Whose job is it to help the homeless?
Part B: Nonprofits and Churches
August 25, 2026
By Nada Lunsford, Founder and President of
Steve’s Home, Homeless Street Outreach
Whose job is it to fund, strategically plan, engage, follow up with case management and implement sustainable help to the homeless?
Upon writing this article, the information and data was overwhelming for one article, so, we broke it down into “Article 3, Parts A & B” to be published separately. Part A explored the Government and the Community responsibilities.
Let’s continue our exploration in
Part B: Nonprofits and Churches:
Do Nonprofits bear the sole responsibility to help the homeless?
Nonprofits play a central role in the administration of homeless resources. Nonprofits should be the primary service providers as they provide experienced, trained staff, and hold community presence and trust, as well as the engagement and trust of those living outside.
Most nonprofits focus on a specific area of need. For example, street outreach and resource connection is the specific niche of assistance at Steven’s Home. (See our first article in this 3-part series “Street Outreach & The Importance of: Meeting Them Where They Are”)
While others focus on different areas of the isolated, yet partnered, areas of need:
- Shelter services (emergency, transitional and permanent)
- Multi-gender housing
- Housing assistance focusing on women and children.
- Veteran housing and assistance
- Substance use & recovery options including sober living homes.
- Food insecurity
- Medical and/or mental health
- Camp/survival gear.
One nonprofit often collaborates with one another to provide necessary wrap-around services, yet each area requires specific and separate funding, reporting, inventory and administrative work. It is integral to sustainability of help that all agencies collaborate and work together, either at the same time, or what is coined as a “warm hand off’ from one agency or area of help to another as the process of the end goal (usually being housed) progresses.
A vast majority of nonprofits rely on grants from both the federal and state level government, private foundation donations and fundraisers to supply their operating income. Additional income for these nonprofits comes from the community and churches. They also reach out to volunteers to help and perform tasks.
There are also smaller minorities of nonprofits, like Steven’s Home, who are not grant funded at all, and have self-driven revenue sources and rely heavily on community donations and volunteers.
Our self-driven income equals our yearly community monetary support and is generated by our Culinary Division drawing on the experience of our founder and director as a former Executive Chef. (this division is a separate program from our Meal Delivery Program which provides meals to the unhoused)
Steven’s Home holds a McHenry County Risk Category 1 food permit, and a lease for a commercial kitchen (rented hourly) which not only provides for the capability to cater any event, it pays our operating expenses, so almost all community support is directly used for program participant services and items, not operating expenses.
The program allows us to offer:
- day-labor employment opportunities to the unhoused,
- volunteer hours to meet DHS requirements to maintain SNAP and Medical benefits
- Court Ordered Community Service hours.
We encourage you to view the required financial reporting for any nonprofit on the IRS website by examining their required 990 report. This report documents all income, expenses, program expenses (help to clients) and overheard costs including salaries paid. Some 990’s are lengthy, but we strongly suggest that you take the time to do this research before supporting any nonprofit. You can find the search page here: Search for tax exempt organizations | Internal Revenue Service
The bottom line is that nonprofits are indispensable in the fight against homelessness, but they should not bear sole responsibility. A multi-sector coordinated approach—with nonprofits at the forefront—offers the best chance for sustainable, equitable solutions. (jstor.org/stable/2632826)
This brings us to our final question of who is responsible or obligated to help the homeless, as we look at Church(s).
The Church’s Responsibility?
Churches are also a nonprofit organization with broader freedoms in regulation from the federal government than, say, a typical 501c3 charitable or human services organization.
There are a few different approaches and views accepted by various religious groups and churches regarding any responsibility of the Church to the homeless:
- Holistic: the church’s mission to encompass both spiritual and physical needs and believe that helping the homeless is a direct expression of God’s character and the Bible.
- Primary versus secondary mission: A conservative argument that the church’s only job is to spread the word and the gospel, that the church’s resources are only for spiritual edification and other “mercy ministries” outside the church are bear the responsibility to help the homeless.
- Individual versus Institutional: The individual Christians should apply the scripture to help the poor themselves, or personally, in their daily lives, with personal funds, and serve the poor individually rather than relying on church staff to be organized to handle poverty and homelessness relief.
