Upcoming Winter/Spring 2024 Funding Opportunity
CSHF’s Winter/Spring 2024 Funding Opportunity will open on November 13, 2023. It is available to Pikes Peak region tax-exempt and tax-supported organizations doing work in three of our four funding focus areas: (1) Access to healthcare; (2) Suicide prevention; and (3) Prevention or healing trauma.
Here is the funding cycle timeline:
- Nov. 13, 2023: Opportunity released and application available.
- Nov. 13, 2023 – Jan. 22, 2024: Pre-application phone calls. This is a required step in our process for any interested organization.
- Jan. 30, 2024, noon MT: Application deadline. No exceptions.
- Late March 2024 (anticipated): Grant decisions communicated to applicants.
CSHF will email its distribution list when the opportunity is open. If you’re not signed up for our distribution list, go to our website homepage, www.cshf.net, and scroll to the bottom right corner to input your email address.
Note: CSHF’s Healthy Environments funding opportunity (food, physical activity and transitional or affordable housing) will be offered in Summer/Fall 2024.
Summer/Fall 2023 Funding Cycle: A Summary
In mid-October, Colorado Springs Health Foundation’s Board of Trustees awarded 33 grants totaling $2.6 M. These grants relate to our Healthy Environments funding focus area, specifically access to food, access to physical activity and transitional or affordable housing.
Here are some data on the applications and grant awards:
- Total applications: 41
- Total grant awards: 33 (80% award rate)
- Grant awards ranged from $5,000 to $450,000
Community Review Pilot Program
Colorado Springs Health Foundation is piloting a new community review process to broaden the insight and expertise brought to bear on our grantmaking process. This Community Review process, adapted from a similar approach at Caring for Denver Foundation, asks local experts to review a subset of grant applications and provide staff and board with thoughts about application strengths, challenges, and key questions. Our inaugural Community Reviewer group participated in the Summer/Fall 2023 Funding Cycle, and their contribution was tremendous. They helped us better understand the community context and ask better (and deeper) questions. Their thoughtfulness helped our deliberation and decisions. Big gratitude goes to our first six reviewers: Ted Borden, Jody Derington, Catherine Duarte, Alison Gerbig, Patience Kabwasa and Mina Liebert. We will use a new group of Community Reviewers for the upcoming Winter/Spring 2024 funding cycle.
Trustee Changes
Welcome:
The Foundation welcomed Ann Cesare and Fr. Augustine Nellary, PhD to the board. Ann is UCHealth-Memorial’s Senior Director of Community and Government Relations. Fr. Augustine is the Director of Mission, Ministry & Volunteer Services for Penrose Saint-Francis Health Services, having relocated to our community from Durango. Ann and Fr. Augustine are deeply steeped in the community, and both are already making significant contributions to the board. Welcome Ann and Fr. Augustine!
Farewell:
After many years of service, Mia Ramirez will leave the CSHF board as of Dec. 31, 2023 due to board term limits. During her tenure, Mia has helped shape CSHF in countless ways. She has been instrumental is the design and implementation of our grantmaking process. She has served on the Governance and Evaluation/Impact Committees. She has consistently asked thoughtful, incisive, and strategic questions of board and staff. And above all, she has helped CSHF remain grounded in and focused on identifying and addressing avoidable health disparities. We are sad to say farewell yet know that our paths will continue to cross given our common commitment to furthering health equity in the Pikes Peak region.
What We Are Reading About or Listening to Now
- How Harvard looked to TikTok influencers for a better way to communicate about mental health: https://www.nytimes.com/2023/10/16/health/mental-health-tiktok-harvard.html
- Fixer-Upper: How to Repair America’s Broken Housing System by Jenny Schuetz. A great primer on housing policy at the federal, state and local levels. And for a policy book, an easy and compelling read!
- An New York Times Op-Ed by David Wallace-Wells, “Why are so many Americans Dying?” An interesting critique of the “deaths of despair” narrative. Worth the read.
- Ezra Klein Show: Guest host Tressie McMillan Cotton interviews Dr. Pooja Lakshmin on her book Real Self Care. The pod is called “Boundaries, Burnout and the ‘Goopification’ of Self-Care”