Statements

Mission

Empowering our homeless neighbors to achieve income, dignity, housing and community.

Background

For over 15 years, The Contributor has successfully worked with over 3800 chronically homeless individuals with a two-prong objective: providing an opportunity to immediate income and a path to permanent housing. In that regard, their primary mission has always been to assist people on the path to housing by removing or reducing obstacles Initially, this was accomplished by providing an immediate income opportunity to people who needed legitimate documented income to acquire housing. Our unique position of also publishing a street paper allowed us to create community awareness of the obstacles to housing and solutions to homelessness, distribute vital information to the homeless community, and highlight the stories of the homeless.

Our C.O.V.E.R. (Creating Opportunity for Vendor Employment, Engagement, and Resources) Rapid Rehousing and Resource Program was the natural expansion of our mission of removing another obstacle, and in 2020 we began offering specific case management support for our vendors.

Impact

In 2022 Our participants success "by the numbers"

STATS:
Unique services applied for: 5496
Individuals Served: 339
Individuals housed: 41
RRH housed: 34
Families Housed: 3
Housing applications made: 1467
RRH referred to PSH (Section 8) 25
RRH participants currently holding mainstream vouchers 10
RRH participants housed in PSH 15
Addiction Treatment services referred and obtained: 3
Continuing Education Referrals:3
Expungement Clinics: 4
Doctor's Appointments: 47
Employment Referrals: 15
SNAP benefits: 196
Lifeline phones: 47
Snap E&T: 177
Health Insurance obtained: 58
Dental Insurance: 21
Dentures: 6
Birth Certificates: 39
ID's: 41
Bus Passes disbursed: 5964
Year Long connector cards disbursed:72
Family Support Services applied: 1
SOAR applications in process: 8
# of Papers purchased by SNAP E&T newspaper vendors: 188,603
# of vendors meeting goal 320
# of MAP badges earned 21
Amount of Income reported by participants in our SNAP E&T program: $984,508

Needs

In 2023

- We are looking to grow our staff on the newspaper side to take a watchdog approach to covering homelessness and grow readership.

- We are also looking to grow and the social work side to get more vendors into housing in the next year.

- To pay for necessary documents for vendors to get into housing

- To pay for Contributor merch that rewards our vendors.

- To pay our rent for our location at Downtown Presbyterian Church.

- To pay for the production of our paper.

CEO Statement

Community, Work, Dignity. 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 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. 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