The Doe Fund is a nonprofit organization in the United States that provides paid transitional work, housing, educational opportunities, counseling, and career training to people with histories of homelessness, incarceration, and substance abuse.

[2] McDonald, an executive in the private sector at that time, began by distributing food to homeless people on the floor of Grand Central Terminal for 700 consecutive nights.

[5] In 1985, a homeless woman known only as "Mama"—whom had fed and befriended—died of exposure, the result of spending the night on a concrete sidewalk after being ejected from Grand Central Terminal on Christmas Eve by Metro-North police, despite her pneumonia and the freezing temperatures outside.

[12] Karr-McDonald, who grew up in Greenwich Village, became close to April while in New York researching a screenplay about homeless people living in Grand Central Terminal.

All are first assigned to a Ready, Willing & Able cleaning crew, after which they can transition to work in the culinary arts, as drivers, on security details, or in other assignments—most of these positions created by The Doe Fund's various social entrepreneurial ventures.

[20] Graduation from the program comes 9–12 months later, once they have found full-time employment, are living in their own non-subsidized apartments, maintaining complete sobriety and, if applicable, paying child support.

[22] A Harvard University study by criminal justice expert Dr. Bruce Western[23] which tracked Ready, Willing & Able's formerly incarcerated clients for two years after their graduations, found that they were 45% less likely to be reconvicted than other parolees.

[31] The Manhattan Institute for Policy Research awarded the William E. Simon Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Social Entrepreneurship to McDonald in 2008 for his work-based programs to reduce homelessness and criminal recidivism.

[38] The New York Daily News said McDonald had blurred the lines between his personal and professional life by pocketing the $100,000 honorarium accompanying the 2008 William E. Simon Prize for Lifetime Achievement in Social Entrepreneurship.

[41] In a response letter, the chairman of The Doe Fund's board of directors wrote that their executive compensation is comparable to other non-profit organizations of a similar size and complexity.

After Bloomberg's requests for testimony from charities he supported, McDonald and about 20 Doe Fund employees testified in City Council hearings in favor of easing term limits.

Bloomberg had been a Doe Fund supporter since "long before he first ran for office," according to a mayoral spokesman, and had made large contributions in the years before and after the hearing.