San Diego, CA. September 25, 2020. Alliance Healthcare Foundation’s Mission Support funding program will open for applications from eligible nonprofits serving San Diego County on Monday, September 28th.

We are grateful for the significant response we received to our recent community input survey. We are pleased to share that based on your feedback, the San Diego Mission Support unrestricted general operating grants will now be multi-year awards (3 years).

For nonprofit organizations serving San Diego County, Mission Support funding ranges from $25,000 to $100,000 annually per recipient, totaling $900,000 in grant awards for each of the next three years.

The Mission Support program is for nonprofit organizations serving primarily San Diego County. If your organization only serves Imperial County or it is your primary service area, please refrain from submitting the San Diego application. Mission Support applications for Imperial County will open in early 2021, in partnership with the Imperial Valley Wellness Foundation.

Eligibility Criteria for San Diego Mission Support:

• Serve communities that are at least 50% communities of color (geographies, families or individuals)
• Be a 501(c)3 nonprofit or have a 501(c)3 fiscal sponsor
• Provide services in San Diego County with preference given to those with headquartered locations in San Diego County
• Be aligned with Alliance’s mission of advancing health and wellness for the most vulnerable in San Diego County, who often experience inequities in health and social outcomes.

Why Did Mission Support Change?

While the fundamental principles for Mission Support program remain consistent, we also recognize the unprecedented impacts of Covid-19 on the most marginalized communities and the non-profits that serve them, and we strive to be responsive to the needs of our community.

In light of Covid-19, as well as the structural and long-standing inequities it continues to highlight, we are intentionally prioritizing our funding with a racial equity lens and focusing on communities that continue to be disproportionately impacted by Covid-19. As we know, long-standing racial disparities and social determinants of health are being dramatically exacerbated due to the pandemic. Refining the Mission Support funding cycle to intentionally and explicitly focus on helping address those inequities requires that we are grounded in racial disparity data in our grant making and decision-making practices.

Recently, we surveyed a large number of our current and past grantees and applicants, in an effort to refine our San Diego Mission Support program. For those of you who were able to make time to respond, thank you very much! We heard you! Your comments were instrumental in our program refinement.

“In order to achieve an inclusive, equitable region where all people have the opportunity to thrive, we must address persistent racial inequities directly,” says Sarah Lyman, Executive Director, Alliance Healthcare Foundation. “Through our re-focused and multi-year Mission Support program, we aim to provide funding to organizations that employ a racial equity lens when addressing the needs of those disproportionately impacted by Covid-19, and which demonstrate the ability and leadership to deliver high quality outcomes. Now that San Diego Mission Support will be a multi-year grant, we also look forward to building stronger relationships with our community partners.”

About Mission Support

The Mission Support program is based on the belief that trusting those closest to our constituents, and providing core operating support for great organizations, will best further Alliance’s mission. Alliance aims to advance health and wellness for the most vulnerable in San Diego and Imperial counties.

Organizations may use the Mission Support funds provided as they see fit, allowing them to apply the funds in a way that best meets the most pressing needs of the people they serve.

For our partners in Imperial County, Alliance works with the Imperial Valley Wellness Foundation (IVWF). Mission Support funding for the Valley is run independently by IVWF and will be announced in early 2021.

2020-2021 San Diego Mission Support Application Schedule
Opens: September 28, 2020 (8:00am PST)
Closes: October 26, 2020 (5:00pm PST)
Decisions: December 2020

##########About Alliance Healthcare Foundation. We work to advance health and wellness for the most vulnerable in San Diego and Imperial counties through collaborative funding, convening and advocacy.

We believe all people have a desire, and a basic human right, to be well.

We define wellness as a state of complete physical, mental, spiritual, economic and social well-being and not merely the absence of disease or infirmity. Society, structural systems, community, neighborhood, and family are collectively responsible for creating an environment of health and wellness. Wellness is personal and is not the same for everyone.

Health equity exists only when people can attain their full health potential, regardless of resources, circumstance, skin color or identity. This potential can only be reached when we reduce – and ultimately eliminate –the disparities that adversely impact marginalized and under-resourced communities.

We currently operate a portfolio of five programs:

1. i2 Innovation Initiative — also referred to as “venture philanthropy”—based on the thesis that innovation capital (often high risk, high reward) is needed to transform the current paradigm (high cost and poor outcomes) and improve quality, increase capacity and reduce costs (The 2020/21 i2 has been postponed indefinitely due to COVID-19 impact);
2. Mission Support—based on the belief that trusting those closest to our constituents and providing core operating support for great organizations will best advance our mission;
3. Responsive Funding—based on the belief that it is important to be responsive to time-sensitive community needs and opportunities;
4. InvestUp—based on the belief that it is important to actively and strategically be looking for ways to meaningfully advance our mission and it is worth spending some or all of our corpus—beyond the earnings off of our endowment—if we can substantively, sustainably and positively change the dynamics; and
5. Impact Investments–based on the thesis that we can activate our investment portfolio to achieve more positive impact.

Our History. In 1982, the San Diego Community Healthcare Alliance (Alliance) created the first Preferred Provider Organization/Network (PPO) in the United States. From 1989 through 1994, the Alliance funded Alliance Healthcare Foundation (AHF) through profits from its Community Care Network (CCN) operations. In 1994, Alliance sold CCN to a national healthcare company and channeled the proceeds from CCN’s sale into an endowment of $83 million for AHF. That endowment has enabled funding of approximately $64 million (USD) in direct funding and approximately $41 million (USD) from national and local funding partners in San Diego and Imperial counties. Our endowment holds approximately $80 million in assets today, with funding for programs and operations derived from endowment investment earnings.

AHF Media contact:
Karen Winston, Communications Director, Alliance Healthcare Foundation
P 858-348-6472 E karen.winston@alliancehf.org