In 2023, the Health Fund’s Community Health Impact (CHI) and Capacity Building programs underwent some significant changes, all with the goal of making support more accessible for organizations doing important, community-driven work to improve health across our state.
Among the changes:
- We accepted applications throughout the year with grants awarded in three separate funding cycles.
- Applicants had the option to present projects through concept calls — video conferences with members of our team — instead of in written form.
- We strengthened criteria emphasizing community engagement, input, and participation in all projects funded through these programs.
These changes contributed to a successful year for the two programs, with more than $5 million awarded to support 45 projects and organizational improvements throughout Michigan.
As we get ready to launch our latest CHI and Capacity Building RFPs in December, we’re taking stock of what we learned from the past year and sharing some refinements to come in 2024.
Community is paramount
These programs exist to serve the health needs of Michigan communities. Whether by funding the implementation of community-led health solutions or by investing in the capacity of organizations and partnerships to supply critical services, our CHI and Capacity Building grants will continue to uphold this purpose.
We will prioritize applicants who can most clearly describe how communities of concern are involved in the planning, design, implementation, and/or evaluation of their projects.
Flexibility matters
The significant interest in our pilot concept call process in 2023 provided a valuable lesson: different groups can best share their ideas and stories in different ways. That’s why we’ll continue to offer this choice in 2024 and encourage applicants to explore whether it works for them.
Meanwhile, we found that expanding from one grant funding cycle to three made our programs more responsive to timing considerations for grant partners in 2023. At the same time, it made it challenging for the team to spend more time with applicants who needed extra support and led to some inefficiencies in our process. We’re going to optimize in 2024 and offer two application cycles, which we expect will streamline our process while still preserving needed flexibility and accessibility.
Successful Capacity Building projects lead to sustained improvements
Our Capacity Building grant program invests in the crucial nonprofit infrastructure our state needs to create healthier communities. As we reviewed applications for Organizational and Collaborative Capacity Building grants in 2023, we saw common themes among the most compelling projects, which provided a vision and plan for long-term, sustained impact beyond the scope of the grant.
As a result, we’ll be emphasizing support for organizational infrastructure improvements, evaluation and learning, technology enhancements, and staff or board development in our grantmaking for this program in 2024. We’ll share more information and examples of activities under these categories in our RFP.
Non-grant resources offer critical support
In addition to grants, our Capacity Building program offers a wide range of resources available at no cost to help nonprofits with many of their most pressing needs. These tools and partnerships offer support for fundraising, marketing, communications, staff development, client and community engagement, and more.
We’ll continue to pay for useful services, evaluate these resources, and introduce new additions to meet evolving needs. And we’ll continue to encourage groups with requests outside our core priorities grantmaking to explore these resources as dynamic alternatives.
Stay tuned for more on these themes as we launch our 2024 RFPs on December 14. Questions? Please contact Veronica Marchese — Program Manager — or Megan Murphy — Director of Community Health and Capacity Building.