Q: How were organizations selected for multi-year grants? We have been intentional about how we use data that our grantee partners provide to inform our funding strategies and assess impact in our grantmaking. While we are a relatively new foundation, our grantmaking processes have evolved in alignment with our strategic plan. Using hyper-local data, having deep conversations with all grantee partners, and developing our evaluation framework has informed the evolution of our general operating support funding. These elements have helped us shape the criteria we used to select our 2021-2023 multi-year partners.   Each partner meets the criteria below, although the way they meet it may look differently depending on its organizational focus, communities served or other aspects:

• Employs an organization-wide intersectional approach to health equity and racial justice work and practices beyond their programs and services.
• Intentionally engages our region’s residents and communities in conversations, solutions and/or decision-making to inform their strategy and work.
• Centers BILPOC leadership in their staff and board of directors.
• Engages in organizational learning to inform upstream, systems-focused approaches to health equity.
• Convenes with others through an intersectional lens and brings collaborative expertise and capacity.
• Demonstrated local leadership in implementing a robust COVID-19 response that utilizes, provides, and/or advocates for:
  • Community health workers/promotoras de salud
  • Community-based mental health services, and/or
  • Direct cash assistance to our region’s residents through a racial/ethnic equity lens

  Q: What are the most significant differences between an annual grant versus a multi-year grant from Healthy Communities Foundation? Time commitment, on grantee partners and the Foundation, is the main difference between annual and multi-year funding. For Annual Grantee Partners: We have continued to streamline the application process and reporting requirements to reduce the time spent on the application, site visit, and due diligence process. But, as part of our new equitable evaluation framework, there is much we can learn from the critical work of annual grantee partners, and look forward to engaging with them in a learning process that is rapid and informs our broader strategies. For Multi-Year Partners: While multi-year partners receive a three-year funding commitment from us, there is also a commitment from organizations to a more in-depth reporting process and participation in learning practices with the foundation that may include qualitative research and communications collaboration. Q: When do you begin your next multi-year funding cohort? As part of our equitable evaluation framework, multi-year grantee partners are a part of our learning and impact strategy. The decision to extend multi-year grants (or expand the number and type of multi-year grantee partners) will be based on key learnings and data we derive from our evaluation framework. In addition, we will include up-to-date assessments of our region’s health needs in that decision-making as our region may be in a different phase of the pandemic recovery. Q: Why did the Healthy Communities Foundation not have an open call or RFP process for multi-year partnerships?  We recognize that organizations have faced many internal and external changes this past year, including navigating new funding shifts. We heard from our partners that it has not been easy managing multiple grant applications at this time. We did not want to add another barrier for organizations that are already operating at maximum capacity. We turned to our learnings from 2020, our conversations with community and grantee partners in early 2021, and our strategic plan to develop our approach to multi-year partnerships.