FUNDING
Our Strategic Priorities
Improve Maternal & Infant Health
We believe that our community can be a place where every mother and young child has access to the care and resources they need to thrive, from pregnancy to early childhood.
Over the past decade, Hamilton County has shown that progress is possible. In 2023, the county achieved its lowest infant mortality rate ever. Yet recent increases remind us that progress is not guaranteed.
Healthy pregnancies and healthy babies depend on more than healthcare alone. Safe and stable housing, financial security, quality care and strong social connections all support maternal and infant wellbeing. But access to these resources has not been equally available across Greater Cincinnati, particularly in historically Black communities.
Lasting change happens when women and families closest to the challenges help shape the solutions and when healthcare providers, community organizations, public agencies, businesses and policymakers work together to redesign the policies and practices affecting their lives. By building on what works, we can create a more responsive, respectful and reliable system of support before, during and after pregnancy.
Together, we can help ensure every mother and young child—particularly Black and Hispanic families—has a full, fair and just opportunity for wellbeing.
bi3 invests in efforts to improve maternal and young child health, with a particular focus on Black and Hispanic women and children ages 0–3, by:
- Strengthening a diverse, coordinated maternal and young child health workforce and expanding access to culturally responsive doula care
- Advancing innovative and respectful models of care designed alongside women and families
- Expanding networks of support before, during and after pregnancy, including maternal mental health services and social and economic supports
- Bringing partners across sectors together to transform the policies, practices and systems that shape maternal and young child health
Promote Mental Health & Wellbeing
We believe our community can be a place where everyone—adults and youth—has the support and resources they need to be resilient and mentally healthy.
Mental health and wellbeing are shaped by more than individual choices. They are influenced by our relationships, communities and access to responsive systems of care. Yet too many adults and youth encounter fragmented services, inadequate reimbursement, limited access to culturally responsive care and systems that respond to crises instead of preventing them.
Because these systems were created over time, they can also be redesigned. bi3 is proud to work alongside community partners to build a more connected, respectful and responsive approach to mental health and wellbeing. TriHealth is integrating behavioral health into primary care, community-based organizations are developing approaches with the people they serve, advocates are working to strengthen resources and access, and our region is advancing a shared, youth-led strategy through Hopeful Empowered Youth (HEY!).
By listening to people closest to the challenges and working together across healthcare, education, philanthropy and community, we can move from responding to crises toward preventing them and create the conditions that give everyone a full, fair and just opportunity for mental health and wellbeing.
bi3 invests in efforts to increase access to quality mental health and wellbeing resources and create more responsive systems of support by:
- Expanding access to timely, high-quality and culturally responsive mental health and wellbeing resources
- Advancing prevention, early intervention and innovative community-centered models of care
- Supporting youth mental health and wellbeing by elevating youth voice and investing in the regional HEY! strategy
- Bringing partners together to transform the policies, practices and systems that shape mental health and wellbeing
Advocate for Change
We encourage our elected and government leaders to think differently about health and healthcare and provide them with the data and information they need to make positive decisions.
Advocating for Change is one of bi3’s core strategies to advance our mission and drive health equity. As a philanthropic leader committed to sparking and scaling innovation, bi3 recognizes that improving community health requires more than good programs—it requires changes to the systems and policies that shape people’s lives.
Our work is grounded in a core belief: The people closest to the challenge often hold the clearest insight into what needs to change. bi3 listens and plays a strategic role in amplifying those insights. Through trusted relationships with policy makers and systems leaders, bi3 elevates what’s working, where barriers remain and what’s possible.
In our public sector advocacy, we will be nonpartisan and positive in our relationships and associations. We will focus on what we learn from our research, partnerships, and investments, and we will support our organizational priorities and lean into our key investment areas.
Our advocacy efforts prioritize:
- Expanding access, screening, coverage, enrollment and funding for maternal and young child health and maternal behavioral health services
- Addressing birth equity (reducing racial disparities in maternal mortality/morbidity, birth outcomes, and infant mortality) and social determinants of health
- Increasing funding and support for mental health services with an emphasis on children and youth
Fuel Innovation at TriHealth
We believe our community can be a place where individuals have equitable access to high-quality, culturally competent care that leads to better health outcomes and health behaviors.
bi3 supports our strategic partner, TriHealth, in fueling innovation and evolving care models, while strengthening its culture and systems to better support all patients. This results in better health outcomes for everyone in the Greater Cincinnati community.
