Friendship Home exists to support, shelter, and advocate for victims of domestic violence and their children. Friendship Home Seeks To: Provide a continuum of safe, confidential shelter options-from emergency shelter through transitional shelter. Provide a rich array of crisis intervention services, case management, and emotional support to those we shelter as well as those who are waiting for shelter; helping them to rebuild their lives, free from fear. Address the many complexities and barriers associated with domestic violence and sexual assault on an individual level as well as a community systems level. Continue to reach out to survivors through individual advocacy, emergency case management, and support groups after they leave shelter, offering an environment where survivors feel welcome and are encouraged to share their stories and their wisdom with others.

It is Friendship Home's vision that someday the need for our services will cease to exist, that domestic violence will not be tolerated. We see a community that embraces all survivors. A community that takes bold action to affect change. A society that holds abusers accountable and allows survivors to resume lives free from fear. We see Friendship Home as a haven of new beginnings; empowering survivors and their children who take refuge within our walls. Offering acceptance and validation of the journey they have taken; Friendship Home supports them as they recover from the trauma -providing strength-centered services so they can embrace the future. Our vision for their children, who have witnessed far too much, can one day thrive and recapture the childhood they deserve. Our goal is to surround them by modeling hope, understanding and compassion. As we strive for this vision, we want our aspirations to be reflected by our services and our unwavering commitment to ending the violence.

Source: Nonprofit submitted responses

Goal One: We are launching a major gifts campaign to address an anticipated $1.6M funding gap in 2023-26.

Goal Type: This goal reflects our commitment to further our advocacy work for our organization and or cause area.

Goal Two: FH has contracted with Inclusive Communities to facilitate a year-long process to create an organizational culture where everyone can learn, communicate and work in collaboration and mutual respect.

Goal Type: This goal reflects our commitment to further our advocacy work for our organization and or cause area.

Goal Three: Improve our community’s systemic response to domestic violence and honor violence within Middle Eastern Immigrant Communities and expand Friendship Home’s services to victims from this population.

Goal Type: New program(s) based on observed changes in needs among our constituencies/communities served.

Describe an investment in leadership

Over the last 18 months, Friendship Home has supported three emerging leaders at Friendship Home (through tuition and paid time) in participating in Leadership Lincoln, a nine-month leadership training program. Two have completed the training and one began participation in September 2021.

This organization mobilizes for mission in the following ways:

• Strategic Partnerships

• Networks of Collective Impact Efforts

• Thought Leadership

• Raising Awareness

• Community Building

• Policy Advocacy

What are this organization’s external mobilizaton efforts?

Friendship Home is actively engaged in our community’s Coordinated Response, participating in the Family Violence Council’s Case Team, and the Lincoln Threat Advisory Committee. We provide consultation to our local child protective service system (within the limits of confidentiality) and participate in a number of efforts to improve the child protective system’s response to domestic violence, including a new initiative to create a special juvenile court. We are active in our local Continuum of Care, the Juvenile Justice Prevention Fund Coalition and the Juvenile Detention Alternatives Initiative. We are currently working with the Asian Community and Cultural Center to improve Lincoln’s response to victims of DV from Lincoln’s Middle Eastern Immigrant Communities. We are actively engaged with the Network of Sexual and Domestic Violence Service Providers and in their state and federal policy advocacy efforts.

The pandemic galvanized Friendship Home staff and Board in maintaining our lifesaving and life-changing services, underscoring just what we can accomplish in any crisis with teamwork, creativity, tenacity, and the support of our community. We are proud that we protected the well-being of our staff by providing them with special COVID-related leave for illness and childcare (on top of FFCRA leave banks), equipped them to work from home, and took extra care to respond to their concerns and maintain communication and camaraderie. We worked with our federal and local experts to create policies and procedures which protected the health of the victims we serve and our staff. We regularly updated them to respond to changing conditions and evolving best practices. We networked intentionally to understand how other shelter providers were adapting. While our communal shelter was closed for about nine months, we substituted suite motels to fill the shelter gap. Our scattered-site single-family shelters and transitional housing units proved to be quite effective in the pandemic. We equipped them with Wi-Fi, tablets, and desks to facilitate working or learning from home. While we could not provide face-to-face services in 2020, our advocates and case managers worked tirelessly to provide virtual or phone services, individualized to meet the client’s needs, and to break the isolation many clients were experiencing. We leveraged every special COVID funding opportunity that came our way—purchasing equipment, improving our facilities, and upgrading software. Board and staff created a solidarity statement to embrace the BLM movement. We focused monthly staff meetings on creating space for all staff and survivors and their lived experiences within our work. Ultimately, FH engaged the expertise of Inclusive Communities in a year-long process to create an organizational culture where everyone can learn, communicate, work in collaboration and mutual respect.