In collaboration with the Housing Authority of the City of L.A. (HACLA), United Way recently recruited a group of local volunteers to help homeless and low-income families secure affordable private housing.
With a current waitlist of more than 7,000 applicants, HACLA’s Section 8 Housing Assistance Program provides qualifying applicants (based on income level and other criteria) with much needed vouchers to subsidize the cost of their monthly rent.
To partially offset the impact of federal funding cuts, more than a dozen newly trained HACLA volunteers will fulfill various administrative tasks, offer translation services and most importantly, work closely with clients to apply for Section 8 housing vouchers.
According to HACLA’s Section 8 program director, Peter Lynn, United Way’s continuing efforts in volunteer recruitment and other areas have created a win-win situation for all parties involved.
“These volunteers are making a selfless commitment, one which we believe can be very rewarding and bring them a great deal of satisfaction,” he said. “As for the most vulnerable families in L.A. who will now be able to maintain their housing, it means just as much because it shows them that they matter to the broader community.”
“Our partnership with United Way has really extended the reach of government programs and ensures that both of our organizations can better serve homeless and extremely low-income residents by affording them the extra time and attention they need.”
*Above, staff members from United Way and HACLA conduct a volunteer screening interview.
In an unprecedented response, Los Angeles County residents donated 315,000 pounds of food to the Stamp Out Hunger food drive last Saturday, May 12.
The annual drive, which is sponsored by the National Association of Letter Carriers in partnership with United Way of Greater LA, is in its second decade. Every year, the effort provides critical support to millions of American families who are struggling to make ends meet.
In 2011, 88,000 pounds of canned and non-perishable goods was collected. This year’s haul represents a 358% increase!
The challenge that arises from this amazing generosity? Sorting and distributing the food. Volunteers are needed rightnow in a warehouse near Downtown L.A.
If you can spare a few hours out of your day to help local families in need, please click hereto sign up!
For more information, please contact Volunteer Services Manager Jessica Yas at jyas@unitedwayla.org or (213) 808-6463.
The Home For Good Summit was held on February 23, 2013. With over 300 members of the public, private, nonprofit, business, government, faith and philanthropic sectors in attendance, the Business Leaders Task Force on Homelessness celebrated Home for Good’s Year One achievements and the official launch of Year Two. Watch the video below for some highlights from the day’s events!
Wells Fargo employees from across the County recently put their financial expertise to the test at Mt. Gleason Middle School in Sunland by tutoring kids on the importance of managing their money.
As a part of the company’s instructional Hands-On Banking program, volunteers spoke with roughly 200 students about creating a personal budget, balancing monthly income with monthly expenses and understanding the difference between buying what you want and buying what you need.
The Giving Keys is an organization that works to end homelessness on the streets of Los Angeles, one person at a time. It all started with a couple holding a sign that said “Ugly, Hungry & Broke.” Founder Caitlin Crosby was walking along Hollywood Boulevard after a screening of Invisible Children when she came upon Cera and Rob, a homeless couple that would become her business partners in founding The Giving Keys. Caitlin began paying Cera and Rob to engrave keys with words of empowerment such as “LOVE,” “STRENGTH,” “HOPE,” “BELIEVE,” etc. to be put on necklaces. Once a key is purchased, it must eventually be given away to a person who you believe needs the message. As the employees of The Giving Keys pound each empowering word into each key, they are working to transition out of homelessness and into better lives. Two years later, Cera is working at the zoo, while Rob is attending community college. Caitlin Crosby believes that continuously pounding away at a meaningful word really allows the person to embrace the message that the word brings. Engraving “STRENGTH” into a key, for instance, reminds the person to be strong through this transition. Engraving “BELIEVE” into a key reminds the person to continue to believe in the process, that working to better themselves will pay off. The key is then passed from person to person, allowing an unlimited amount of people to feel the message. And it all starts with the homeless. This interconnectedness lets us know that we are not alone, and when the key is passed along, you are encouraged to go back to thegivingkeys.com to share your story and inspire others. All of the proceeds from The Giving Keys go to the homeless working to engrave the keys, and the organization hopes to set up an organization in the future that incorporates all of the tools the homeless need to transition, including drug rehabilitation, job counseling, and skills training.
My name is Christina Simmons and aside from being a wife to a former U.S. Marine and mother of an inquisitive and free-spirited seven-year-old boy, I am also a woman who has had to overcome my fair share of challenges in life.
