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

Katie Hong

Director, Special Initiatives, Raikes Foundation

Funders Together Board Chair

katie_hong_sized.jpgKatie Hong is the director of special initiatives at the Raikes Foundation. Prior to that, Katie lead the foundation’s efforts to prevent and end youth and young adult homelessness and supported its national education strategy. Before joining the Raikes Foundation in 2012, Katie consulted with private philanthropic foundations and nonprofit organizations on strategic planning and organizational effectiveness. She worked at the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for more than five years, where she oversaw its Pacific Northwest Initiative, including efforts to reduce family homelessness and its work in advocacy grantmaking.

Katie has also served as the director for the City of Seattle's Office of Housing, as executive policy advisor to Governor Gary Locke, and as a White House Fellow for both Clinton and Bush administrations. She has a bachelor’s degree from the University of California at Berkeley and a master's degree in public policy from the University of Chicago. Katie is currently a fellow with the Billions Institute.

 

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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