Report Guides Community Efforts to Pay for Prevention Programs

A new pub­li­ca­tion from the Annie E. Casey Foun­da­tion offers strate­gies and tips for local coali­tions look­ing to finance and sus­tain pre­ven­tion pro­grams for young peo­ple in their com­mu­ni­ties. The resource is based on the expe­ri­ences of com­mu­ni­ties that adopt­ed the Foundation’s Evidence2Success® frame­work, which sup­ports long-term part­ner­ships between com­mu­ni­ties and pub­lic sys­tems to iden­ti­fy, imple­ment and sup­port evi­dence-based mod­els for large groups of chil­dren and families.

Fund­ing Pre­ven­tion in Com­mu­ni­ties reviews sev­er­al key aspects of sus­tain­ing pre­ven­tion — efforts that cap­i­tal­ize on strengths and address root caus­es of risk fac­tors for young peo­ple — while empha­siz­ing the impor­tance of:

• fol­low­ing a strate­gic financ­ing process from the outset;
• set­ting sound, data-dri­ven priorities;
• devel­op­ing and com­mu­ni­cat­ing a vision that inspires buy-in from funders;
• match­ing activ­i­ties to fund­ing streams and max­i­miz­ing exist­ing resources; and
• reg­u­lar­ly adapt­ing pro­grams based on new data and evidence.

To be suc­cess­ful, coali­tion lead­ers must have the scaf­fold­ing in place to sup­port each of these ele­ments. The Evidence2Success frame­work focus­es on build­ing infra­struc­ture through the devel­op­ment of core capac­i­ties in part­ner­ships, data and eval­u­a­tion, con­tin­u­ous qual­i­ty improve­ment, strate­gic finance plan­ning, advo­ca­cy and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, and project management.

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Secur­ing financ­ing for both pro­gram­mat­ic costs and infra­struc­ture can be a daunt­ing task, but Evidence2Success sites have shown that it can be done through a vari­ety of strate­gies, such as using exist­ing resources more effec­tive­ly and train­ing con­tract­ed providers in the deliv­ery of new evi­dence-based pro­grams. Diverse fund­ing streams — par­tic­u­lar­ly local pri­vate foun­da­tions and fed­er­al mon­ey that flows through state agen­cies and into com­mu­ni­ties, includ­ing new oppor­tu­ni­ties through the Fam­i­ly First Pre­ven­tion Ser­vices Act — can help col­lab­o­ra­tives carve out a strong resource base. The pub­li­ca­tion maps out the var­i­ous path­ways coali­tions can fol­low to access gov­ern­ment dol­lars to sup­port dif­fer­ent parts of their pre­ven­tion work.

“Even with well-laid plans and tech­ni­cal assis­tance, coali­tions inevitably face chal­lenges in keep­ing pro­grams going for the long term,” says Mil­dred John­son, a pro­gram asso­ciate with the Foundation’s Nation­al Com­mu­ni­ty Strate­gies team who works close­ly with Evidence2Success com­mu­ni­ties. ​“Lead­ers can use the lessons from Fund­ing Pre­ven­tion in Com­mu­ni­ties to help ensure those chal­lenges are just bumps in the road to fund­ing and expand­ing pro­grams that work.”

Read more about how com­mu­ni­ties are imple­ment­ing Evidence2Success