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

Leslie Perkul

President and CEO, William J. and Dorothy K. O’Neill Foundation

Funders Together Board Member

leslie_strnisha_sized.jpgLeslie is the President and CEO of the William J. and Dorothy K. O'Neill Foundation. Prior to her current position, she served as Vice President and the Sisters of Charity Foundation of Cleveland. There she led the Foundation’s program team to develop targeted, outcomes-based approaches for its grantmaking and non-grantmaking activities. She was also the project manager for the Foundation’s Cleveland Central Promise Neighborhood education initiative.

Prior to joining the Foundation in 2006, Ms. Perkul served in various capacities for the Cleveland office of the Enterprise Foundation until 2003. She provided training and technical assistance to community-based organizations in the areas of community planning and program development.

Ms. Perkul holds a Master’s degree in urban studies from Cleveland State University and a B.A. in psychology from Indiana University.

 

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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