Financial Support for Your School-Based Health Center: A System or a Shot in the Dark?
ABSTRACT SUMMARY
Maximize the likelihood of success from your fund-seeking efforts through a system of purposeful strategies. Get in the head of your potential funder! Applicants should identify key elements that indicate potential funders have a funding strategy aligning with the applicant’s organizational goals. Likewise, it is important to develop a systematic process for presenting a project as a worthwhile investment with potential to yield desired outcomes for both the applicant organization and potential funder.
ABSTRACT DESCRIPTION
Fundraising for a school-based health center, or for any project with which an organization may be involved, is more than taking aim at the largest foundation or funding source on the radar screen and hoping that the funder can be convinced to award money to the applicant. It involves doing some strategic homework on potential funding sources. Applicants want to identify key elements that indicate which potential funders have a funding strategy aligning with the applicant’s organizational goals. Likewise, it is important to develop a systematic process for presenting a project as a worthwhile investment with the potential to yield desired outcomes for both the applicant organization and a potential funder.
Participants will learn the basics of a successful search to identify potential funding sources, including how to evaluate the likelihood that funders will be interested in supporting a project. Participants will have the opportunity to pose questions to a community funder of school-based health services to develop an understanding of how funding strategies are developed and aligned with applicant’s organizational goals.
Participants in this session will learn about the importance of communication strategies with their funder or potential funder at various stages in their fund-seeking and fund-receiving process. This discussion will include a focus on the details of how to communicate with a potential funder.
• Before the proposal is submitted. Applicants want to ensure that a project aligns with the funder’s funding strategy.
• After an applicant learns it was not successful. Applicants should maintain a positive relationship (think “groundwork”) for approaching the funder in a future funding cycle.
• During the reporting process. Do funded applicants tell the funder only what they want to hear; or do they tell the funder what they need to know to make informed decisions moving forward?
• After the (funded) period of performance is completed. Applicants want to reinforce that their organization is striving to attain goals that closely match the interest and values of the funder.
Participants will learn the essential components of a successful proposal. Topics will include:
• Writing a Statement of Need and Vision or Goal Statement
• How to craft Objective Statements, written as measurable objectives
• Activities that will bring about desired outcomes and help attain project objectives
• Comprehensive Project Timeline
• Budget development that includes both the Budget Projections and Budget Narrative
• The importance of an evaluation plan and resources to help develop one.
PRESENTER(S)
NAME: Anna Armstrong PhD, MPH ORGANIZATION: Building Healthy Futures NAME: Jeanee Weiss BS, MS ORGANIZATION: Building Healthy Futures
AUDIENCE
ADMINISTRATORS: Y
PRIMARY HEALTH: N
MENTALHEALTH: N
ORGANIZATIONAL: N
PUBLIC HEALTH: Y
EDUCATION: N
YOUTH: N
Technical
issues should be directed to Deirdre Taylor via email: dtaylor@sbh4all.org
or Telephone: (202) 638-5872, ext. 204
