans Homelessness

Posted by 119sc on January 12, 2012

Funders Together is pleased to announce the creation of a new working group for funders focused on veterans homelessness.

America has made important progress reducing homelessness among our veterans in the last year or two, but there is still much work to be done if we are to meet the goal of ending veterans homelessness by 2015. Philanthropy has an important role in achieving this goal and we will be working with other key stakeholders around the country in sharing information and working together to promote best practices to end veteran homelessness.

As a veteran, a foundation trustee, and a board member of Funders Together, I’m very pleased to announce the creation of a new working group for funders focused on veterans homelessness. The group, which will be known as the “Funders Together Working Group on Veterans Homelessness,” will ensure the availability of current information about veterans homelessness for the philanthropic community and build a national network of committed funders working to end homelessness among our veterans. The group also hopes to help represent the voice of philanthropy on this important subject in various forums around the country.

According to the Departments of Veterans Affairs and Housing and Urban Development, approximately 67,000 military veterans were homeless on a single night in 2011-a 12 percent decline since 2010. Unfortunately, however, veterans are still disproportionately represented within the general homeless population. Further, there is reason to expect that homelessness among veterans may increase as troops return home from the Iraq and Afghanistan conflicts. The federal government’s plan to end homelessness includes the goal of ending veterans homelessness by 2015 by focusing on increasing access to supportive housing, case management, and other services.

I am honored to chair the funders working group and pleased to be joined by fellow Funders Together board members:

  • Bill Pitkin, Conrad N. Hilton Foundation, Los Angeles, CA
  • Sonya Campion, Campion Foundation, Seattle, WA
  • David Wertheimer, Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, Seattle, WA

We hope you will join us.

Tom_Nurmi.jpgTom Nurmi is a member of the Board of Trustees of the William S. Abell Foundation and chair of its Homelessness Committee.  He also serves as Secretary of the Board of Funders Together.

 

 

 

veterans

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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