Introduction

Thank you, Jewell. I'm pleased to be here today with all of you.

Looking around the room, I see several other familiar faces. And I'm delighted that it's the case that many of the agencies that make up the Human Services Coalition of Northern Virginia are partners of ours and receive support from the Freddie Mac Foundation, or Freddie Mac's corporate community investment program.

Since 1991, Freddie Mac and the Freddie Mac Foundation have invested more than $320 million in programs and organizations that help children and young people realize their potential – and help strengthen the families and communities that they live in.

I'm proud to note that we’re one of the largest philanthropic funders in the national capital region – but I’m much more pleased to say that in addition to being a funder, increasingly we’re engaged as an active partner, as a convener, and a coalition builder with and among those organizations – many of whom are here today – and whose work we've helped fund, and how each day are conceiving of new and better and more effective ways to meet the basic needs of vulnerable and deserving families in our midst.

What I’m saying here is that we’re deeply invested in the life-changing outcomes you’re achieving for those you serve – and we’re especially focused on the multitude of ways we can help you build capacity and expertise, gain efficiencies, and achieve sustainable scale.

As a large corporate funder in the neighborhood, we’re very aware of the fact that our resources (whether we’re talking about funding, technical assistance, expertise, or our ability to act as a convener) – these resources, and also how we deploy them, can help shape how, and how well critical services are delivered throughout our region. It’s a big responsibility. But it’s a responsibility that we don’t have to undertake on our own. We’ve got all of you.

You know, there’s an old saying that goes something like this: “if you want to go fast, go alone. But if you want to go far, go with others.”

And thankfully, that’s in fact what we do when we partner with one another, especially when we do it with the purpose of serving others. These partnerships allow us to go far – to make headway, and the headway we make is that we give people tools, and we give them the where-with-all to sustain their personal growth and development.

So Freddie Mac and I are grateful to those of you who are our grantees, to those of you who are our partners (our co-conspirators for good, if you will), and also to those of you with whom we may not have worked directly, but who’s work we know about – and whose work is transforming lives that need transforming, or perhaps that just need some strategic, some timely, [or] some well placed intervention and help.

So thank you. Thank you for all your outstanding work, for the efforts you’re making, and more importantly, for the results you’re achieving.

Challenges & Changes: Behind the Headlines

Listening to Cheri Zeman’s [ZEE-men] State of Human Services address this afternoon, it’s clear that Northern Virginia’s nonprofit community is dealing with unprecedented challenges.

Now most of us are familiar with the major issues that affect our region – from the affordable housing crunch, the sub-prime crisis, to controversies over immigration, and the health and well being of our children. But few of us know about the human stories behind the headlines the way you do. You all are on the frontline, serving the people who are affected by these issues every day.

But you know as well as I do that no matter how committed you are, you just can’t go it alone. There simply isn’t any single entity – be it a high performing nonprofit, government or business – that can hope to solve these problems alone. Communication, collaboration, and coordination are vital. Working together, sharing – and not replicating either our strengths or our weaknesses is one of the ways we can maximize the opportunities we have to provide the resources that empower people in need to improve their life prospects in permanent, sustainable ways.

The focus of today’s luncheon – partnering to create stable homes and stable families – is a prime example. It’ll take – quite literally – our combined efforts, our sustained efforts, our going together to go far.

Addressing Homelessness, Stabilizing Homes and Families

Addressing Homelessness and stabilizing vulnerable families has long been part of Freddie Mac’s philanthropic emphasis, but in recent years these issues have taken on greater urgency, and as a result we’ve increased our attention and focus on them.

In 2006, Freddie Mac and the Freddie Mac Foundation partnered with Gerry Connolly and the Fairfax County Board of Supervisors to convene the Community Summit to End Homelessness.

I know that many of you in this room provide critical services to homeless people, or to people who are in danger of becoming homeless. An chances are that many of you attended the Summit, and shared your ideas and experiences, along with other local and national through leaders and service providers.

Since the Summit, we’ve worked hard to stay the course, to remain actively involved in helping develop the 10-year plan to end homelessness in Fairfax County. [Now at this point I have to interject here to say that personally I love the fundamental premise of this plan. Note that’s it’s not a plan to “deal with,” or to “ameliorate” the effects of, or to “manage” the problem of homelessness – rather, it’s a plan to end homelessness. It’s ambitious, but it’s necessary ambition, it seems to me.

And we Freddie Mac folk (people) share this ambition. We feel a sense of urgency about the plan’s ultimate objective of ending homelessness in our area, and we want to be a party of the ongoing commitment, the collective mission, and the covenant (if you will) that’s necessary to accomplish our goal.

