Updates to VNA’s Grantmaking Process and Funding Areas

Dear Friends,

Those of you who saw VNA Foundation’s recent FY 2024 Grantmaking Report know that earlier this year we participated in two external assessments of our grantmaking efforts.

One of those assessments was conducted by Davidoff Strategy and included a landscape analysis as well as important input obtained via surveys and in-depth discussions with many of you—our grantee partners, peer funders, stakeholders, and experts in the health field. Thank you to each and every one of you for taking the time to share feedback and suggestions. Your voices contributed mightily to our work.

Our staff and Board of Directors then held a strategic planning session to review the findings and discuss how we could better meet the urgent and ever-evolving health needs in our communities.

In the months that followed, our team continued to have conversations focused on ways of being as thoughtful and strategic as possible in implementing the recommendations from the assessment. At the forefront of every conversation were our grantee partners, the critical work they are doing, and the additional work they could do, if given the necessary support and resources.

On behalf of the VNA team, I am now pleased to share several exciting updates to our grantmaking process and funding areas. We are confident that these adjustments will allow us to better support the nonprofits working to improve the health of our area’s medically underserved.

Over the next few months, we will begin to roll out the following changes:

Grantmaking Process Enhancements

• Piloting multiyear grant awards to a small initial cohort of organizations
• Prioritizing applicants with smaller budget sizes
• Increasing funding of larger, proactive grants (including Special Initiatives and advocacy-related requests) addressing the root causes of longstanding issues
• Broadening opportunities for general operating grants
• Streamlining progress reports to ease the burden on grantee partners

Enhanced Core Funding Areas

• Access to Healthcare and Preventive Health
• Mental Health and Support Services
• Maternal and Reproductive Health
• Technical Assistance and Organizational Resiliency

Within all funding areas, we will prioritize organizations that: serve uninsured populations and/or Medicaid recipients; demonstrate culturally competent services; and have staff that reflect the population served. This page of our website includes additional details about the services, populations, and organizations that will be prioritized within each funding area.

For all funding areas or grant types, the following priorities and parameters apply, beginning with all LOIs and renewal requests submitted after November 1, 2024:

• Priority will be given to organizations serving Cook County
• Organizations in the five collar counties will be eligible if serving HRSA-designated medically underserved populations in Health Workforce Shortage Areas
• Generally, only grant requests of $40,000 or more will be considered, unless smaller grants are required due to organization size or other identifiable factors
• Large hospital or university systems will no longer be eligible for funding
• After three years of consecutive funding, organizations will be asked to take one year off from applying to the foundation

In addition, and due only to capacity limitations, unfortunately we will be unable to accept requests to fund organizations or programs that only focus on specific diseases, older adults, and/or populations with intellectual and developmental disabilities. You can read more about our funding guidelines on this page of our website and view updates about eligibility on our FAQ page.

In the coming months we will also announce specific revisions to make our renewal process more user friendly. Stay tuned!

Change is never easy, but we believe these revisions will help organizations better understand if their requests are competitive, and allow VNA’s grantmaking to achieve greater impact. And most importantly, we believe that the medically underserved populations that VNA exists to assist will ultimately benefit from these changes as well.

Our team members are happy to answer any questions you may have about these changes. As always, we look forward to hearing from you.

In partnership,

Rob DiLeonardi
Executive Director
VNA Foundation