Since 2010, the bi3 Fund has fostered advancements at TriHealth, improving how patients access and receive care, better connecting patients with community resources, and integrating leading-edge scientific treatments into key clinical areas.
The bi3 fund is currently supporting the following advancements at TriHealth:
- Center for Health Equity
- Fernside Center for Grieving Children
- Integration of Behavioral Health into Primary Care and Pediatrics
- Precision Medicine
- School to Work Program
Current Funding Opportunities
There are currently no open funding opportunities. Join our email newsletter list to stay up-to-date on the latest bi3 news, including RFPs.
Ways We Invest
bi3 makes grants to support our mission. Our grants fund planning, capacity building, policy/advocacy, and pilot/implementation work.
On average, we invest $5 million in community partners each year, including funds earmarked for multi-year commitments. We award grants through Requests for Proposals (RFP), by invitation, and through funder collaboratives.
Requests for Proposals
bi3 issues open Requests for Proposals (RFP) for funding opportunities aligned to its focus areas. RFPs will include information on the goal, criteria, timeline and review process. bi3 awards a limited number of grants to applicants that best meet the requirements of the RFP. For most RFPs, bi3 engages community reviewers in the decision-making process.
Open RFPs can be found under Current Funding Opportunities. bi3 aims to award most of its grants through Requests for Proposals.
By Invitation Funding
While most of our community partners will be determined through Requests for Proposals, bi3 may provide funding to organizations by invitation. Organizations may be invited based on their strength of alignment to bi3’s focus areas and goals at times when the opportunity is time-bound or is a newly emerging need and there is not an open and aligned RFP. bi3 identifies these investment opportunities through community outreach and partnership building by staff. Funding invitations are made depending on the resources available.
Funder Collaboratives
bi3 recognizes that no one organization can create systems change to address our community’s health disparities. By partnering with other funders, bi3 can leverage its resources to fuel greater impact.
Examples of bi3’s current partnerships with other funders include the Data for Equity Funding Collaborative and Hopeful Empowered Youth (HEY!). Examples of past investments include Black Empowerment Works, Boots on the Ground Fund, COVID-19 Regional Response Fund, GreenLight Fund and Funders Response to the Heroin Epidemic.
Funding Eligibility
The bi3 Fund invests in trust-based partnerships to improve health outcomes in Hamilton County, Butler County, Warren County and Clermont County in Ohio.
- Aim to improve health outcomes in Butler, Clermont, Hamilton, or Warren counties in Ohio
- Are a public or private nonprofit or governmental organization or have a fiscal sponsorship with a 501(c)(3) tax-exempt nonprofit organization
- Have strong alignment with at least one of bi3’s focus areas
- Are committed to health equity
- Value and prioritize centering community voice and designing programs and solutions with those closest to the problem
- Do not unlawfully discriminate based on age, race, color, sex, religion, national origin, disability, gender identity and sexual orientation in employment practices or policies and procedures concerning services.
- Address at least one of the Six Conditions of Systems Change
- Are willing to learn and share their successes and challenges
- Unsolicited sponsorship requests
- Emergency grants
- One-time events
- Capital grants (as a primary focus – projects may include some capital if it supports implementation)
- Organizations and work outside bi3’s focus areas
- Projects, programs, or policy advocacy without a health equity component
- Organizations with less than one year of operating history
- Individuals and/or for-profit organizations
- Individual grants to hospital systems other than our strategic partner TriHealth
- Grants to colleges or universities without community partners
- Organizations that publicly advocate for and/or provide access to abortion
- Activities intended to intervene in any election or support or oppose any political party or candidate for public office or engage in any lobbying not permitted by 501(c)(3) regulations
Non-discrimination statement:
The bi3 Fund does not unlawfully discriminate internally (in its administrative and program operations) or externally (in provision of services and grants) on the basis of race, political orientation, religion, gender, sexual orientation, age, national origin, ethnicity, ancestry, marital status, veteran status, or mental or physical disability or any other status prohibited by applicable law.