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

Charles Rutheiser

Senior Associate in the Center for Community and Economic Opportunity, Annie E. Casey Foundation

Funders Together Board Member

Image of Charles RutheiserCharles Rutheiser is a senior associate in the Annie E. Casey Foundation's Center for Civic Sites and Community Change, where he manages the national grant-making on housing and youth homelessness, as well as Casey’s neighborhood transformation investments in Baltimore. He also assists the Foundation’s Social Investment team in identifying program- and mission-related investments in affordable housing Previously, Charles directed the graduate program in applied anthropology at Georgia State University and taught cultural anthropology and urban studies at the Johns Hopkins University, Bryn Mawr College and Western Michigan University. He is the author of two books: Imagineering Atlanta: the politics of place in the city of dreams (1996) and The Opportunity Makers: the first half-century of Sponsors for Educational Opportunity (2016), as well as numerous publications on the role of complex social institutions in perpetuating inequality in the United States and Latin America.  In addition to his service on the FTEH board, Charles is the incoming chair of Funders for Housing and Opportunity, a national philanthropic funding collaborative focused on addressing the national housing instability crisis. He also serves as a faculty member for the Cities of Opportunity program of the National League of Cities and the advisory committee for the Democratizing Development Program of the Neighborhood Funders Group.


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  • Alexis Perlmutter
    published this page in Board 2023-12-08 14:45:34 -0500

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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