And that’s why Freddie Mac hosts our annual Hoops for the Homeless event at the Verizon Center each year. Many of you know that Hoops is a 3-on-3 basketball tournament that raises funds for a number of local non profits that provide services to children and families who are homeless – including several coalition members. [Carpenters’ Shelter, New Hope Housing, Reston Interfaith, SERVE, and Shelter House.]

Equally important (although perhaps less tangible) is the fact that Hoops raises awareness and provides important information about homelessness in the National Capital region, and nationally as well. And it also engages our business partners on the issue.

I think we all appreciate the fact that good information is a prerequisite to understanding, and also to the commitments and constructive actions that flow from it. Hoops is a high profile, visible event, and we put it to good use to raise the profile of homelessness and to raise the money that will support eh work directed at ending homelessness in our community in the foreseeable future.

In similar fashion, our corporate Foundation has broadened its focus to provide more programmatic support for children and families in crisis by funding more transitional and supportive housing initiatives. These programs help stabilize vulnerable families. They help these families become self-sufficient, and in the best cases they actually transform these families’ socio—economic prospects from mere survival, to sustainable stability, to what I describe as a prosperity trajectory.

Now I’ve seen with my own eyes the impact transitional and supportive housing can have on families and communities. Last fall, I met a warm, smart, savvy, and engaging – yet still struggling single mother named Pam who had pulled her life together after enduring an abusive marriage. She was one of the first residents to take advantage of an expanded transitional housing program in Prince William County that Northern Virginia Family Service operates.

When I met Pam, she was employed, her kids were in school, and she was an upbeat, caring, involved mother of two who saw a future that held increasing possibilities and probabilities for her and her family. And as a result, her personal aspirations had changed, but more importantly her expectations for herself and her children had changed. Pam is a success story that demonstrates what effective transitional and supportive housing programs can help achieve. She’s also representative of our region’s formerly homeless people, at least the ones we in this room are able to reach with our programs. It’s faces and stories like Pam’s that bring home the value of our working together.

Now we’re also increasing our support for resident services programs in affordable and public housing developments, and we’re encouraging governments and nonprofits to partner with us in providing comprehensive, supportive services to vulnerable families in residential settings. These are services that will keep people like Pam and her family together, safely housed, and increasingly successful.

Our experience and recent research make it pretty clear that resident services programs are an efficient and cost effective way of bringing meaningful social services to residents of affordable housing. Indeed, there’s abundant, emerging evidence that resident services are as essential as bricks and mortar are to the survival, stability, and well-being of families in need. At this point, it’s pretty clear that there’s a strong nexus between successful affordable housing developments and effective resident service programs.

Job training, financial literacy, and after school programs for at risk children are just some of the elements that make resident services programs a decisive factor in transforming the socio-economic fortunes of financially strapped families, depressed properties, and vulnerable communities.

As one analyst summed up the situation, “residential services are the link between physical assets and human potential.”

Now that’s good news. But there’s even more good news, and it’s that there’s a powerful business case to be made for resident services in affordable housing developments. There’s now compelling empirical evidence that well executed resident services programs materially – and very favorably impact the financial performance of affordable housing properties, in measurable ways. [refer to the Enterprise / Mercy Housing study, the results of which were release this past summer]

This research – and what it demonstrates is so important for the development sustainable, affordable housing. This is because the business model for affordable developments is an increasingly a “dicey” proposition to begin with, especially during periods where capital markets are depleted of liquidity, and insurance markets are stressed and providers respond with unforgiving premiums.

As many of you know, affordable developments rely on a complex mix of conventional bank financing, public financing through vehicles like mortgage revenue bonds and low income tax credits – and philanthropic support from corporations and foundations. Therefore, anything that decreases unit costs, and increases the overall financial performance of a housing development increases the sustainability of affordable rents – and the quality of the overall multi-family, rental housing experience for the vulnerable families we serve.

Corporate and Foundation Funding

Now that’s a small sampling of our work in the community. Last year, we made about $35 million in philanthropic investments – with $26 million going to local organizations.

At this point, let me take just a couple minutes to say a little bit how we go about making decisions about our community investments.

At Freddie Mac, we make our philanthropic investments through two vehicles – one is our corporate giving and community investment program, and the other is through the Freddie Mac Foundation.

In on the corporate philanthropy side, when deciding what investments to make, we ask ourselves several questions: First – does proposed investment advance our mission affordable housing? In this context, we’re looking to support partnerships with high performing affordable housing nonprofits. For example, some of these partnerships are with larger organizations such as Habitat for Humanity, Enterprise Community Partners, NeighborWorks, and the National Alliance to End Homelessness.

