New (Fiscal) Year, New Plan

Beginning a new fiscal year brings the same energy and hopefulness as a new calendar year without the pressure of establishing guilt-ridden resolutions, restricting calories, or joining a crowded gym. A new fiscal year is a kinder, gentler transition deserving of its own reflection and celebration.

Our new fiscal year began July 1st and included a move to a new office space and the launch of a new strategic plan. In the midst of packing, we spent last spring reviewing our successes, challenges, and opportunities since introducing the Better Health Foundation to the greater Quad Cities region in 2023.

In that short 3-year span, we made 44 awards totaling more than $6.2 million! The largest award was $350,000 and the smallest was $1,100.86.

We are excited about and celebrate the investment we’ve made to date in the work of our nonprofit partners and are impressed by their diligent efforts to meet the needs of people with complex health and social challenges.

Being a funder, though, is about more than moving money. We grew in our knowledge of the nonprofit community, forged relationships with visionary leaders, and along the way, gained valuable insights about fulfilling our mission and vision.

If we look at our first 3 years with a critical eye, we acknowledge that our grantmaking was concentrated in terms of numbers of grants and grant dollars. Larger institutions with strong track records captured the greatest amount of funding.

We received fewer proposals from nonprofits in rural communities, making it difficult to meet the needs of those individuals living in the far reaches of our service area.

And while it was our goal to be a catalyst for innovation, we learned many nonprofit organizations do not or cannot think about innovating because they need to build their capacity.

All of those factors became drivers for change and helped us frame our future. Our Board of Directors, led by Board President Rob Woodall, has established four new strategic goals:

Strengthen the capacity of the region’s nonprofits through grant funding, and by leveraging the Foundation’s human, social and technical capital. We believe we can help our nonprofit community gain a stronger footing and become more resilient.

Broaden and deepen community-informed nonprofit services aligned with the BHF areas of focus in communities with the greatest health needs. We will be looking for greater opportunities to level the playing field for people who have more serious health needs. We know from our own research that the greater Quad Cities region includes neighborhoods and zip codes where individuals cannot live their healthiest lives.

Develop a measurement, evaluation and learning framework to enable maximum program impact, sustainable outcomes, and shared learning. We plan to develop a measurement, evaluation and learning framework to help us better understand as an organization and as a region how well we are advancing health in our focus areas, and what is working and what’s not.

Drive new partnerships and collaborations between nonprofit organizations and institutions to increase experimentation and inspire innovation. We aspire to help our nonprofit partners and their partners -- both nonprofit and non-traditional -- come together to experiment and innovate.

We have an appetite for change. That works for a new fiscal year, because unlike the New Year, we’re not watching our calories.