FUNDING
Our Focus Areas
Improving 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 last 10 years, Hamilton County has made progress toward this vision, and in 2023, it achieved the county’s lowest infant mortality rate ever. Approaches that center the voices of Black and Hispanic women and bring together multiple sectors (healthcare, social services, public health) to change policies and practices to support young families are driving these improvements in maternal and child health outcomes.
We must build on our collective successes and lessons learned to continue to see improvements in maternal and child health, particularly for Black and Hispanic families across our focus counties. Our community is leaning into promising approaches like diversifying the perinatal workforce, improving access to maternal mental healthcare, and providing social and economic support to young families. Together, we can improve maternal and young child health for all families.
bi3 aims to fuel efforts to reduce health disparities for Black and Hispanic women and children ages 0-3 years by:
- Growing a strong, diverse and coordinated maternal and young child health workforce with an emphasis on access to doula care
- Strengthening systems and policy to improve birth outcomes
- Expanding networks of support for women and young families, namely maternal mental health services
Promoting 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.
bi3 is proud to partner with our community in creating new approaches and systems of care to support the mental health and wellbeing of adults and youth. Our partner TriHealth is implementing an integrated model of care, community-based organizations are building new and innovative approaches to care, advocates are pushing for additional resources to increase access, and our community has launched a regional strategic plan–Hopeful Empowered Youth (HEY!)—to promote mental health and wellness for youth.
Barriers that stand in the way of mental wellbeing include unequal reimbursement rates, tangled systems of care, a lack of culturally competent care and a lack of focus on prevention. By embracing collaborative approaches and innovations in community-centered care, we aim to build a more resilient community by promoting everyone’s mental health and wellbeing.
bi3 aims to fuel efforts to increase access to quality mental health and wellbeing resources and services by:
- Expanding access to and building more culturally competent mental health services
- Supporting youth mental health and wellbeing, in part through investing in HEY!
- Improving systems and policies to support mental wellbeing
Supporting Community-Driven Health Priorities
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.
Our community has many healthcare and social services organizations working to improve access to care and community health, many of whom are implementing new models that address the social determinants of health.
We can re-envision the delivery of health services and address the social and economic barriers to health, particularly for populations that have been underserved—Black and/or Hispanic people, individuals with low education and income, individuals with disabilities, immigrants and new Americans, and individuals without health insurance. Together, our community can improve health outcomes and create a system of care that leads to good health for all.
bi3 aims to fuel efforts to improve health outcomes identified through community-led processes by:
- Supporting the priorities of our strategic partner, TriHealth
- Addressing gaps in care for community members experiencing health disparities aligned with the priority areas identified through the regional community health needs assessment
Current Funding Opportunities
There are no open funding opportunities currently. Please see the timeline below for future funding opportunities.
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.
Timeline for current and future RFPs:
- Maternal Mental Health: To be released spring 2025
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