Second – does it help demonstrate and model good corporate citizenship? In other words, are we acting in a way that demonstrates leadership and corporate social responsibility in the communities that we work and live in? And here we try to do this through our Board Leadership Training Program that is designed to equip Freddie Mac directors and officers with the skills and expertise they need to provide sound volunteer leadership for local nonprofits.

Third – we ask ourselves whether a particular request helps us maintain, build and strengthen key business relationships? IN these situations we often have the opportunity to partner in the community investment arena with companies who are our customers or business partners on the for-profit side of Freddie Mac.

And finally we also ask ourselves whether a particular request for support provides us with an opportunity to engage our employees in ways that bolster employee morale? I must say that over the years we’ve learned that this is an important consideration for many of our employees in their decisions to join Freddie Mac – and to stay at Freddie Mac and be productive contributors, even during hard times.

On then on the other side of the Enterprise, the Freddie Mac Foundation’s philanthropy focuses on working with nonprofits that make a measurable difference in the lives of vulnerable children and families. Out investment strategy focuses on several considerations.

We partner with nonprofits that specialize in providing services in several key areas; including promoting adoption and foster care, enhancing youth development, and creating stable homes and families.

We work with groups that have a proven track record. We use an outcomes based approach, where we closely monitor the results of our investments. This is an increasingly important consideration for us and other major funders as well.

On the Foundation side, our investments are area specific, that is we work mainly with nonprofits dedicated to helping families and children in the National Capital Region.

Responding to Immediate Needs

That said however, our investments are also based on meeting urgent, critical and immediate needs. They can be in director response to pressing national and urgent needs, such as providing emergency funds for local nonprofit agencies during the economic downturn that followed 9/11, or aiding Gulf South communities devastated by Hurricanes Katrina and Rita in 2005.

In the wake of the hurricanes, Freddie Mac and Freddie Mac Foundation made sizeable investments of money and resources to provide relief to the Gulf Region.

A portion of that support helped families relocate to the Washington region, and we partnered with local nonprofit organizations to provide displaced families with housing and supportive services.

This is critical. I’ve spoken with a number of these New Orleans families whose lives were upended and uprooted. After relocating here without family, friends, or jobs, they faced another unexpected and jarring obstacle: the cost of living is much higher in this region. So supportive services played a significant role in helping stabilize these families’ lives – including adjusting to a different region with a different economy, a dramatically different cost of living, and in many respects a different culture.

Recently, Freddie Mac and the Freddie Mac Foundation extended our Katrina relief efforts by committing another $5 million in humanitarian aid to New Orleans – in addition to the $16 million we’ve already invested in the region. These funds will help rehabilitate and rebuild affordable housing in the city. It will also provide needed resident services to help many low-to-moderate-income families stabilize their lives.

And we’re not just sending funds to this still-recovering region. On Sunday, I’m joining 100 Freddie Mac employees traveling to New Orleans. We’ll spend the next week repairing homes for local families.

Together, these efforts will help families return to New Orleans and rebuild their lives.

Engaging New Partners

Now Freddie Mac is, by no means, the only Washington area company sharing its resources and commitment to make a difference. Many are smart, strategic, and generous with their financial support, expertise and volunteer involvement to address local, national and global needs.

Still, it’s safe to say that there is an untapped well of corporate philanthropy in the region.

Over the next few years, as local and state budgets feel the pinch brought on by lower housing prices, it will be come increasingly important to identify and cultivate new philanthropic resources. We’ll need to engage new and more partners if we’re to meet the existing and emerging needs of vulnerable people in our region.

IN order to engage more potential business partners, nonprofits will need increasingly need to speak their language – a language that focuses on concepts like performance metrics and return on investment. Business is – or at least likes to think of itself as being performance driven. We need increasingly to think in those terms if we’re going to attract and sustain their attention and resources over time.

Nonprofits need to be willing to take a hard look at their programs and services – to evaluate their effectiveness and, where necessary, make changes or collaborate with other organizations to make the best use of finite resources.

That’s why the Human Services Coalition of Northern Virginia is so valuable:

It fosters collaboration and cooperation, making it easier for members to work together.

And it enables local nonprofits to speak with one voice that cuts through the din to influence public policy and bring about change.

Provides opportunities for mutual reinforcement through events – fellowship like this.

Finally, I invite you to attend one of Freddie Mac Foundation’s Outcomes Based Training workshops. This year, we continued these quarterly workshops to help nonprofits effectively measure and document their results. I encourage you to attend one of these training sessions, if you haven’t already done so.

Thank you for inviting me to be here today. I look forward to working with many of you in the future, as we strive to make a difference for vulnerable children and families in our community.

Blessing upon you all.

Thank you.