The Connecticut Coalition to End Homelessness announced Thursday it will receive a $2.5 million grant from Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos’ Day 1 Families Fund.
Bezos launched that fund along with the Day 1 Academies Fund last year with an overall commitment of $2 billion to fund existing nonprofits that help homeless families and create a network of preschools in underserved communities.
Richard Cho, chief executive officer of the Coalition, says the “no strings attached” grant will be used to support community efforts to end -- and prevent -- family homelessness.
“One of our potential aspirations is to create an endowment that would make flexible financial assistance available in perpetuity so that we can help households and families who are on the verge of homelessness as well as those that are in shelters -- to help them, kind of, rapidly resolve their homelessness,” he said.
Cho estimates that 8,000 people a year experience homelessness in Connecticut. Cho’s organization was one of 32 nonprofits across the country selected to receive a grant.
