Community Responsive Grants
Background
MeHAF launched the Community Responsive Grants (CRG) program as a pilot in late 2019, making the first round of 1-year project grants at the beginning of 2020. The program has provided community-led organizations opportunities to propose their best ideas and solutions, as defined by their communities, to advance health equity.
Prior to the CRG program, most of MeHAF’s grantmaking efforts were more narrowly defined to accomplish specific predetermined objectives and outcomes.
Purpose
The purpose of CRG is to fund community-led projects that advance health equity and align with one or more of MeHAF’s Four Goal Areas: equitable access, system change, better health for specific groups, and shared leadership. The program is intended to respond to community needs, address emerging opportunities, test innovative approaches, or implement programs informed by community experiences of how best to address systemic barriers to achieving health equity.
Highlights
- The CRG program is complemented by the Systems Improvement and Innovation Responsive Grants (SIIRG) program which supports system-driven innovations in the health services sphere that are responsive to community needs, but not entirely community-led. The parallel development and annual nature of these two responsive grant programs has helped us to incorporate continued learning from each round of grantmaking into process improvements that often impact both programs.
- To date, more than half the grants awarded in this program have focused on behavioral health and/or Substance Use Disorders.
- CRG is MeHAF's first grant program to offer an annual funding opportunity for new projects.
