Where’s the Bezos Day One Fund’s Latest Homelessness Support Going?

Jeff Bezos is one of the wealthiest people on the planet and his philanthropy draws a lot of attention. Though overshadowed in recent years by the giving of his ex-wife, MacKenzie Scott, Bezos remains one of the top billionaire philanthropists. His giving is spread throughout three vehicles: the Bezos Earth Fund, which accounts for the majority of his giving, the Bezos Family Foundation, which is run by his parents Jackie and Mike, and the Bezos Day One Fund.

Owing perhaps to the sheer scale of the Bezos Earth Fund — and how prominent it has become in the climate funding space — the Bezos Day One Fund doesn’t get nearly as much attention. But it’s a substantial philanthropic endeavor in its own right. Launched in 2018 when Bezos and Scott were still married, the Bezos Day One Fund is a $2 billion commitment to provide support in the areas of homelessness and preschool education. Its Day 1 Families Fund focuses on backing nonprofits that offer assistance to families experiencing homelessness so that they may regain safe and stable housing, while its Day 1 Academies Fund seeks to create a network of full-scholarship, Montessori-style preschools in low-income and underserved communities.

During its sixth annual Day 1 Families Fund leadership awards, the Bezos Day One Fund recently announced it has awarded a total of $117.55 million to 38 organizations so that they can "continue their compassionate, needle-moving work to help families move from unsheltered homelessness and shelters to permanent housing with the services they require to thrive." Grantees include Abode Services, BronxWorks, Council for the Homeless, Hospitality House of Northwest North Carolina, Native American Connections, Primavera Foundation and Shelter House, Inc. The Day 1 Families Fund has awarded a total of $639.1 million to date.

Beginning with the Day 1 Families Fund’s initial funding cycle, the Bezos Day One Fund has generally taken a more traditional approach to addressing homelessness in the U.S., providing support for direct services rather than funding organizations that work to address the root causes of the homelessness crisis, which is where much of the funding in this space has trended. This stands in some contrast to the Bezos Earth Fund, which has embraced a “systems-change” approach that encompasses strategies like environmental justice, movement building and leveraging federal funding.

Support spans the country

Still, the Day 1 Families Fund’s yearly infusion of funding to address homelessness is sorely needed. Between rising rents, inflation, lack of affordable housing, stagnant wages and racial disparities, an increasing number of people across the U.S. are either experiencing homelessness or are housing-insecure. Between 2017 and 2022, homelessness rates have risen by 6%. According to the National Alliance to End Homelessness, states with the highest rates of homelessness are those on the West Coast, in New England — New York, Vermont and Maine in particular — and Alaska. Washington, D.C., also has a higher rate of people experiencing homelessness, surpassing Vermont.

As a result, funding for homelessness tends to concentrate on the coasts, which is why it is surprising — and heartening, given the fact that homelessness is hardly unique to the coasts — to see how geographically spread out Day 1 Families Fund's grants are. This recent round of grants are spread across 23 states, Washington, D.C., and Puerto Rico. Grantees represent places like Minneapolis, Minnesota, Cleveland, Mississippi; Athens, Georgia; Billings, Montana; Eau Claire, Wisconsin; Vega Alta, Puerto Rico; Pearl City, Hawaii; and Tuscaloosa, Alabama, among others.

Advisors for this year's grantees represent organizations like Urban Institute, the Corporation for Supportive Housing, Community Action Partnership, Housing Innovations and the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Grantees also include faith-based organizations, including the Catholic Charities of the Archdiocese of Miami, Inc., Catholic Community Services of Western Washington, the Salvation Army of Fort Myers Area Command and the Salvation Army of Greater Charlotte.

Making an impact

Per the fund's website, between 2018 and 2021, a selection of more than half of the Day 1 Families Fund’s grantees have reported that they've helped divert more than 28,000 families from experiencing homelessness, connect more than 30,000 unsheltered families with safe shelter, and connect more than 75,000 families to services.

This year's grantees include several organizations that have previously been awarded grants from the Bezos Day One Fund, including Catholic Community Services of Western Washington in Tacoma, Washington, and HOPE Services Hawaii in Hilo, Hawaii. The other recent grantees that have received support in the past are Crossroads Rhode Island in Providence, Rhode Island; MAHUBE-OTWA in Detroit Lakes, Minnesota; and the Salvation Army of Greater Charlotte in Charlotte, North Carolina.

According to a case study by the fund, Catholic Community Services of Western Washington (CCSWW) was able to use the grant funding it received in 2018 to connect approximately 2,400 families with needed services, provide 150 unsheltered families with shelter, and divert 450 families from homelessness. CCSWW provides a variety of services, including behavioral health support and housing support to families impacted by poverty and inequality, which research showed were disproportionately people of color.

CCSWW used the funds to support the Tacoma Ministerial Alliance, a Black-led nonprofit that works to address family homelessness, particularly among Black families. CCSWW also opened the Family Day Center in Tacoma to offer families food, laundry, shower facilities and other support, and launched a program to train advocates to work with families to help divert them from homelessness.

HOPE Services Hawaii (HOPE) is the largest homeless service provider on the island of Hawaii. As another case study outlines, after receiving a $2.75 million grant from the Bezos Day One Fund, HOPE used the support to fill operational gaps, hiring more staff to handle greater caseloads and purchasing vehicles to be able to more easily reach families in rural areas. HOPE also used the grant money to help people connect with COVID relief and CARES Act funds.

That’s not all. In addition, HOPE used the funding to scale up its efforts to provide outreach, emergency shelter, rapid rehousing and other services, launch a master leasing program to sublease rental units to families in need of housing, and provide extended support by partnering with mental health coordinators, social workers, nurse practitioners and local hospitals.

More than half of the families HOPE has served since it received the grant identify as Native Hawaiian and Other Pacific Islanders. In addition to facing the economic impacts of the pandemic, many families on the island were left unhoused after a lava eruption in Pahoa in 2018. HOPE used some of its grant to buy 14 acres of land in Pahoa to build housing for them.

"The Day 1 Families Fund grant put us on the map," said HOPE's chief executive officer, Brandee Menino, in the case study report. "It added credibility to the work we do and helped us build visibility in our community, which was so important when COVID hit and so many families needed our help. They had heard of us and knew they could turn to us."

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