Healing & Resilience

Since our start in 2017, the Healthy Communities Foundation has understood the value of investing in the capacity of local leaders, organizations, and communities. We recognize that our collective ability to maximize health and well-being in our region requires a vibrant and thriving local health ecosystem, where organizations – and the people who power them – have the resources necessary to accomplish their work now and for the long haul.

We trust our partners to determine the best ways to operate with flexibility, abundance and clarity, so they can sustain and support people to bring their best selves to the work. When people thrive, organizations do too. This helps our communities access the quality, culturally affirming care they deserve.

Our primary grantmaking strategy reflects this: We believe the most transformative way to build capacity is through unrestricted general operating support.

And, beyond this, we recognize the power and potential in showing up for partners in other ways – by supporting local leadership, cultivating organizational well-being, and rooting in candid, authentic relationships with partners to understand evolving community needs.

Our Approach to Capacity Building

We seek to strengthen organizational resilience by investing in people, policies, and organizational infrastructure.

Our goal is to enhance organizations’ ability to respond to challenges or change by growing community leadership, cultivating cultures of well-being and belonging, and establishing systems and practices that advance their mission through a racial equity and racial justice lens.

We seek to promote healing-informed organizational cultures and practices to reduce burn-out, strengthen relationships, and shift structures and policies that contribute to existing inequities.

We believe that well-resourced individuals can promote inner well-being and organizations can advance equity through systems and cultures of belonging.

We use concepts of 'healing' and 'resilience' as a lens to guide our learning and understanding of grantee partners’ context.

We recognize our communities’ resilience despite having limited resources. Rather than operate from a place of scarcity, we want organizations to embrace abundance and possibility. We all benefit from the learning — and unlearning — necessary to evolve organizational cultures that affirm diverse identities, amplify community expertise, and activate full creativity and potential.

What Does This Look Like in Practice?

To us, this means:

Leaning into radical reimagination of what healthy organizations can look like by promoting inner well-being, valuing diverse voices and identities, cultivating cultures of belonging, and investing time, energy, and resources in local health leaders.
Learning new ways of being by rooting in relationships and shifting culture and practice.
Unlearning patterns of urgency and one-size-fits-all assumptions of what leadership looks like.
Building capacity to adapt and respond to challenges and change so that people and organizations can meet their mission with collective clarity, creativity, compassion, and joy.

Inside Our Work: Thoughts from HCF

Learn more about how we developed our Healing & Resilience framework through intentional listening and relationship-building and how we support our partners’ organizational resilience and well-being beyond grantmaking.

We occasionally share organizational resilience resources via our newsletter and social media, so feel free to subscribe and follow us to receive updates. The following are additional resources for you:

Resilience Grants

Organizations that have received a Healthy Communities Foundation general operating grant within the last 12 months may apply for a Resilience grant via the Responsive Funding portal. Note that additional eligibility criteria may apply.

Resilience funding is intended to catalyze a one-time shift or change to strengthen or enhance organizational resilience. Aligned projects clearly center, elevate, and deepen the expertise of local BILPOC health leadership regardless of their title/role. We prioritize proposals with a clear racial equity/racial justice lens for current grantee partners with operating budgets up to $5M. Organizations may apply for one Resilience request per calendar year.