Area grant-giving model offers new options
Organizations to reward collaboration
A luncheon meeting of two businesswomen launched a new model of grant-giving that donors and nonprofit agencies alike believe might change the way charities work together in the future.
The U.S. Oil Basic Needs Fund and J.J. Keller Foundation announced the first fruits of that approach Wednesday:
A $300,000 grant — $100,000 annually over three years — to the Mental-health Outreach Resource Expansion (MORE), a collaboration of seven organizations that will create a mental health network of care for people experiencing homelessness and/or domestic violence in Brown County.
A grant of up to $225,000, beginning with a first-year allocation of $100,000, to the Dental Service Expansion Project, which is designed to increase access to dental care for children and adults who are uninsured or on Medicaid. The project is a collaboration between Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and the Brown County Oral Health Partnership.
The grants will come from the proceeds of the annual U.S. Oil Open, a fundraising golf outing supported by about 200 businesses, foundations and individuals, which will be matched by the Keller Foundation. This year's outing is scheduled for Aug. 13 at four area golf courses.
Five other smaller grants ($1,500 to $25,000) were awarded to single organizations, but it's the collaborative efforts that have proved revolutionary.
It began with a meeting over lunch of Sarah Schmidt, family president and director of U.S. Oil, and Marne Kellner, senior vice president of the Keller Foundation.
"She was trying to solicit us to be a bigger sponsor of the event, and I said, 'You know what? I think we could do something different here, something bigger that would have a bigger impact on the community,'" Kellner said. The result was the matching relationship.
Working through the Green Bay Community Foundation (GBCF), the two charitable funds established a structure that rewards collaborative efforts with three-year grants of up to $100,000, as opposed to the $25,000 maximum for single agency grants.
"We asked these organizations to think about how they might collaborate so that their core competencies could leverage more expertise," said David Pamperin, GBCF executive director.
Bob Johnson, executive director of the American Foundation for Counseling Services, served as the lead organizer for the MORE project.
"These very generous and community-minded folks putting the money on the table suddenly produced an opportunity to do things that you only wished you could do previously," Johnson said. "We as an agency already had some standing relationships with providing onsite mental health care … when this came forward, we saw it as an opportunity to link people who already had some capacity working together and to do it in a better, more comprehensive way, and in some ways do what we had talked about but had no means to do."
The grant allows the MORE partners to hire a full-time therapist who will rotate among the various sites, along with a half-time advanced practice nurse prescriber, Johnson said.
Lori Suddick, associate dean of health sciences for NWTC, said the grant will allow the complementary services of the college and OHP to work together.
"Both organizations have the mission to improve the dental care of the underserved, which is primarily low-income, in the community," Suddick said. "The goal was to collaborate in a way that we can take funding and create a mutually beneficial partnership."
A grant committee of about a dozen community volunteers and officials from the funding partners reviewed more than 50 grant requests totaling $6 million, said Wes Garner, committee chairman. Although only seven of those requests were funded, Garner said the Community Foundation is presenting many of the other grants to potential donors.
"We developed a process that's very appealing to community donors, that makes them feel that the funds they're giving are put to good use, and efficiently," Garner said.
Schmidt said she and Keller are impressed with the work that nonprofit organizations did to develop collaborative efforts in a narrow time frame — the grant program was announced in early February with an application deadline of April 1.
"We feel like they really epitomize the best of what we hoped we could do with these funds," Schmidt said. "They really took this idea of impact and collaboration very seriously to come up with exceptional opportunities."
"The genius of this is through the simple act of promoting and rewarding collaboration in a meaningful way, it changed the whole playing field," Johnson said, adding that groups are already starting to talk about ways to work together for next year's round of grants. "When you put this amount of money on the table, it changes the whole dynamic."
MORE program to create mental health network
From the “Collaborative Project Narrative” submitted with the grant application from the American Foundation of Counseling Services, Golden House, the House of Hope, NEW Community Clinic, New Community Shelter, St. John the Evangelist Homeless Shelter and Bellin Psychiatric Center Inc.:
“The MORE program would create a mental health network to care for persons experiencing homelessness and domestic violence in Brown County. … Partner agencies will develop requirements for the continuum of care and assist in outcome measurement. …
“The MORE Program (Mental-health Outreach Resource Expansion) will take a holistic approach; each of the partners will provide a distinct and essential service that in combination will fully meet the needs of every client without duplication of efforts.”
“One of the greatest obstacles in helping homeless individuals empower themselves revolves around the issue of mental health. Many of the mental health issues that afflict the homeless population cannot be overcome by counseling alone. …
“Often in our community, these individuals do not have access to mental health medication in a timely fashion. For instance, the average stay for a resident at the New Community Shelter is 39 days, yet it takes an average of 60 days for these individuals to see a professional who can prescribe medication. At the same time, medication alone is not the answer. …
“One of the goals of this grant is for the therapist and APNP (advanced practice nurse prescriber) to develop customized mental health services that would uniquely address the concerns/issues of the clientele of each specific agency.”
Dental Service Expansion project to enhance programs
From the “Collaborative Project Narrative” submitted with the grant application from Northeast Wisconsin Technical College and the Brown County Oral Health Partnership:
“Brown County’s traditional dental care system is badly underfunded and overwhelmed by a rapidly growing at-risk population. Access to both preventive and restorative dental care is very limited for those who have Medical Assistance (MA).
“Recent Dental Medicaid mapping by the Wisconsin Department of Health and Family Services indicated that Brown County is one of only seven counties statewide with less than 20 percent of Medicaid recipients receiving dental services.”
“The Dental Service Expansion Project is an initiative that builds on an existing collaborative partnership between NWTC (Northeast Wisconsin Technical College) and the OHP (Brown County Oral Health Partnership) by formalizing the relationship to enhance current dental programming/services offered in the community to uninsured/underinsured children and adults.
“This project consists of two main components:
“1) Dental Clinic (i.e., restructuring NWTC’s existing Dental Hygiene and Dental Assistant programs’ on-campus clinical experience into a real world environment through a cross-discipline Dental Clinic that is staffed by a full-time dental team three days per week); and
“2) Summer Program Site (i.e., establishing NWTC as the primary site for the OHP’s summer program for children and staffing it with two dentists).”