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

Funders Together to End Homelessness Receives Achievement Award

National Network of Grantmakers Recognized for Efforts to Promote Catalytic Philanthropy and Effective Solutions to Homelessness

Boston, MA (07/18/2012)—Funders Together to End Homelessness today announced that it received the 2012 Private Sector Achievement Award from the National Alliance to End Homelessness (NAEH). The award recognizes Funders Together, a national network of grantmakers, for its work within the philanthropic sector to help end homelessness.

“We are enormously honored to receive this award,” said Funders Together Executive Director Anne Miskey. “We are very passionate about bringing grantmakers together to help prevent and end homelessness. We know it can be done, and it is wonderful to have earned recognition for our accomplishments from the National Alliance, which is a national leader in such efforts.”

Miskey and Funders Together Board Chair David Wertheimer, from the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation,  accepted the award at NAEH’s 22nd Annual Awards Ceremony, which was held at the John F. Kennedy Center for the Performing Arts in Washington, D.C., on July 17, 2012. For the second year in a row, the ceremony coincided with NAEH’s National Conference on Ending Homelessness.

Originally created in 2004 as the Partnership to End Long-Term Homelessness, Funders Together was re-launched as an independent 501(c)(3) organization in 2010. Today, with more than 140 members, it is the only national network of grantmakers working to end homelessness. It promotes a catalytic approach to philanthropy that goes beyond effective grantmaking to active civic engagement in solving homelessness.  Over the next five years, Funders Together expects to leverage more than $100 million in public funds for housing, supportive services, replication of successful programs, and developing cutting-edge models.

The Private Sector Achievement Award is one of three awards presented each year by NAEH. The other two awards are a Nonprofit Sector Award and a Public Sector Award.  This year, the Nonprofit Sector Award went to DESC and the Public Sector Award went to Douglas County (Nebraska) Commissioner Mary Ann Borgeson.

For more information on Funders Together to End Homelessness, go to: www.funderstogether.org.  For more information on the NAEH Awards, visit https://help.endhomelessness.org/events/14.

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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