WHEN FAMILIES ARE SAFE TONIGHT, THEY CAN BEGIN BUILDING A FUTURE TOMORROW.
Working families in our community are facing rising costs in nearly every part of daily life and unexpected setbacks can quickly threaten a family’s stability. More families are seeking help, and timing matters. Families Together works alongside parents and children experiencing homelessness, helping them move quickly from crisis to stable housing. Because every safe night matters—and safe nights create the foundation for hopeful futures.
What Becomes Possible After SafetY
Recently, our Executive Director, Jennifer Paul, was walking into the Families Together office when she noticed a woman sitting in her car outside our building, the window rolled down as she took photos of the shelter apartments. When Jennifer stopped to say hello, the woman explained why she had come.
Thirty years ago, she and her children had lived here while working to rebuild stability after experiencing homelessness. Families Together helped them move from shelter into permanent housing. Now, decades later, she had returned to show her family where that turning point began. As she spoke with our staff, she held her phone out the window, excitedly sharing photos of her son. When asked how she and her family were doing today, she turned with a wide smile and said simply: “We’re doing great.”
Moments like this remind us that the impact of safe housing reaches far beyond a single night of shelter. When families find stability, the possibilities for strong futures grow for generations.
Community Care Builds Safe Nights and Hopeful Futures
Here are the many ways you can help create safe nights—and hopeful futures—for families.
Give a Financial Gift
$1,500 – Removes the barrier of rental and utility deposits for a family moving to stable housing creating more safe nights and hopeful futures.
$750 – Provides 25 hours of education and employment guidance to help parents and adult children build pathways to long-term success.
$300 – Connects three families to health care support, helping establish a strong and healthy foundation for the future.
$150 – Provides one safe night of shelter for a family facing homelessness.
$75 – Provides transportation for 10 middle and high school students to visit a local college and imagine new possibilities for their futures.
Your gift helps create safe nights today—and hopeful futures tomorrow.
Donate Children’s Books
Families Together is collecting new or gently used books for children ages 3–11 for our Free Little Libraries to share with families in our program.
We especially welcome books that reflect the diversity of our community and help children see themselves—and the possibilities ahead—in the stories they read.
Every child deserves the chance to fall asleep with a story—and dream about the future ahead.
Interested in organizing a small book drive or donating books from your collection? Reach out to Lucy Jones, Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator, at Lucy@FamiliesTogetherNC.org for drop-off details.
Share a Family Recipe
This spring, two generous organizations are providing pantry staples for families in our program. We need your help collecting recipes that transform ingredients such as canned tomatoes, green beans, corn, and condensed soup into simple, nourishing meals.
Do you have a favorite recipe that uses primarily canned goods or shelf-stable ingredients? Send your recipe and the story behind it to Lucy Jones, Volunteer and Outreach Coordinator, at Lucy@FamiliesTogetherNC.org.
We’ll select 2 to 3 recipes at the beginning of May to use when building meal kits for our families—connecting your family’s table with theirs.
Interested in supplying the missing ingredients or assembling meal kits? Lucy would love to hear from you.
Share Our Story
Help us reach more families by sharing the Safe Nights, Hopeful Futures campaign with your friends, colleagues, and community.
Follow Families Together on social media, share campaign updates, or invite us to speak with your group about how our community is working together to ensure every family has a safe place to sleep—and the opportunity to build a hopeful future.
A HUGE THANK YOU to everyone who joined us on our Double Match Day, showing your support in creating the Safe Nights that lead to Hopeful Futures for local children and their families experiencing housing instability in our community. Your generosity on such a special day means even more families searching for safe and stable housing can find the resources they need to find solid ground and a path forward.
Thanks to 20 incredibly generous local families who created the $70,000 match fund that inspired and empowered donors to maximize their impact, you all raised $48,000! That's $48,000 that are now DOUBLED IN IMPACT and immediately being put to work helping twice as many local families access support services so that they can achieve stable homes where kids can sleep soundly and parents can breathe again. The remaining match funds will be held in reserve for our end of campaign match period and will allow individuals who missed yesterday's match another opportunity to maximize their impact for local families in crisis.
It fills us with joy to see how our family of supporters cares for fellow members of our community who are working hard every day to leave uncertainty behind and looking towards bright, hopeful futures. Families Together knows that ending family homelessness in Wake County is a tough task, but we also know that with compassionate and dedicated community members like you, we can make a difference.
Become a Match Funder
Inspire Hundreds. Multiply Impact.
One of the most powerful ways to support Safe Nights and Hopeful Futures is by becoming a Match Funder.
This campaign’s Double Challenge Match Goal: $75,000
When you commit as a Match Funder, your gift encourages others to give—magnifying the impact for families with children experiencing homelessness.
THANK YOU SO MUCH to everyone who joined us for our virtual panel event, From Safe Nights to Hopeful Futures - How Community Support Helps Families Move From Crisis To Stability. We hope it was as engaging and motivating for you as it was for us. We'd also like to give a HUGE thank you to our panelists - Faith Godfrey, Kenneth Nixon, and Lucy Jones - who gave us such wonderful and important insight to how their work all comes together to make sure families have secure, dignified living spaces that allow them to, as Erin mentioned, "have that inhale, exhale moment," and know with certainty that their story is not over.
If you weren't able to attend the event, no worries! We've got you covered. A full recording of the panel discussion has been uploaded to our YouTube channel - click the link below to watch