Two metro Atlanta nonprofits aimed at helping the homeless have been named as recipients of multimillion-dollar grants from Amazon founder and CEO Jeff Bezos’ charitable organization.
The 2020 Day 1 Families Fund Awardees “include 42 organizations providing services to homeless families in 24 states. They will receive $105.9 million in funding to help provide food, shelter and support to young families across the country,” the organization stated on its website.
Among the nearly four dozen winners are two metro organizations: HOPE Atlanta and MUST Ministries. MUST Ministries, based in Marietta, will receive $5 million. HOPE Atlanta, bases in Atlanta, will receive $2.5 million.
“We feel like we got a Christmas miracle,” Dwight “Ike” Reighard, president and CEO of MUST Ministries, told The Atlanta Journal-Constitution. “We’re just very thankful.”
Reighard told the AJC that the organization will use some of the funds to build its new homeless shelter, which it broke ground on earlier this year.
HOPE Atlanta said it will use the money to provide housing and other services to an additional 1,500 families experiencing homelessness.
“As more and more families face economic hardship and housing insecurity amid COVID-19 and across our 28-county service area, this gift could not have come at a more critical time,” Jeff Smythe, HOPE Atlanta’s CEO, said in a statement to the AJC.
Bezos started the Day 1 Families Fund in 2018 to give annual grants to organizations that fight family homelessness.
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