A recent article, “The Pivotal Role of Churches in Addressing Homelessness the Combined Efforts of All Institutions of Society Are Needed” explains the needed role of the church in all phases of homeless assistance programs:
“The efforts of churches in addressing homelessness are equally pivotal, though often publicly under-recognized because their aid frequently takes informal forms. However, 87% of religious congregations in the U.S., across faith groups, provide social services to people outside their immediate congregation. (The Pivotal Role of Churches in Addressing Homelessness the Combined Efforts of All Institutions of Society Are Needed Author Kate Robinson Sat Oct 18, 2025)
- Churches should be and be present at the beginning of the planning process by being included in strategic planning conversations.
- Churches should be plugged into the day-to-day work of government and nonprofit hubs for housing and homelessness services with membership in the local CoC (Continuum of Care to End Homelessness)
- Churches need to be intentional in equipping congregational members to engage in this work, as well as developing their commitment to reaching out to the community. (The Pivotal Role of Churches in Addressing Homelessness the Combined Efforts of All Institutions of Society Are Needed Author Kate Robinson Sat Oct 18, 2025
Scripture tells us that “the Church” is a body of members, human beings, not a corporate entity, or a Board of Directors (who are a part of the church body) but the very members who embody the group called “the church.”
It is a community of people redeemed by Jesus Christ, walking with Him as a part of their daily lives. The church building or its leaders are not “the church.”
- 1st Corinthians chapter 12 defines “The church” specifically as body “parts” forming one body:
- Verse 12 which says, “Just as a body, though one, has many parts, but all its many parts forms on body” and
- Verse 14 “Even so the body is not made up of one part, but of many” and in finality,
The bible emphasizes the priority and importance of the church body to share God’s word and bring hearts to a life with Jesus, and this is essential for bringing people to salvation and heaven, but this was never the sole work of the church.
There are over 2000 mentions in scripture that tell us to help the oppressed and poor, as individuals who are members of a church body.
Just a scant few are:
- Isiah 58:10 And if we spend ourselves on behalf of the hungry and satisfy the needs of the oppressed, then your light will rise in the darkness, (which is service as a form of ministry), and your night will become like the noonday”
- Proverbs 14:31 explains how we treat the poor, or neglect their needs, reflects how we honor God, and helping is again, a form of ministry. “Whoever oppresses the poor shows contempt for their maker, but whoever is kind to the needy honors God.”
Helping is one of the biggest forms of ministry and the easiest way to share God’s word. Helping is showing a stranger how God works in our hearts and lives and it is showing how we live with and for God.
We celebrate the work of the churches and religious groups, like St. Vincent’s DePaul whose conferences in each city are a consistent source of much help, in many areas. The Chapel, McHenry provides our local shelter with its building, has a food pantry and clothing provision, and other churches have smaller programs that help on a specific day of the week, during specific times of day. Other church leaders have formed groups to work together to aid those in need.
Steven’s Home has experienced a small, local church congregation spending a day prepping hundreds of pounds of fresh vegetables for our Meal Delivery Program providing meals to encampments and other outside dwellings.
While many churches help with their internal programs, there are others who either fear liability issues in helping or rely on myths about the unhoused causing them to turn a blind eye to an opportunity to meet an unmet need in critical areas of help that stretch well beyond food and clothing and would bring sustainable help over short term help.
Last spring, several McHenry County agencies collaborated and reached out to as many as 85 churches with requests varying from very low level, tangible help to a few hundred dollars in one-time help. These requests included:
- The use of their parking lot for 2 hours, weekly, to pass out immediate basic needs & camp supplies.
- Help by utilizing the church street address for obtaining a state ID, (critical in obtaining services from providers who require an ID)
- The use of building space for a 4 hour, weekly, service provision with several agencies being on site with 40-70 unhoused or those in need, at the same time, under the same roof for maximum accessibility to help to our most in need.
- One request was for a few hundred dollars to feed 70 or more unhoused people on Fridays at a consistent homeless resource event.
