Empowering Futures: THE COLLECTIVE IMPACT OF GRANTMAKING ON HOUSTON’S UNHOUSED YOUTH

THE INITIATIVE: YOUTH HOMELESSNESS FUND

Over the course of ten years, the Youth Homelessness Fund (YHF) has awarded over $536,000 in grants to nonprofit organizations that develop and implement strategic solutions to aid youth experiencing homelessness in Houston. Established in 2013, this small group of committed funders has focused on preventing youth from experiencing homelessness at a systems and community level. The YHF was a Field of Interest Fund facilitated by Greater Houston Community Foundation (Foundation) to help build a local network of funders committed to reducing homelessness through leadership, education, advocacy, and collaborative grantmaking.

We spoke with Nancy Frees Fountain from the Frees Foundation and one of the founding funders of YHF about how they started this collective group, and she shared, “This was such an impactful initiative and way of working together. Individual foundations have a hard time coordinating. Working together in this way, we could move the needle more. We focused on a time horizon that was beyond one year, and we continued to build upon successes with sequential steps toward effecting community and systems changes.”

Getting Started

A national group, Funders Together to End Homelessness, works to end and prevent homelessness. Through working together with this national group and the Foundation team, local Houston funders educated themselves and identified ways they could make an impact closer to home. This realization led to the establishment of the YHF, with the original name of Greater Houston Fund to End Homelessness, through the Foundation.

After researching more, this group recognized how the youth population facing homelessness was often overlooked or deprioritized. Federal funding and government agencies focused on chronic or veteran homelessness, but not enough data existed for these agencies to know how best to focus on youth facing homelessness. YHF funders quickly realized they wanted to focus on unhoused youth as they saw this as a population with significant needs with little data or metrics and therefore, little investment.

The YHF’s first focus was to help obtain more accurate data on youth experiencing homelessness. The number of youth who were ‘counted’ during the national homeless count annually was always lower than the reality in our community. The community needed answers to questions like ‘Where do youth facing homelessness go?’ or ‘What goes on at the school level when kids are identified as homeless?’ These types of critical questions were the catalyst in the YHF’s 2014 decision to award their first grant of $90,851 to the University of Houston Graduate College of Social Work to help administer the YouthCount 2.0 , a survey of unhoused youth in the greater Houston area that helped gather tangible data and needs for system changes. Findings from the survey confirmed that youth facing homelessness do not identify as homeless and will not utilize adult homeless service providers, and 41% of unhoused youth report involvement with the foster care system. These findings, and the new protocol for how to “count” youth developed by the University of Houston, were key to unlocking major changes and resources for youth experiencing homelessness in Houston. The grant had an outsized impact, something every philanthropist wishes to achieve.

Homeless youth look really different than homeless adults –they blend in, want to be with their friends, and need more support and case management rather than housing. However, homeless youth are also the most vulnerable and at risk. It was evident early on that there was a need for more facilitation and collaboration at the community level, and this is where we knew that private philanthropy could come into play to make a huge difference.

– Nancy Frees Fountain, Frees Foundation

Creating Hope Through Legislative Action

Funding a data collection survey may not always be the most appealing opportunity for donors, particularly when considering the persistent issue of youth facing homelessness. While the donors in this group continued to fund direct services with other dollars, they concurrently collaborated closely with researchers, homeless youth agencies, and advocates to guarantee that this report would not sit on a shelf, gathering dust. Together, they forged partnerships to develop action plans aimed at initiating change through the utilization of this data.

In 2015, YouthCount 2.0 was completed and shared with the Texas Legislature a month before their session. This led to two significant laws being enacted at the state level by utilizing data obtained by YouthCount 2.0.

• The first law, HB 843, aims to prevent homelessness of youth who age out of foster care. HB 843 incorporates a housing stability plan at the beginning of the transition planning process for youth aging out of foster care.

• The second law, HB 679, increased the opportunities to serve unhoused youth. HB 679 established a state definition of unhoused youth that mirrors the federal definition: youth with their families, unaccompanied youth, and youth without stable housing (not “literally” homeless). HB 679 also helped expand who qualifies as a “homeless youth,” thereby increasing access to funding and resources for more youth.

Commitment To Systemic Change

Over the next eight years, the same momentum continued. The YHF consistently relied on evidence-based research and data to make funding decisions, building on successful outcomes and emerging needs. The result of their grants over time was that the systems interacting with youth experiencing homelessness began to achieve better coordination, enhancing their collective understanding of the issues and potential solutions. Most importantly, they began to listen to and serve youth more effectively. Some of these systems included juvenile justice, community police departments, HISD, health, foster care, and child protective services.

They were finally working and communicating together to help prevent youth from becoming homeless and to keep more Houston youth safe and on a path to self-sufficiency, continuing education, workforce participation, and financial independence.

“Through targeted Youth Homelessness Fund (YHF) support, Houston reVision has forged vital connections and partnerships with institutions, such as the criminal justice system, school districts, and governmental organizations,” stated Charles Rotramel, Chief Executive Officer of Houston reVision. “In addition, we have earned trust with at-risk youth via trauma informed care and established a lifeline Drop-In Center for unstably housed youth that provides food, clothing, and other basic necessities. This aid has empowered Houston reVision to succeed in helping at-risk and homeless youth transition out of foster care and detention centers, seal or expunge records, and connect to housing and jobs. Houston reVision has catalyzed systemic change, helping youth vulnerable to addiction, crime, sex trafficking, incarceration, unemployment, and suicide receive high-quality mentoring, case management, community support, and educational programming.”

We are grateful for the support of the YHF, which has helped Houston reVision to make a real difference in the lives of at-risk and homeless youth.

– Charles Rotramel, Chief Executive Officer Houston reVision

ONGOING COLLABORATION & FUNDING STRATEGIES FOR LEVERAGED IMPACT

On average, YHF awarded about $41,000 per year over ten years. To some, this may seem like a small amount of dollars, but because they were funding at a systems level, they were really able to make an outsized impact. So, how did this group of individuals work together to determine the criteria for grant selection and a funding strategy?

At the outset, the Foundation assisted the group in defining their goals and priorities. They collectively decided that instead of solely providing funding to organizations through this group and issuing numerous organizational grants, they would support new opportunities, collaborative efforts, solutions focused on systems change, and broad community initiatives. Beyond the YHF, many donors continued to allocate general operating grants to the organizations they consistently supported. These grants were deliberately aimed at achieving collective impact and effecting systemic change.

“The Foundation was tremendously helpful. They would send our requests for proposals that stated the group’s [YHF] priorities, did a scoring chart so that each nonprofit was evaluated using the same metrics, and interacted with the nonprofits on our [YHF] behalf,” stated Nancy Frees Fountain with the Frees Foundation. “The scoring helped keep us all in alignment on where to invest. Also, the Foundation would host roundtables for our group and invite many of the primary players working with the youth homeless population in our region. We could hear what was really going on to help us determine what should drive our decision-making. These honest, facilitated conversations helped us to understand the needs of people with boots on the ground, which, in turn, determined our next steps in funding.”

The Youth Homelessness Fund has catalyzed uniting nonprofit partners and maximizing resources to impact the sector that helps youth facing homelessness in Houston.