Thursday, March 12 | 2:00pm ET | 1:00pm CT | 12:00pm MT | 11:00am PT

Diversion has become a growing strategy in addressing homelessness. When integrated and implemented across the homelessness response system, it has proven to also be an effective intervention for resolving a family’s homelessness or housing instability.  

Thanks to the Family Homelessness Initiative at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we have research to show that diversion works. At our 2020 Funders Forum, we shared some of those evaluation findings. During this webinar, we’ll look at how communities in Washington state integrated diversion into coordinated entry at the systems level and how funding was structured in order to do so.  

Join us during this webinar to hear directly from Building Changes, which tested diversion strategies for families under the Bill & Melinda Gates Family Homelessness Initiative, and learn about how they worked with Africatown to scale diversion strategies in Washington state. We’ll also hear from the Schultz Family Foundation about how they understood the need to fund diversion at the systems level, not just a programmatic level, and how they helped brought other funders into this work and drummed up additional support.  

We’ll also share some disaggregated data around how Black and African American people opted into diversion at higher rates, what this suggests about other parts of the homeless response system, and what tough questions we need to ask ourselves.  

Participants will leave this webinar with: 

• An understanding of what diversion is and how, when implemented as a process, rather than a program, it helps house families 
• Knowledge about what mindset shift is needed from funders in order to fund and scale a diversion model  
• Questions we should ask and investigate to analyze racial bias and inequities in our current thinking and systems 

 Speakers 

• Emily Harris-Shears, Senior Manager, Grantmaking & Capacity Building, Building Changes 
• Paul Butler, Program Officer, Schultz Family Foundation 
• Yalonda Sinde, Finance and Development Director, Africatown International 

Please note that participation in this webinar is limited to private funders, including foundations, United Ways, corporate giving programs, individual philanthropists, and philanthropy serving organizations (PSOs). If you have questions about your eligibility to register, please contact Stephanie Chan, Director of Membership and Programs at Funders Together to End Homelessness.