A Look Back To 2021 – Healthy Communities Foundation

As our service region nears the two-year mark of navigating the ongoing COVID pandemic, for us, the year 2021 has been a year of listening, leveraging, and launching. With our bold COVID response plan in hand, we have rapidly mobilized and leveraged resources for equitable pandemic recovery efforts in our region while moving at the pace of community needs, making decisions in step with our partners, and refining our grantmaking approach to align with them.

Listening to Our Community and Partners

We kicked off 2021 by having conversations with 70+ partners to understand the pandemic’s continued impact on our region and their organizations. We took what we learned to inform our pandemic response for the next three years. We maintained connections with our partners throughout the year to stay informed of what was happening on the ground. Among the many impacts we heard included the rise of mental health needs for staff and community, particularly youth; their ongoing efforts for COVID outreach and equitable vaccine access; how they have been addressing issues of safe housing, quality education, income, and employment due to inequities based on race, ethnicity, sexual orientation, or immigration status. Despite the intense pressures of the ongoing pandemic, our partners have shown community resilience, creativity, and innovation in their work and how they serve our region.

Leveraging Historic Levels of Public Funding 

Our early funding in local, community-led efforts last year encouraged our peers in the public and private sectors to increase their grantmaking through this year and initiate new funding, particularly to historically underfunded communities in our region. This movement has maximized the impact of our COVID Response investments this year and for the next three years. 

Launching Healthy Equity Projects and Refined Grantmaking Approach

We launched our bold COVID response plan, which has allowed us to adapt and respond to our region’s changing health and wellness needs. Thanks to our Board’s leadership, we have sustained a 70% increase in our total grantmaking since the pandemic began compared to 2019, awarding $8,017,366 in grants. Our general operating support, a total of $6.2 million, was more than 70% of this year’s total funding. As a cornerstone of our grantmaking and an essential part of our trust-based grantmaking strategy, our general operating support evolved this year with the implementation of multi-year funding and refinement of our annual grantmaking process.