Health Equity Capacity Building

Background

MeHAF launched the Health Equity Capacity-Building (HECB) program in 2018, making eight grants in the first round. This was followed by a second round, funding seven additional grantees in 2019. The program was one of the first major initiatives launched under our 2018 Strategic Framework, which emphasized the need to center health equity in our work. While our initial commitment was for a three-year grant period, we soon recognized the need for a longer commitment and subsequently extended the period twice, to a total of nine years.

Purpose

In 2021, the HECB grantees worked in partnership with MeHAF staff to develop this aspirational goal statement for the program:

The long-term goal of the HECB program is to provide a foundation for MeHAF and grantees to collectively work toward building a movement for health equity in Maine.

Through the program, grantees and MeHAF will forge new transformative, healing relationships, both between funder and grantee and across communities.

Working together, grantees and MeHAF will craft a system and structure that enables grantees to examine and strengthen their internal systems, skills, resources, networks, and audience so that they each have what they need to pursue their missions and build long-term, sustainable power.

MeHAF will use its voice and influence to spread equitable practices to other funders, the state, and mainstream organizations.

By learning alongside grantees, MeHAF will build and sustain grant programs that advance justice and equity, and apply that learning across its other programs.

To support this goal, the program pairs unrestricted operating support grants with a cohort learning community and self-selected technical assistance supports, both in group and individualized settings, and works provide ways for grantees to collaborate and connect.

Highlights

Grantee teams now lead the implementation of each component of the program, including planning the cohort gatherings and guiding the program’s evaluation.
We have created a funding mechanism controlled by the grantees themselves, through which they make decisions about funding collaborative projects within the group.
Each grantee organization has an annual capacity-building budget, in addition to their unrestricted grant funds. This allows them to prioritize and resource their core organizational development needs.

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