WHY WE EXIST
Aligning Funders. Advancing Solutions.
Our Vision
A Minnesota where every person has a safe, stable home they can afford.
Our Mission
Mobilize philanthropy to strengthen Minnesota’s housing and homelessness ecosystem.
Our Values
Collaboration
We bring funders and partners together, building trust and alignment for lasting change.
Opportunity
We prioritize solutions that give every Minnesotan access to a safe, stable home, no matter where they start.
Responsiveness
We listen, learn, and adapt based on people’s experiences and data insights.
Inclusion
We strive for people most affected to help define problems, guide decisions, and see themselves in the outcomes.
Strategic Influence
We act boldly and with purpose to unlock solutions and drive change beyond what any single funder can achieve alone.
Our Approach
Foundations for Home strengthens Minnesota’s housing ecosystem by investing in the connections, tools, and infrastructure that help partners move forward together.
We are guided by the Water of Systems Change framework. This framework identifies six conditions that shape systems change:
Policies
The rules that shape how people can get housing and support, including eligibility requirements, rental protections, and access to assistance programs.
Practices
The everyday ways housing providers and agencies work, like how they screen tenants or handle evictions.
Resource Flows
How money and information move through the system, including public funding, grants, and tax credits.
Relationships
How housing organizations, funders, government, and residents work together — or don’t.
Power
Who gets to make decisions about housing and whose voices are heard.
Mental Models
The beliefs people hold about housing, like whether it’s a basic need or just a market product.
Our History
For more than two decades, Minnesota’s philanthropic community has worked together to tackle housing instability and homelessness through this funders collaborative. Minnesota’s first statewide plan to end homelessness launched in 2004. In response, community leaders came together to align private resources and strategies behind that vision, laying the foundation for what is now Foundations for Home.
Early efforts brought business, community, and philanthropic leaders around one table to accelerate investments and raise awareness. In 2013, that spirit of collaboration became formal with the creation of the Heading Home Minnesota Funders Collaborative. Since then, we have aligned millions in resources, provided critical early infrastructure in Minnesota’s effort to end Veteran homelessness, helped launched statewide initiatives such as Homework Starts with Home, coordinated emergency responses during COVID-19, championed strategies that embed lived experience and narrative change into housing systems, and more.
In 2026, we became Foundations for Home, a name that reflects our commitment to building the relationships, tools, and infrastructure that make housing systems work better for people. Today, we continue to mobilize philanthropy for lasting solutions because when funders move forward together, Minnesota moves closer to a future where everyone has a safe, stable home.
