Your Way Home Montgomery County Receives 2016 HUD’s Secretary Award for Public–Private Partnerships- Housing and Community Development in Action
On April 10, 2016, the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, in partnership with the Council on Foundations, named Your Way Home Montgomery County one of the 10 winners of an awards program to recognize community foundations for the excellent work they do along with their public partners in the areas of housing and community development.
The Secretary’s Award for Community Foundations recognizes excellence in public-philanthropic partnerships that have both transformed the relationship between the sectors and led to measurable benefits in terms of increased economic employment, health, safety, education, sustainability, inclusivity and cultural opportunities, and/or housing access for low and moderate-income families.
The Montgomery County Foundation Inc. is the fiscal sponsor for the Your Way Home Fund, a pooled fund for grants, gifts and donations that are leveraged and coordinated for us by Your Way Home’s innovative Housing Resource Centers, community destinations for people experiencing or at imminent risk for homelessness to receive housing crisis response services to end or prevent their homelessness. To date, over ten regional foundations private and family foundations, as well as businesses, civic organizations, police departments and individuals have contributed resources to the Your Way Home Fund.
The Your Way Home public-private partnership was made possible through the catalytic philanthropy of the HealthSpark Foundation (formerly North Penn Community Health Foundation), whose early planning and capacity building grants and continuing commitment to Your Way Home led the way for systems transformation and collective impact. Other philanthropic leadership and support comes from the Curaterra Foundation, the Genuardi Family Foundation, the Patricia Kind Family Foundation, and the North Penn United Way, among others.
The Initiative's goal is to transform Montgomery County’s approach to serving homeless families and individuals to make the experience of homelessness rare, brief, and nonrecurring by 2020, while ensuring that families and individuals who do experience homelessness achieve housing and financial stability with better health outcomes, food security, higher quality of life, and lasting independence.
In its first two years alone, Your Way Home Montgomery County increased exits directly from shelter to permanent housing from 30% to 46%, and to date more than 94% of the people re-housed have maintained housing stability.
Marrying innovation and leverage, Your Way Home delivers a groundbreaking approach to solving a complex community problem. The participating nonprofit, philanthropic, and county government agencies embrace a common agenda, shared measurement systems, mutually reinforcing activities, continuous communication, and technical assistance from a backbone support organization augmented by dedicated consultants and county staff members.
HUD Secretary Awards are given to place-based funders for completed or ongoing initiatives that are executed in partnership with a local, regional, or federal government agency. This award highlights the power of collective impact that can be achieved through public-philanthropic partnerships between government entities and foundations.
About Your Way Home Montgomery County
Your Way Home is a public-private partnership to end and prevent homelessness in Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. For more information, visit: www.yourwayhome.org.
About HUD
HUD’s mission is to create strong, sustainable, inclusive communities and quality affordable homes for all. HUD is working to strengthen the housing market to bolster the economy and protect consumers, meet the need for quality affordable rental homes, utilize housing as a platform for improving quality of life, build inclusive and sustainable communities free from discrimination and transform the way HUD does business.
About the Council on Foundations
The Council on Foundations, formed in 1949, is a nonprofit membership association of grantmaking foundations and corporations. Council members include more than 1,700 independent, operating, community, public and company-sponsored foundations and corporate giving programs in the United States and abroad. The Council’s mission is to provide the opportunity, leadership, and tools philanthropic organizations need to expand, enhance and sustain their ability to advance the common good.