Years ago, when my husband Lloyd joined the Marine Corps and was deployed overseas for the very first time, I immediately buried myself in work – foolishly believing that the busier I was, the less worried I’d be about his safety. But I still couldn’t help but wonder when, or even if, I would get to see him again.
I made the tough decision to give up my job at Kinecta Federal Credit Union and move to Camp Pendleton so my husband and I could start a family. But the joy of welcoming little Joshua into the world soon gave way to much harder times. Lloyd was deployed twice more and while he was away, I was basically a single mother doing everything on my own.
Back then, we were living paycheck to paycheck and struggling to feed our small family. Money was so tight that I’d often give him heavier portions at dinner, claiming I was full and then secretly eating a bowl of cereal after he went to sleep.
Once we returned home to Culver City, it was extremely difficult to find work. I even tried going back to the credit union, but because of the recession, they were no longer hiring.
The Bankworks program at United Way partner, Jewish Vocational Services, couldn’t have come at a better time. It offers training in the fundamentals of banking, builds your confidence and really brings out the best in you. Within two days of graduating, I received three job offers and happily accepted a position at US Bank!
Lloyd and I are slowly catching up on bills and things are finally returning to normal. My dream is for us to build stable careers which not only allow us to support ourselves but to send our son to college one day.
As a mother, there’s nothing I cherish more than being able to provide a brighter future for my family.
*Christina (second from left) is pictured here on her graduation day with husband Lloyd (second from right) and staff members from United Way and JVS.
In celebration of its recent anniversary, United Way Worldwide presented Bank of America, Deloitte, Illinois Tool Works, Microsoft and Wells Fargo with the prestigious 2012 Summit Award for their respective contributions to its 125-year-old global movement.
Recognized for their philanthropic, volunteer engagement and community impact efforts, these companies have demonstrated a comprehensive commitment to bettering the lives of others through ongoing involvement with local chapters of the organization such as United Way of Greater Los Angeles.
Bank of America raised $35 million through its UW workplace campaign while its employees volunteered 1.5 million hours nationwide. In 2011, its support of the free income tax assistance program helped secure $800 million in refunds for low-income families. By the end of the 2013 tax season, Bank of America will have invested $6.5 million in United Way’s financial stability initiatives.
Deloitte raised $21 million through its workplace campaign and boasts more UW Tocqueville Society members (giving upwards of $10,000 each year) than any other corporation in the country. It has pledged $110 million worth of pro bono work to leading nonprofits and provides key research to spark advances in corporate philanthropy and volunteering through its annual Volunteer IMPACT Survey.
Illinois Tool Works raised $11 million through its workplace campaign thanks to a dollar-for-dollar match program which incentivizes participation and leadership giving of $1,000 or more per year. ITW’s employees put in nearly 3,600 volunteer hours and its annual UW video is created in collaboration with area high school students, Boys and Girls Clubs’ members and a nonprofit creative arts foundation.
Microsoft donated $100 million as well as $844 million in software to nonprofits and educational institutions in 2011, with United Way remaining the single largest recipient of employee gifts and corporate matching funds since the company’s Community Affairs program was created. Microsoft also provided a $17 per hour match for volunteering employees who recorded more than 426,000 hours of charitable work last year.
Wells Fargo raised $56 million through its UW workplace campaign while its employees volunteered 1.5 million hours of their time in 2011 alone. In addition to creating a unique Volunteer Leave Program which offers team members up to four months of fully paid leave to work on local school or nonprofit projects, the company generously donated a total of $213 million to various charitable organizations.
Click here to see photos from the awards ceremony!
A group of funders in Los Angeles—both philanthropic and public― recently announced a single$42 million Request for Proposals (RFP) for projects providing housing and supportive services for people identified as chronically homeless. The RFP will distribute $5 million in private funds contributed by 11 different philanthropic funders and $37 million in public funds contributed by seven agencies across two cities and the county. It is anticipated that these funds will leverage an additional $33 million in public resources after the grants are awarded.
Isn’t this the same Los Angeles that has long been characterized as dysfunctional in its governance, lacking philanthropic leadership, and fractured in collaborative spirit?
Stakeholders in Los Angeles have been able to overcome this stereotype through active, patient efforts to create systems change, and philanthropy has been at the center of it. Over the past eight years, philanthropic organizations have been working to build capacity in the public and nonprofit sectors to better align housing, health, and other systems. Providers and public sector leaders have responded with increased attention and funding for permanent supportive housing for the chronically homeless residents of Los Angeles. City and county agencies have collaborated on funding supportive housing, and providers are integrating outreach, health, and housing efforts to help the neediest access and stay in housing. Philanthropy has been a quiet partner in many of these efforts; most recently it stepped forward to encourage stakeholders to consciously align our collective resources to create a more predictable and efficient system for funding supportive housing efforts.
