The Missouri Foundation for Health wants to make sure Missouri groups adequately capture some of millions of federal health reform dollars that are available through the Affordable Care and Act, or ACA. Through a new line of business for the MFH called Missouri Capture, or MoCap, the grant-maker will assist nonprofits and governmental organizations apply for federal grants.
“There are a number of funding programs in there that have nothing to do with the insurance industry or the insurance model and most of those things are available now, not delayed until 2013 or 2014,” Jim Kimmey, president of the Missouri Foundation for Health, said.
For 2010, the national ACA allocation is $250 million for community and clinical prevention, public health infrastructure, research and tracking activities, and public health training; and another $250 million for primary care workforce programs.
“We think we can help organizations compete effectively for those federal funds,” Kimmey added.
Federal ACA allocations are expected increase by $250 million each year until a stable $2 billion annual funding level is reached.
On Thursday, August 19, the Foundation held an informational meeting at the Missouri History Museum in St. Louis with entities interested in pursuing federal health grants. While MoCap will not pursue the grants for them, it will help demystify the federal funding process so that organizations will have a better shot at finding the right federal dollars to fund health and prevention programs through stronger applications.
MoCap will work with an organization’s regardless of its prior history with the MFH.
“It doesn’t matter whether you are a past grantee or not. This is a fresh start going forward,” said Sally Haywood, director of external programs at MFH.
Kimmey said historically, Missouri organizations have not done well in securing dollars to supporting community health and prevention programs.
That is, in part because the competitive procurement process includes complex applications, electronic filing process and short application periods.
“It can be quite a challenge to submit. Sometimes the guidance is 80 pages long; they can give 30 to 60 days to respond via electronic submission processes,” Haywood said.
“We rank 37th in CDC grants; we rank about 24th or 25th in HRSA grants coming into the state and the Foundation thinks we can do a lot better and the board of directors agreed with the staff and authorized the new program,” he said.
Many Missouri organizations do not have adequate expertise or resources to prepare competitive applications, even though they are capable of carrying out a project if funded. MoCap will help fill that void, based on the level of assistance needed by the organization.
“MoCap help is tiered, so we are trying to discover some tools for all organizations to better assess if federal funding is appropriate for them and how they can best get ready; broader assistance to organizations prepared to seek federal dollars; and some intensive help to some organizations on specific grant initiatives,” Haywood explained.
Getting registered on grants.gov is a priority to moving forward. MFH has a link to a tutorial on that process.
“Getting registered can take two days to five weeks; and if a new procurement announcement came out by the feds tomorrow, and you had 30 to 60 days to write a good proposal, we wouldn’t want your attention diluted by the process of getting registered. Hopefully that would be done so that you could just point your attention on writing the strongest possible grant proposal,” Haywood said.
MoCap assistance will be provided in Missouri Foundation for Health service region, which includes 84 Missouri counties and the city of St. Louis.
For more tips, tools and information and resources, go to www.mffh.org/MoCap.