There’s better awareness of CHWs than ever, which means there should be better funding streams than ever too, right?
Finding funding isn’t always straightforward, so it can pay to think crooked.
We uncovered and brainstormed many interesting possibilities in our meeting Getting Creative with Funding. Here they are, grouped into categories.
General Funding Sources
National Network of Libraries of Medicine
NNLM offers many funding opportunities, such as grants for holding training in libraries.
Foundation Center newsletters
Foundation Center publishes many free newsletters, including the useful RFP Bulletin and Health Funding Watch.
Council on Foundations Scan through members to find out who might be giving grants. The membership directory is for members only, but the website is still full of references and keywords that can help in a search.
Grantmakers in Health This is a networking group for funders that reveals trends and directions in grant making. There are also announcements of grant funding, such as “The Well Being Trust, a national foundation dedicated to advancing the mental, social, and spiritual health of the nation, recently announced new grant funding for twenty-six initiatives as part of their California Mental Health and Wellness Initiative.”
Private Donors
Look beyond government sources for funding. For example:
- Susan G Komen received a bequeathal that set up their patient navigation training program.
- Banks have community funds programs that must be spent. Some got fined for not spending their funds, so they may be eager to find an outlet for their money. Check out US Bank Community Possible Grant Program, Deutsche Bank Small Grants Fund, People’s United Community Foundation.
- Health plans, such as BlueCross BlueSheild’s Mobilize AZ, which gives funding for substance use disorder, mental health, and diabetes
- Crowdfunding may be a way to find out what a community wants and raise funds from individuals. This could be a way to set up scholarships. States, look to partners for managing these. Examples are GoFundMe, Kickstarter, ChipIn, or these alternatives.
Unexpected Departments and Sectors
Think outside of public health for funding other than or connected to health, like science, transportation, or other areas dedicated to social determinate of health. Note to examine your buzzwords, neutralize them, and learn the buzzwords in other sectors.
Some ideas:
- Department of Transportation and Highway Safety, which wants to use CHWs to promote the use of car seats.
- Reproductive Health to boost maternal health programs.
- Partnering with doula organizations for post-partum maternal health, for what is a doula but a CHW?
- Departments of Housing, e.g., Healthy Homes, Housing Trust Fund
- CitizenScience, which works largely in technology and environments but also population health (Smoke Sense is a project that aims to understand the extent to which exposure to wild land fire smoke affects health and productivity, as well as inform health risk communication strategies that protect public health during smoke days; SONYC is a smart cities initiative focused on developing a cyber-physical system (CPS) for the monitoring, analysis and mitigation of urban noise pollution; GoViral is a free and real-time online Cold & Flu surveillance system administered by researchers at New York University. Participants will get a Do-It-Yourself flu saliva collection system that they can keep and use at home if they are feeling sick.)
- Keep looking for federal, but also state and community funding sources.
Partners
Partners can help share the load and also open up possibilities for new grants. Some examples:
- Indian Health grant for diabetes
- Good Health and Wellness (Indian) – careful of duplicating efforts
- CHRs
- EMS (guiding CHWs to getting certified in CPR and First Aid)
- Gaming Commissions often need to spend their money on communities
Strategy Ideas
When looking for funding, think about these strategies.
Mixing Funding Streams
Funding seeds funding. Sometimes you can increase funding if you tell one funder that you’ve received funding from another. They can provide a matching grant for the same cause.
Understand the Different Funding Categories
Be familiar with the terminology around different kinds of funding and what it means. This could help you structure projects that fit in areas you might not have considered. For example, seed funding, place-based funding, capacity-building, supporting the non-profit sector, etc.
