At Beam, we believe homelessness will be solved when everyone works together. That means government, central and local. It means charities, big and small. It means social enterprises, tech startups and employers.
And crucially - it also means the public. Using Beam, the public removes financial barriers to career progression for individuals experiencing homelessness. But they also form new support networks for those they fund.
The potential for complete collaboration with the growing use of technology is enormous.
What is Beam?
Beam lets anyone help a homeless person for the long-term by funding their employment training. Beam gives each homeless person a caseworker who supports them to build a career plan - and all the way into stable work, ranging from bricklaying to accountancy and almost everything in between.
Donors are kept updated on the progress of the individuals they fund and can send encouraging comments from their smartphones and computers. About 80% of donations are split equally between every person on the platform: either in the form of one-off donations or via monthly donations.
You can see the people experiencing homelessness who Beam is currently supporting into skilled work here:
Beam is the first prize winner of 2018’s London Homelessness Awards. Beam is also the winner of the ‘Innovation in Technology’ Award at the Homeless Link Excellence Awards.
Beam puts its live data transparently online, including anonymised social impact data about those we help. At the time of writing, 2,990 people have funded campaigns, totally £328,000 and 26 homeless people have started jobs with 37 in training.
View Beam’s live data here:
Partnering with charities
Beam has worked closely with charities since the beginning, and continues to co-create the operational model with service users (known as "members") and our partners, notably St Mungo's. Beam also ran early user testing sessions with another partner, Centrepoint.
Today, Beam is partnered with over 20 leading charities, from national charities like Shelter and St Mungo’s to small hostels. These charity partners refer people experiencing homelessness to the Beam platform to help them to fulfil their career aspirations.
Partnering with local authorities
Beam partners with forward-thinking local authorities in London. Beam’s newest local authority partner is Hammersmith & Fulham, an event covered recently by the BBC. Local authority partners can refer to the Beam platform from their housing team or other agencies in the local area. Beam has also been partnered with the GLA since winning backing from its innovation fund in 2017.
Using Beam, a local authority can help achieve their strategic goals, whether that’s upskilling and increasing opportunities for disadvantaged groups in their borough, getting people into work, or reducing temporary accommodation spend (20% of people on Beam have left TA). Beam will work with a maximum of 3 other local authorities in 2019, committed to innovative, community-led solutions to homelessness.
We believe homelessness will be solved when everyone works together - that means complete collaboration. To discuss partnering with Beam, email partner@beam.org.
