Eligible organizations in Texas are invited to submit a letter of interest for our new Collaborative Approaches to Well-Being in Rural Communities project, which aims to support rural communities in their efforts to inclusively and collaboratively transform the environments where people live, learn, work, play and pray to support resilience, mental health, and well-being. Contingent upon the quality of proposals received, the foundation plans to award up to five, three-year grants totaling $2 million (not to exceed $400,000 per award).
The foundation will invite applicants with the strongest letters to submit a full proposal and will offer assistance in the development of that proposal, if needed. For the purposes of this project, the foundation defines rural as counties of 250,000 people or less, with a preference for smaller communities. Multiple counties may collaborate as long as each county in the collaboration has 250,000 people or less.
Project Description
The Collaborative Approaches to Well-Being in Rural Communities project aligns with the foundation’s new strategic direction. Through this project, we seek to address a lack of understanding of how communities support resilience and mental health, the significant inequities that exist in Texas, the community conditions that contribute to mental health disparities, and how people come together to create and implement community-driven solutions.
Selected grantees will develop or build on a community collaborative to assess, plan and implement strategies to become a healthier community that supports resilience, mental health and well-being. Using a population health approach to address specific conditions that contribute to mental health disparities, each community will determine their path toward mental health equity and community wellness. In addition, we will also fund a separate coordinator grant to facilitate technical assistance and evaluation for the grantees, and to assist the foundation in thoughtfully partnering with and learning alongside the grantees.
The foundation will fund grantees to facilitate collaboration in their communities in which all partners contribute expertise, share decision-making and ownership of project outcomes, increase understanding of community conditions, and integrate knowledge gained with the goal of improved community well-being. Ultimately, the result we seek is that all people in Texas thrive in communities that value and support their resilience, mental health and well-being.
We intend to select grantees who demonstrate a commitment to:
- Shared learning through partnership with the foundation and other grantees
- Creating learning environments in collaboration with the technical assistance and evaluation coordinator, foundation staff and other key stakeholders
- Meaningful inclusion of traditionally excluded groups in planning, program and policy development, and change implementation
- Collective impact and systems change through strategic partnerships
- Engaging in community-based participatory research (CBPR) for continuous quality improvement and ongoing evaluation
- Engaging in local and state-level policy development and advocacy
- Prioritizing mental health as equally important to well-being as physical health
- A sustainable community collaborative invested in developing and maintaining resilience, mental health and well-being of all community members
Letters of Interest are due March 7, 2018 at 11:59 p.m. CST. Please read all information carefully before submitting a letter of interest. It is the applicant’s responsibility to refer to the website for the most current information. You may also download a print-friendly version of this information.
For more information, go to: http://hogg.utexas.edu/rural-communities
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