Statements
Mission
Empowering our homeless neighbors to achieve income, dignity, and community.
Background
Established in 2007, The Contributor began as a street newspaper offering a distinctive income and employment opportunity for individuals experiencing homelessness. Vendors purchase the biweekly newspaper for $0.50 per issue and sell them for $2 each. Over the years, this initiative has evolved into a multifaceted organization, engaging over 4,000 chronically homeless vendors and distributing more than 7 million papers, generating an impressive $20 million in vendor income.
At The Contributor, we are dedicated to fostering a unique ecosystem that prioritizes the self-determination of those we engage-the chronically homeless. Our community provides them with a platform to voice their stories and the opportunity to thrive through various programs such as:
Paper Sales Vending Program: Providing vendors with a sustainable source of income and employment.
SOAR Programs: Offering supportive services by Certified Peer Recovery Specialists to engage individuals to receive care surrounding medical barriers to income and apply for SSDI and SSI.
Case Management: Facilitating personalized support to address individual needs, and obtain identification, housing navigation, health care and SNAP food benefits.
Evidence-based Critical Time Intervention Program: Assisting vendors in accessing housing and navigating critical transitions.
Additionally, our COVER program enhances these efforts by providing housing services to help vendors secure and maintain stable housing, build community connections, and access essential resources such as health insurance and nutritional support
Impact
In 2023 Our participants success "by the numbers"
STATS:
Unique services applied for: 6311
Individuals Served: 418
New individuals permanently housed: 51
Individuals provided housing stability funds: 124
Individuals provides supportive services (identification, transportation, education): 311
Bus Passes disbursed: 4891
SNAP benefits applied and continued: 196
New SSDI benefits obtained: 15
Lifeline phones distributed: 47
Snap E&T: 97
Health Insurance obtained: 58
# of Papers purchased by SNAP E&T newspaper vendors: 163,000
# of vendors meeting goal 320
# of MAP badges earned 21
Amount of Income reported by participants in our SNAP E&T program: $800,000
Needs
At The Contributor, we are dedicated to fostering a unique ecosystem that prioritizes the self-determination of those we engage-the chronically homeless. Our community provides them with a platform to voice their stories and the opportunity to thrive through various programs such as our paper sales vending program, SOAR programs, case management, and our Evidence-based Critical Time Intervention program.
Our current most pressing needs are as follows:
Donations for Operating Overhead: As we continue to expand, ensuring superior accounting and experienced management is crucial. While we maintain low overhead costs, the need for unrestricted funds is paramount. We budget $200,000 annually to cover essential operational expenses.
Volunteers for Office Support and Sales: Volunteers play a pivotal role in our model's success by working directly in our office and interacting with our vendors. They assist in selling newspapers and contribute significantly to the engagement and empowerment of our participants.
Board Members: As existing Board Members complete their terms, we actively seek talented individuals willing to lend their expertise. Effective board governance is essential to our mission of engaging and supporting our community effectively.
CEO Statement
Community, Dignity, Self-Determination. The Contributor provides all three: a community of volunteers who love our homeless neighbors and a city that learns to love them. Work that gives people who have lost hope a sense of power over their destiny and a reason to get up in the morning and pursue their goals. Dignity that comes from selling out of the paper that first time, building their business, making friends, and working with our staff to get their documents and find housing where they can stay clean and eat healthy. Nashvillians come in all shapes, sizes, colors, personalities, intellect and income and backgrounds. But we ARE neighbors living together in ONE community. AS our vendors work with dignity to improve their quality of life, they become better neighbors. And having good neighbors makes our quality of life better too.
The Contributor is known for helping our homeless neighbors establish their own micro-businesses and work their way into housing through selling an award-winning street paper. Contributor "vendors" earn immediate income, establish meaningful relationships, regain their dignity, and become Contributors to the community.
What you may not know is The Contributor now does housing and resource navigation, and full-case management. Vendors who come to buy the paper can now receive assistance applying for food stamps, birth certificates, ID's, health insurance, and housing. They can work with our SOAR trained, Certified Peer Recovery Specialists, engage their medical barriers and apply for SSDI and SSI. Having both, the "work" program of Contributor newspaper sales and the C.O.V.E.R. wrap around program, exponentially reinforces the success and dignity of the vendors experiencing homelessness in a way that either alone just cannot do.
Board Chair Statement
For 13 years The Contributor has been ending homelessness one small business at at time, but the pandemic threatened to disrupt small businesses in particular. In response, we dropped our wholesale paper price to our vendors in half with the help of our donors. Your donations will help us continue to pass the savings directly to them, and your donations will multiply 4-6 times in our vendors' pockets as they leverage their micro businesses to find housing. And our housing navigators are working harder than ever to help our vendors find and keep their housing during this pandemic.
Homelessness is by definition a fracture in our society, technically classified as "living in a space not meant for human habitation." Our homeless neighbors don't choose to opt out of society. They have fallen into a fracture. Giving our vendors a documentable business selling our street paper, The Contributor, gives them a foundation from which to climb out.
Navigating from homelessness to housing is hard. First, it requires a documentable income. For our vendors, it starts with getting a job, or rather a business selling The Contributor. We train homeless men and women to start a business buying newspapers wholesale from us and selling them retail to you. Don't just tip our vendors, value the paper they sell and take it so they can grow their businesses. They use their invoice records from buying their papers from us to prove they have a business. Every time they sell out, they are encouraged to buy more and build up their documentable business. It is this income record that qualifies them for housing.
Our housing navigators work diligently with our vendors to apply and prepare them for housing and stabilizing services. Your support will help us to continue this vital work. Long time vendor John Henry moved into housing this spring, escaping the gravity of the fracture in our city that is homelessness. Many others are on their path to housing as well.
Your donations will encourage vendors to keep believing in themselves by keeping their overhead low and their income up.
Service Categories |
|
| Primary Category: | Employment - Job Training |
| Secondary Category: | Housing, Shelter - Housing Support |
| Tertiary Category: | Civil Rights, Social Action, Advocacy - Alliances & Advocacy |
Areas Served
We are based in Nashville, but our newspaper vendors sell in surrounding counties. Our subscription and Contributor-live digital model broaden our customer base to anywhere in the US.
| TN - Davidson |
| TN - Sumner |
| TN - Williamson |
