Maximizing Impact in a Limited Time: Time-Limited Programs and Foundations
Some foundations institute time-limited initiatives to maximize resources. Others adopt a spend-down approach to have impact within a short organizational lifespan. Both situations provide opportunity for a health-focused foundation to accomplish goals with urgency, but pose the challenge of doing so without the luxury of time. ClearWay Minnesota and Missouri Foundation for Health have embraced strategic and tactical advantages of being life-limited and having time-limited programs, respectively, to address persistent health issues.
Growing Local Philanthropy to Improve Health
Community foundations are often in the best position to bring partners together, across sectors and geographies, and to tackle the complex set of issues facing their residents. They represent a network that can serve as a powerful force, including to improve health outcomes. Recognizing this, Kansas Health Foundation launched the Giving Resources to Our World Initiative with the goal of strengthening local philanthropy in communities across Kansas.
Defeating the Deadly Double: Depression and Diabetes
Inadequate access to mental health services, diabetes, and obesity are the top-ranked critical service gaps in virtually all community health needs assessments conducted by local health departments and nonprofit hospitals throughout Virginia. Diabetes and depression are also among the top three conditions treated in Virginia’s health safety net organizations.
Responding to COVID-19 and Beyond
In the early days of the COVID-19 pandemic, the Trust was compelled to do our part. Like most philanthropic organizations, we were determined to maximize impact and make grants quickly, while also adhering to our due diligence standards.
From Citizen-Led Ballot Initiative to Community-Centered Solutions for Mental Health and Substance Misuse
Our mission is to address Denver’s mental health and substance misuse needs by growing community-informed solutions, dismantling stigma, and turning the community’s desire to help into action. In less than one year of operation, we have funded 41 organizations and five City agencies and provided $17.3 million in funding to the Denver community.
Innovation in the Safety Net
This country’s safety net health system has always been a place of innovation. The safety net includes community health centers and public hospitals that serve the 100 million patients who either have Medicaid or lack health insurance entirely. With limited resources and patients with complex medical, social, and behavioral health needs, the safety net has long had to innovate out of necessity.
Health Equity: Our Way Forward …Through COVID-19 and Beyond
Eric Kelly, President, Quantum Foundation For health funders, it is essential that we realize that even given all of the unforeseen devastation of COVID-19, and the compounding social crises in its wake, many of our communities began 2020 already in a health crisis. These pre-existing conditions allowed a global pandemic that does not discriminate to…
Pioneering Health-Wealth Solutions for Children
Today, as we navigate the pandemic, deep racial and economic inequities in health and wealth outcomes have been revealed and amplified for children—especially children of color. Health and wealth are inextricably linked. Investments to improve health outcomes using the social determinants of health and to promote financial well-being across families are mutually supportive. The ultimate goal is to ensure that all children are healthy, financially secure, and live in families without daily financial stressors because of assets and wealth.
Can We Have It All? Balancing Key Factors in Evaluating a Grant Portfolio
Like many funding organizations, Methodist Healthcare Ministries of South Texas, Inc., has been on a journey to incorporate strategic evaluation into its grantmaking, and in 2019, completed an ambitious suite of impact evaluations. The evaluation had multiple aims, including: determining the portfolio’s impact; examining the impact of each intervention via program-level studies; and supporting grantees’ use of and capacity to engage in these and future evaluations.
Building an Equitable Future for Health and Well-Being
FORESIGHT is the name for a partnership of 17 philanthropies that is catalyzing a vision for the future of health and well-being centered on two things: the game-changing trends, challenges, and opportunities on the horizon; and the aspirations of a diversity of communities throughout the U.S.