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

Webinar: Child Welfare, Youth Homelessness, & Abolitionist Values

Purple banner with text that reads "Child Welfare, Youth Homelessness, and Abolitionist Values" with four heads shots of speakers.

Friday, March 21, 2025 | 2pm ET / 1pm CT / 12pm MT / 11am PT 

Co-sponsored by Youth Transition Funders GroupFunders for Justice

As we enter another chapter in which federal housing justice advocacy will necessarily focus on defense, we must also be future-focused and keep moving towards our long-term vision. To do that, we need to be intentional to build a strategy that includes liberatory visions and values. This webinar provides an opportunity to learn how abolitionist principles can help us analyze and prioritize the most effective advocacy opportunities even if we don’t all agree on the goal of dismantling carceral institutions. By uplifting the work of the upEND Movement in the context of preventing youth homelessness, we will use the child welfare (aka family policing) system as a case study that helps us identify the ways in which our usual approaches often assume the legitimacy of racist systems despite our best intentions. Joined by Funders Together member and upEND funder the May & Stanley Smith Charitable Trust, we will connect the dots between family-policing abolition, philanthropy, youth homelessness, and housing justice by leaning on Funders Together’s Policy Framework.

This session continues our ongoing series on Youth Homelessness Prevention but promises to elevate lessons that are applicable across the spectrum of funding on housing and homelessness.

Speakers

  • Michael Durham (he/him) | Director of Networks | Funders Together to End Homelessness
  • Josie Pickens (she/her) | Program Director | upEND Movement
  • connease warren (she/her) | Cofounder & Advisor | upEND Movement
  • Elisabeth Cutler (she/her) | Senior Program Officer | May & Stanley Smith Charitable Trust


Learning Objectives

  1. Differentiate between reformist and abolitionist (or non-reformist) reforms
  2. Articulate the relationship between youth/family homelessness and the child welfare (aka family policing) system
  3. Describe the key components of Funders Together’s policy framework

Registration

Please RSVP for this webinar using the button below. You will receive your unique Zoom link once a Funders Together staff person has approved your registration.

orange register button

Participation in Funders Together programming is limited to foundations, community foundations, grantmaking staff at United Ways, corporate giving programs, individual philanthropists, venture philanthropy and other non-traditional philanthropic giving entities, philanthropy-serving organizations, and members of Funders Together. Government funders and staff at organizations where grantmaking is not the primary function are not eligible to participate. Funders Together reserves the right to deny participation to individuals we believe do not meet participation eligibility criteria. If you have questions about your eligibility, please reach out to Rachelle A. Matthews, Director of Membership and Programs. 

Technology

This webinar/funder call will take place via Zoom meetings. Registration will be open until March 21. If you do not receive your Zoom link or have technical issues logging into this call, please reach out to Michael Durham: [email protected]

This call will last 75 minutes.

Co-sponsored by: 

Youth Transition Funders Group logo

WHEN
March 21, 2025 at 2:00pm - 3:15pm
CONTACT
Michael Durham ·

Showing 1 reaction

  • Michael Durham
    published this page in Programming 2025-01-24 16:27:33 -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


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