Rachelle A. Matthews

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

Rachelle A. Matthews

Director of Membership and Programs
she/her/hers

Rachelle A. Matthews, or RAM as she's known, is a dynamic multipotentialite and polymath professional who thrives on exploring diverse disciplines and tackling complex challenges. With a deep commitment to racial equity, housing justice, closing the wealth gap, and ending homelessness, RAM is dedicated to driving impactful change. She's recognized for her creative problem-solving and innovative thinking, earning a reputation as a rock star innovator and trust-inspiring fixer. According to RAM, her personal motto is: “Instead of putting a time frame on it, just do everything you said you were going to do.”

Prior to joining Funders Together, she served as the Strategy Lead for Public Engagement & Advocacy at Community Solutions, where she led a national campaign in response to the historic SCOTUS case: Gloria Johnson vs. Grants Pass, OR. Rachelle also contributed to groundbreaking work as Special Assistant to the Chief Scientist at NOAA during the Obama Administration. RAM holds a Juris Doctorate degree and is based in the Dallas-Fort Worth Metroplex with her family. She’s a mom who enjoys traveling, community service, cooking, reading, blogging, a good day of rest, scrabble, playing spades and hiking.

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Jack Zhang published this page in Staff 2024-09-05 14:46:13 -0400

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