- To utilize space as a warming / cooling center for 2 to 4 hours a week, or as weather called for.
The answers from 72 of the 85 local churches contacted were: (six of the requests were returned “no address” by USPS)
- 1 church immediately responded with monetary help,
- 2 stepped in to offer help offering the use of their building for 4-6 hours on Fridays, however funding, logistics and board of director’s have prevented this from being utilized as of the writing of this article – talks with these 2 churches are still ongoing.
The answer from all others was:
- No answer at all, or
- “We need to ask our corporate office” (no definitive answer came)
- “We need to have a Board meeting” (no definitive answer came)
- “That” may be a liability (an agency certificate of liability insurance was offered)
- “We have a new pastor, so that person needs a few months to get acclimated.”
- “We are worried about our neighbors around the church location”
- “We participate at a food pantry” which is very needed work, IF:
- The homeless person can find transportation, on a specific day, during specific times to receive that help.
- The person living outside can transport the food, then store or prepare it. (dry storage safe from rodents is virtually impossible, and there is no refrigeration at an encampment)
A remarkably interesting observation was made in these responses, or lack thereof, was that none of these churches provided an answer to the pleas for all levels of help with the answer of:
“We need to bring this to our congregation of church body members to discuss it, pray over it, and decide if we are called to help.”
The Church body, or congregation, would possibly make a different decision than a single leader or Board of Directors, remembering “where two or three gathered in my name, there am I in the midst of them.” (Matthew 18:20)
Serving and helping others one of the best opportunities to step outside of the church building and bring testimony, witnessing and sharing God’s word.
We are to not only talk about God and His grace, but to show it through our own lifestyle, and to bring the work by being the hands and feet of Christ. This must be done with the trained staff of street outreach workers.
It is not advisable that any church or public persons roam an encampment or approach homeless outdoor shelters. These locations are someone’s home, and are protected by the Il Homeless Privacy Act (775 ILCS 45/ Illinois Compiled Statutes)
During a recent police encampment eviction in McHenry County of eighteen homeless human beings, it was interesting to find out how many congregants, and pastors, were unaware of this local human and social emergency.
While the story was covered in two local newspapers and was well covered on social media with one video of Steve’s Home speaking about the eviction before a city council that received over 12,000 views – yet so many pastors and others in leadership positions that I spoke with, (and many congregants within the church) had “heard about it” yet did not offer to help, most knew nothing about the eviction at all, and the desperation and tremendous need that was caused, literally overnight.
Some of this unawareness may be a personal choice to not follow local news or social media, however, how are they going out and witnessing to the community as Jesus told the disciples to do, if no attention is paid to the devastation that is sometimes within their own community just outside their own doors?
Churches will rally to help those affected by tragic weather-related incidents, or a family’s medical emergency or tragedy, but that was not the case when 18 homeless people were evicted from the only place they had left to call home.
The “untouchables” were left untouched, unwitnessed to, and unhelped by the church.
Jesus showed his kinetic, or intentional movement within the community, outside church walls, modeling this method of ministry for us to follow.
In conclusion, I ask again, Whose Job is it to Help the Homeless?
In conclusion, one answer is clear: The critical collaboration of all the entities discussed: the government, the community, nonprofits and churches in this last article of our 3-part series.
The government has done their part with funding. The community always jumps in to do their part. Nonprofits exhaust financial resources, and their staff in staying the course to end homelessness. Some, but not all, churches also are doing their part in following the word and providing localized ministries to serve and help the oppressed, poor, weak and homeless.
Steven’s Home is a faith based homeless street outreach, we share with our friends outside our faith and how God’s grace took us from the trap house to this mission and ministry today. I use my Christian mom’s solid advice:
“Go to scripture and find the answer there”, specifically in all the acts and miracles Jesus performed for mere strangers, just because those acts were a method of ministry.
At the end of my life, I strive to hear: Matthew 25:21 “Well done, my good and faithful servant. You have been faithful over a little; I will set you over much. Enter into the joy of your master. “
Thank you for taking the time to read this article, visit articles 1 & 2 in this series, and always feel free to reach out to Steven’s Home with any questions you may have regarding homelessness.