Beam is the world’s first crowdfunding platform that supports people experiencing homelessness to get into work.

The flexible nature of Beam’s funding model provides unique opportunities for hard-to-reach groups – for example, 47% of the UK’s homeless population are single mothers. By providing access to an uncapped bursary, partly used to cover all necessary childcare costs, Beam can provide single mothers with the time and space needed to train up and find a job that supports their family.

Crowdfunding provides an innovative people-powered response to the issue of unemployed or lowly paid people struggling with homelessness, allowing members of the public to directly involve themselves in a solution to social disadvantage. Along with financial donations, Beam supporters are able to provide targeted career help, either by offering those on Beam work opportunities or mentorship within a trade they have experience in.

Beam looks to split from the more opaque operational nature of the larger charity model, and indeed one of Beam’s core values is the idea of ‘transparency’; transparent in what we use donations for and that person’s journey with Beam, and transparent with outcomes data which we list openly on our homepage.