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

What is Foundations for Employment and Housing?

It's not too late to join Funders Together's newest community of practice focused on employment and homelessness.

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Over the next two years, Funders Together will host a community of practice for funders dedicated to connecting homelessness programs and systems with workforce and employment. We already have an incredible list of participants from across the country. But, we have a few spots left!

Every month throughout 2018 and 2019, this group will meet virtually or in person to learn the basics of the employment and homelessness systems, best practices and solutions from across the country, and what we know based on the data we have. As a group, we will determine where there are gaps in funding or knowledge, what we need to take solutions to scale, and how we can help move this work forward both locally and nationally to create systemic change. In addition to virtual meetings, we will host two in-person meetings each year which will provide an opportunity to learn from a community that is doing this work and to learn and plan with fellow community members. These regular connections not only allow participants to learn together, but to build relationships and share challenges and successes in their own work.

After our first community of practice, Foundations for Youth Success, participants identified the most valuable part of the community as the opportunity to build relationships with a peer network. In fact, participants were so inspired by their work together that they decided to continue meeting and invite other funders to join what is now known as the Youth Network.

If you would like to build your own peer network and really help make employment a part of every homelessness system, this community is for you! We will have the first virtual meeting with the full group in January 2018. If you are interested in joining this amazing group of funders, reach out to Jennifer Olney at [email protected] today!

We believe that to make this community a success it is important to engage a diverse group of participants. Due to the generosity of community members, we are able to offer a limited number of scholarships for travel and fees. If you would like to learn more about scholarships, please reach out.

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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