Over the past couple years, the LA Homeless Funders Group, a regional affiliate of Funders Together, has been learning about and discussing the concept of pooling our philanthropic funds to incentivize aligned funding from our public sector partners. Although this type of alignment has happened on an ad hoc basis, grantees remained frustrated with having to go separately to dozens of funders to allow them to do the important work of helping move people from the streets into supportive housing. Moreover, for those of us seeking quantifiable declines in the numbers of persons on our streets and in shelters, there was no common method for coordinating our resources to do so.
In 2010, a new opportunity emerged with the release of the Home For Good Action Plan, which quickly garnered broad support to end chronic and veteran homelessness in Los Angeles County by 2016. Currently at more than 100 signatories, the plan has for the first time given the nonprofit, public, business, and philanthropic sectors in Los Angeles a common approach to addressing homelessness to rally around. For years, there had been talk among other public and private funders about creating a coordinated funding mechanism, but learning from other Funders Together members, such as the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation, we came to the conclusion that it might take philanthropy to catalyze such an effort. In August 2010, the board of the Conrad N. Hilton Foundation approved a $1 million challenge grant to seed the Funders Collaborative. As evidenced in the release of the RFP, the response by philanthropy and our public funding partners has been rapid and overwhelmingly positive.
United Way of Greater Los Angeles, which issued the Home For Good Action Plan in partnership with the Los Angeles Area Chamber of Commerce, has very ably led the process of developing the RFP and is managing the pooled philanthropic funds. An engaged workgroup of public and private funders― including those who are contributing funds through the RFP, but also others who have not contributed this year but have expressed interest in possibly doing so in the future―have worked diligently to develop the values and funding priorities in the RFP. We look forward to announcing funding decisions in July and will keep partners across the country informed of our challenges, progress and lessons learned through Funders Together and other venues.
We do not have any illusions that the Funders Collaborative on its own will solve the vexing problem of homelessness in Los Angeles, and it hasn’t emerged in a vacuum. Rather, it is the result of years of work by committed stakeholders across public, philanthropic, and provider sectors. They have made progress, but needed a little push to do the difficult work of pooling and aligning funding toward a common goal. That is a perfect role for philanthropy and, we believe, a bet worth making.
Congratulations to our local corporate partners: Bank of America, Deloitte LLP, Microsoft Corporation, Wells Fargo and ITW . They were all winners of United Way’s highest national awards for corporate citizenship and community impact at the Community Leaders Conference in Nashville, Tennesee, May 1-4, 2012.
On May 2, 2012, Mark Horvath from Invisible People wrote a blog about the proposed Community Care Facilities Ordinance. The article was featured on the Huffington Post. This is what Mark had to say:
“I hate politics. I do. Politics always seem so complicated — I like things simple. Plus, to me, politics means “lots of talk and little action.” I’d rather just start working hard to make things better than to waste years arguing who is right or wrong. But obviously if you’re someone like me who gives their all to fight homelessness, politics cannot be avoided. That’s the case with the Community Care Facilities Ordinance. Here I am minding my own business, just trying to build Invisible People while battling my own survival, and I start to hear all this chatter about some law that could hurt what little affordable housing we have now.
From what I understand Councilmember Mitchell Englander, representing 12th District Northwest San Fernando Valley, is proposing a citywide ordinance in an attempt to regulate sober living homes. But it looks like the ordinance is based on NIMBYism and may drastically reduce affordable housing for disabled, veterans, elderly, homeless, and other marginalized people.”
In discussing why the ordinance is bad news for affordable housing in Los Angles, Mark references housing advocates, Greg Spiegel -Director of Policy and Communications at Inner City Law Center- and Kerry Morrison – Executive Director of Hollywood Business Improvement District, who agree that the ordinance will have devastating effects throughout the city. Mark urges readers to take an important step to stop this harmful ordinance:
“We can stop this! The United Way [disclosure: former client] has listed all of Los Angeles’s council member’s contact info along with a nifty tool to create a letter on this blog post. The office for Councilmember Englander twitter account is here and maybe he’s listening. Please be respectful, but please let Councilmember Englandar know how you feel about this insane ordinance that’s headed down a path to cost tax payers lots of money.”
