Kelli King-Jackson

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

Kelli King-Jackson

Senior Program Officer, The Simmons Foundation

Funders Together Board Member

Kelli is a Senior Program Officer with The Simmons Foundation. Having spent nearly 20 years in the nonprofit sector, Kelli serves as a thought leader and public speaker with a passion for the intersection of social justice and philanthropy. At the Foundation Kelli has leadership responsibilities for implementation of grantmaking strategies in homelessness, youth, and LGBTQ issues. Kelli currently serves on national steering committees for Funders for LGBTQ Issues Out in the South Initiative and the Funders Together to End Homelessness Youth Network Leadership Committee.

Most recently, Kelli has been lending her philanthropic expertise to the grants committees of the Hurricane Harvey Relief Fund and the Center for Disaster Philanthropy Hurricane Harvey Fund.  In every service opportunity, Kelli remains deeply committed to centering the voices and experiences of the most marginalized communities.

Kelli is a graduate of New York University with a B.A. in Sociology. She is an alumna of Leadership Houston Class 27 and the ABFE Connecting Leaders Fellowship Program. Kelli is a social media aficionado who enjoys family time, laughing with friends and writing.

Do you like this page?

Be the first to comment

Sign in with

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