What We Cannot Do Alone: Assembling Regional Funder Networks for Housing Justice

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

What We Cannot Do Alone: Assembling Regional Funder Networks for Housing Justice

Funders Together recognizes that our vision for housing justice on a national level, including its aspirational values and concrete policy implications, requires implementation at the local level. Any community’s unique history, politics, and relationships determine our success. If we expect regions’ homelessness providers to act in coordination and align behind racial justice values, so should funders.

What We Cannot Do Alone: Assembling Regional Funder Networks for Housing Justice aims to support our members in mobilizing funders at the local level. This resource helps funders understand:

how to make the case for regional funder networks,
the range of structures, staffing, models, and activities typical of FTEH networks,
various Funders Together’s networks in Chicago, San Diego, and Baltimore, and
eight recommendations for anyone exploring a new network.

If you represent a community looking to stand up a new funder network on housing justice, email Michael Durham, Director of Networks, for support.

Webinar Recording: What We Cannot Do Alone: Assembling Regional Funder Networks for Housing Justice

During this webinar, we presented the key recommendations from the new report and enjoyed deep conversation with the directors and member representatives from Funders Together San Diego and Chicago.

The presentation was geared more towards those who are considering starting a regional funder network, rather than those who are already part of one.

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Jack Zhang published this page in Funder Resources 2023-11-17 13:40:36 -0500

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