Grantmaking Changes Coming in 2020
- Trauma & Resilience will be a new funding focus area: CSHF aims to help prevent or heal trauma and build or strengthen resilience. Why? Traumatic experience is linked to lifelong health status. Examples of populations of interest include, but are not limited to, children who have been neglected or abused or military service members who have endured the challenges of war.
- Small Grant Requests: CSHF will shorten its main funding opportunity application for requests of $10,000 or less. This change is being made in response to funded partner feedback received through the 2017 and 2018 evaluation efforts. The Capacity-Building/Technical Assistance funding opportunity application and the Fostering Collaboration funding opportunity application will remain unchanged regardless of the size of the request.
- Emergency Grant Guidelines and Process: CSHF has developed definitions, guidelines and processes to address the rare emergency grant request. For more information, please contact CSHF staff directly.
Timing: These changes will take effect in 2020, with the exception of the Emergency Grant Guidelines and Process, which is already in place. They apply to all applications due in or received in 2020. All applications with submission deadlines in 2020 will be modified to reflect these changes.
Who Is Affected: Any organization considering submitting an application in 2020 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 2020. As is our practice, any potential applicant will be asked to have a phone conversation with staff before submitting a request. This phone conversation is an opportunity to ask any questions about these changes.
Save the Dates
The Colorado Health Institute will present the 2019 Colorado Health Access Survey results. This statewide survey provides critical information about the current state of healthcare access in our community. The local presentation of results will be Thursday, Sept. 26, 1 pm at Library 21C. Go to https://www.coloradohealthinstitute.org/research/CHAS to learn more and/or register to attend.
Also, CSHF is a proud sponsor of El Pomar Foundation’s Pikes Peak Heritage Series, which focuses on Health & The Outdoors for 2019. The 3-part series will take place throughout the fall. Check out https://www.elpomar.org/programs/pikes-peak-heritage-series/ for more information and an opportunity to register.
Learning Collective: Cultivating a Culture of Learning
Colorado Springs Health Foundation recently kicked-off a Learning Collective focused on building a learning culture and engaging in evidence-based practice. The Learning Collective – our term for a learning community – grew out of CSHF’s 2018 evaluation work. Ten organizations were selected to participate in the pilot cohort: Care and Share Food Bank of Southern Colorado, Catamount Institute, Community Health Partnership, Early Connections Learning Centers, Fostering Hope Foundation, Hillside Connection, National Alliance on Mental Illness (NAMI), Pikes Peak United Way, Springs Rescue Mission, and Teller County Department of Human Services. Vantage Evaluation, CSHF’s evaluation partner, will facilitate and guide the group. The end goal is to help participating organizations build a learning culture that informs strategy and programming; adapts to new challenges and innovates along the way; and makes a bigger difference for/with the people they serve. CSHF will be evaluating the Learning Collective to determine if and how to offer it again.
What We’re Reading (or Listening to) Now
We know that many of us suffer from depression and anxiety and too few of us are able to (or, in some cases, desire to) access mental health treatment. As such, we need to look at community-based solutions that complement medical or clinical approaches. This July 22, 2019 “Fixes” column from the New York Times talks about a program imported from Zimbabwe that uses community members (peers) to provide conversation and support. And it works.
I (Cari) have recently delved deeper into Raj Chetty’s work. He’s an economist at Harvard and he leads the Opportunity Insights project:
https://opportunityinsights.org/
He and his colleagues use big data to test some key social and economic questions related to opportunity (i.e. how do we increase economic opportunity for all?) He recently did some very interesting work on mobility (“Moves to Opportunity”) and some of his colleagues recently published a paper on key federal welfare policies that have the most bang for the buck as it relates to opportunity. I find this work incredibly salient to health. If you’d like to get the cliff notes version via podcast, listen to this:
https://www.vox.com/2019/8/15/20801907/raj-chetty-ezra-klein-social-mobility-opportunity
Colorado Department of Health & Environment’s VISION tool: https://www.colorado.gov/pacific/cdphe/vision-data-tool This is an amazing tool for any of us monitoring trends in health indices. VISION stands for Visual Information System for Identifying Opportunities and Needs. You can look at a host of indices at the county or health service area level. You can look at trends or cut the data by demographics. It’s a very user-friendly tool to better understand the relative health status of our community. Special thanks to Helen Harris, epidemiologist at El Paso County Public Health, for bringing it to our attention.