Upcoming Winter/Spring 2025 Funding Opportunity
CSHF’s Winter/Spring 2025 Funding Opportunity will open on November 4, 2024. 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. 4, 2024: Opportunity released and application available.
- Nov. 4, 2024 – Jan. 21, 2025: Pre-application phone calls. This is a required step in our process for any interested organization.
- Jan. 28, 2025, noon MT: Application deadline. No exceptions.
- Late March 2025 (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 2025.
Summer/Fall 2024 Funding Cycle: A Summary
In mid-October, Colorado Springs Health Foundation’s Board of Trustees awarded 34 grants totaling $2.8 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: 40
- Total grant awards: 34 (85% award rate)
- Grant awards ranged from $7,500 to $290,000
- % of grant dollars awarded by funding focus area:
- 16% Access to greater physical activity;
- 35% Access to healthy, affordable food;
- 49% Transitional or permanent affordable housing
- % of grant dollars awarded by grant type:
- 58% program;
- 28% general operating;
- 14% capital
Community Review Pilot Program
CSHF’s Community Reviewer model is now in its third cycle, following two successful pilot cycles. Community Reviewers enhance the grantmaking process by incorporating diverse perspectives and insights that reflect the true needs and priorities of the community we serve. 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. Big gratitude goes to our six reviewers for the Summer/Fall 2024 Funding Cycle. We will use a new group of Community Reviewers for the Winter/Spring 2025 Funding Cycle.
If you want to participate as a community reviewer or learn more about the process, please reach out to Jamie Brown by emailing [email protected].
Evaluatiing How CSHF’s Contribution Makes A Difference (CSHF’s Impact Assessment)
CSHF recently completed an evaluation effort aimed at better understanding how its grant contributions have made a difference in its funded partners and their important community work. An outside evaluation expert, Courtney Ricci, PhD, worked with eight of CSHF’s longstanding funded partners to explore this question in depth. These funded partners highlighted that CSHF’s support extends beyond a particular grant to include building organizational capacity, supporting innovation and learning, enhancing their credibility, and leveraging CSHF funding for additional funding opportunities. In particular, early-stage general operating funds have supported innovative and creative initiatives, offering organizational flexibility and opportunities for learning. CSHF’s encouragement to collect and analyze organizational and programmatic data has been instrumental in advancing the nonprofits’ reach and impact.
A heartfelt thank you to the eight funded partners for their valuable time and insights:
- Colorado Springs Fire Department
- Fostering Hope
- Mt. Carmel Veterans Service Center
- National Alliance on Mental Illness
- Pikes Peak State College
- Safe Passage
- Solid Rock CDC
- Suicide Prevention Collaborative of El Paso County
To read the impact reports please click here.
What We Are Reading About or Listening to Now
- Dopamine Nation: Finding Balance in the Age of Indulgence by Anna Lembke. A quick read on finding balance in a world that promotes overindulgence.
- A podcast, On Being with Krista Tippett featuring Kate DiCamillo – On Nurturing Capacious Hearts. Krista and Kate talk about how openness allows us to embrace the complexities of ourselves and one another.
- A Science of Happiness podcast, Happiness Break: The Healing Power of Your Own Touch, with Kristin Neff. Dr. Kristin Neff guides listeners through a self-compassionate touch practice and shares research-backed reasons to nurture self-kindness.
- A New York Times article about a pygmy hippo by Becca Foley and Noah Riffe, “A Pygmy Hippo Is Stealing Hearts (and Biting Zookeepers)”. You can also see what Moo Deng the hippo is up to via the zoo’s 24-hour livestream.