New foundation set to award $4 million in grants to Quad-Cities health non-profits

The BHF was launched in March, after Genesis Health System’s merged with MercyOne and endowed the BHF with $40 million in funds to improve Quad-Cities community health. In an announcement at Modern Woodmen Park on Wednesday, the BHF said that 501(c)3 organizations in the Quad-Cities will be eligible to apply for a series of grants over the next two years.

The grants will be broken into four distinct categories, with applications due at different points of the year. The first will be Capacity Building and Service Support grants, which open in October for organizations looking to strengthen their operations. In the spring, there will be Innovation grants, which are focused on the future, bringing new methods and ideas into the local health community.

Next summer, the BHF will offer Solutions at Scale awards, which are the most lucrative grants, ranging from $250,000 to $350,000. Those are intended to spread evidence-based health solutions throughout the region, and will be the most exclusive. There will also be discretionary grants, which will be awarded sparingly for emergency scenarios. The foundation is seeking to offer funding for organizations that serve Cedar, Clinton, Louisa, Muscatine and Scott counties in Iowa and Henry, Mercer, Rock Island and Whiteside counties in Illinois. 

Missy Bowery, BHF CEO, said organizations that may compete, or appear to compete, with Genesis, MercyOne or Trinity Health are deemed ineligible for grants, given BHF’s status as a legacy of Genesis. Also ineligible are national organizations that don’t exclusively serve the Quad-Cities region. 

“If you’re an organization that you represent a national organization where the money is going to leave our region, please don’t apply,” Bowery said. “We’re talking about money that we want to stay here to utilize for the benefit of our region.

“Our vision is a region that thrives because all of the members of its communities are engaged in improving their health, and that of their neighbors.”

Decisions on which organizations are approved for grants will be made by the BHF board of directors, a 16-member board that includes community leaders, representatives from John Deere and The Hawkeye Group, and Main Street Baseball CEO Dave Heller. 

“You may be thinking that elevating the health of our region is a tall order, and one that would require substantial resources, and you’re right — we have ambitious plans and expectations,” said BHF board secretary and treasurer Rob Woodall. “Determining what we will support requires considerable thought, because we cannot fund every worthwhile project, and there are many of this community.” 

To narrow the focus, the BHF is focusing its first grant application cycle on the issues of behavioral and mental health, maternal and child care and risk reduction for obesity and diabetes. That’s a huge opportunity for some local organizations, like Family Resources, an organization works with foster children, offers mental health counseling and provides resources for survivors of acts of violence that could use the funding to further their missions. 

Family Resources CEO Nicole Cisne Durbin said the Innovation Grant in particular is exciting, considering the opportunity it gives local health nonprofits to reconsider fresh ideas they might not have originally had the capacity to pursue. 

“We don’t get money as nonprofits to innovate or to think beyond the services that we’re contracted to do, when we can see that there’s better ways to do things,” she said. “Those bigger award amounts are just critical to our region moving forward and serving our community.”