Changes to 2019 Grantmaking
Colorado Springs Health Foundation will make two changes to its grantmaking starting in 2019:
- Change to the Workforce Shortage Funding Focus Area: CSHF will broaden its workforce-shortage-related funding focus area to address any/all healthcare workforce shortages. Starting with applications due or received in 2019, the funding focus area will be, “Address the healthcare workforce shortage.” The other three funding focus areas will remain the same.The reason for the change is that healthcare (which includes care for physical, behavioral and/or oral health needs) involves many different types of workers, and many of these workforces are experiencing a shortage. CSHF wants to be able to address the broader healthcare workforce needs.
- Changes to Multiyear Grant Parameters: Multiyear grant requests will continue to be accepted but on a more limited basis. CSHF will consider multiyear grant requests when an organization or collaboration needs support to initiate a new approach to address a community concern. Designing, implementing and measuring the impact of a new approach often require more than one year.CSHF will not entertain multiyear requests for general operating support or ongoing program operations. This adjustment will not affect multiyear awards made in 2018. This change affects applications due or received in 2019. CSHF’s “three years on/two years off” requirement remains unchanged.The reasons for this change are grounded in the lessons learned from our first year of multiyear grant making (2018). We have determined that it is prudent to maintain good flexibility regarding future year funding. Making many multiyear grants reduces our ability to respond to new requests and/or community needs. As such, we are narrowing the parameters for awarding multiyear grants.
Timing: These changes will take effect in 2019. They apply to all applications due in or received in 2019. All applications with submission deadlines in 2019 will be modified to reflect these changes.
Who Is Affected: Any organization considering submitting an application in 2019 is subject to these changes. These changes do not affect previously awarded grants.
Questions: Please contact staff with any questions: [email protected] or 719-985-8989. Also, CSHF’s next main annual grant cycle will open up in late November/early December, with applications likely due toward the end of January 2019. As is our practice, any potential applicant will be asked to have a phone conversation with staff before submitting a request, which will be an opportunity to ask any questions about these changes.
Funded Partner Spotlight: The Resource Exchange
David Ervin’s enthusiasm is contagious. And it doesn’t just arise when he’s talking about the individuals with whom The Resource Exchange works, but it also pops up when TRE’s executive director discusses the Colorado Springs Health Foundation grant that has helped to build out infrastructure for TRE Research Center.
What began with a “cockamamie notion,” and grew slowly with a 2015 grant from the California-based Special Hope Foundation, Ervin says will now live into perpetuity thanks to CSHF.
“Here’s the super, super cool thing about that … We have done all sorts of research into research centers. There are lots of them that are associated with classic academia. We haven’t found one yet — we’re well into a year of the Health Foundation grant — we haven’t found one that’s based on a community foundation like ours.
“That’s not why we did it,” he adds. “We did it out of this real profound sense of obligation that we have to share this out to the rest of the world. But it’s kind of cool that it’s one of its kind.”
TRE’s jump into research itself began organically, as an offshoot of the Developmental Disabilities Health Center (DDHC), a partnership with several other community organizations.
“We theorized when we launched that piece that it would change health status and we theorized that it would change quality of life of people with intellectual disabilities who, historically, have colossal access barriers to quality healthcare and the result is they experience terrible, terrible health status relative to their neurotypically developed peers,” Ervin says.
DDHC began to capture data and measure effects as a part of one of the partner’s mandates — and quickly realized the information could be of benefit to others as well, especially to those who were thinking about building models to address the barriers that people with disabilities face.
And they realized they could do more. Currently, TRE Research Center is engaged in a national study called the Longitudinal Health Inventory for People with Developmental Disabilities, and four distinct research projects all focused specifically on the relationship of healthcare and health in people with intellectual and developmental disabilities.
Ervin adds that they’re doing some “pretty cutting-edge work” in pediatrics and early childhood as well, which is important to local moms like Wendy Dickson, whose son Jasper began accessing therapy from TRE before he was diagnosed with Angelman Syndrome, a rare neuro-genetic disorder that primarily affects the nervous system.
“I can’t imagine where Jasper would be without TRE and the therapists,” says Dickson. “When they first saw Jasper, he was not crawling or sitting and had so many other issues. He is now 2 1/2 and is learning new things daily. TRE has amazing therapists who work hand-in-hand with your family to teach you how to help your children. They have been a great resource for getting help with the struggles of raising a child with developmental delays.”
“We think we’re onto some best practice,” says Ervin, “but if best practice falls down in a forest and no one’s there to hear it, does it make any noise? …
“I want people to “ooo” and “ah”— not because we’re particularly impressive, but because this community has been an incubator for something that has no precedent. I want people to recognize that the Colorado Springs Health Foundation could’ve come up with eight million reasons to say no, including, in fact, the fact that there is no precedent,” Ervin says. “And, yet, they didn’t, and the result is that we’re making progress in improving help for humans who are our neighbors, who are our nieces and nephews and co-workers, who have, for generations, experienced the worst form of healthcare bias.”
To learn more about TRE, the Research Center and research currently in progress, visit www.tre.org/services/tre-research-center-2.
Save the Dates!
CSHF is hosting two learning opportunities in October:
In partnership with El Paso County Public Health’s Healthy Community Collaborative, CSHF invites you to learn about the 2017 Healthy Kids School Survey results. This survey provides critical information about the current state of our youth’s health…where we are doing well and where we face challenges. Tuesday, Oct. 11, 9 – 11 am at Penrose House’s Garden Pavilion. Please phone or email CSHF if you plan to attend: [email protected] or 719-985-8989.
Join CSHF on Friday, Oct. 26, 8:30 – 11 am [check-in at 8:30 am; program starts at 8:45 am], El Paso County Citizens’ Service Center, for a Health Equity Skill-Building Training with a team from The Center for Health Progress. Space is limited, so please phone or email CSHF if you plan to attend: [email protected] or 719-985-8989.
What We’re Reading (or Listening to) Now
The Colorado Office of Health Equity recently published the Equity Action Guide: https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/cdphe/equity-action-guide
This guide “looks at the root causes of inequity across Colorado through an in-depth review of community characteristics, stories and data.”
A New York Times article on opioid deaths, “Bleak New Estimates in Drug Epidemic: A Record 72,000 Overdose Deaths in 2017” (Aug. 15, 2018): https://nyti.ms/2MRx36Q
Not only does the article describe the trend up in deaths, it also notes a couple of states that have made notable progress toward reducing deaths, which offers hope and real solutions.
A New York Times article on what some emergency departments are doing to help people address their opioid use disorder, “This E.R. Treats Opioid Addiction on Demand. That’s Very Rare.” (Aug. 18, 2018): https://nyti.ms/2MvBJCe
Vu Le speaks truth to power, and this is no exception: http://nonprofitaf.com/2018/08/philanthropy-and-the-destructive-illusion-of-leveling-the-playing-field/
We think every funder should read this and consider it seriously.
A great article from the Stanford Social Innovation Review regarding keys to scaling up: https://ssir.org/articles/entry/why_proven_solutions_struggle_to_scale_up
Mahzarin Banagi, the Richard Clarke Cabot Professor of Social Ethics at Harvard University, and one of the people (the person?) who identified implicit bias, speaking about how “The mind is a difference-seeking machine” – an On Being podcast: https://onbeing.org/programs/mahzarin-banaji-the-mind-is-a-difference-seeking-machine-aug2018/