COVID-19 has increased the need for services that many nonprofits provide, just as the recession brought on by the pandemic has cut into the resources of those nonprofits. Most small to medium sized nonprofits thrive with the help of grants, and now the competition for grants is especially tough. The Grantsmanship Center is offering a series of training webinars, and Roland Palencia, the Director of Community Benefits at L.A. Care Health Plan, is a panelist on the Meet the Grantmakers webinar today.
Palencia will first describe his 17-year background in philanthropy, including his 14 years at L.A. Care, during which he has worked to help organizations in under-resourced communities improve health outcomes and gain sustainability. Since the pandemic began, most grant funding from L.A. Care’s Community Health Investment Fund has supported organizations working to mitigate the impact of COVID-19 on L.A. Care members and residents of Los Angeles County. This has included grants to organizations that conduct activities such as homeless outreach and housing placement, to legal aid organizations helping to prevent evictions, to an organization that provides meals to homebound individuals, and to organizations that specifically are working in marginalized communities of color to begin to address systemic racism as stated in Statement of Principles recently approved by our Board of Governors.
Nearly 100 grant writers and leaders from nonprofit organizations are registered for today’s Meet the Grantmakers webinar. Palencia will offer specific tips on how to make sure an organization’s grant proposal is noticed. He says, at this time, it is critical that grant writers determine the impact the pandemic is having on the populations they serve. They have to reassess their interventions and address the new challenges, especially racial and health disparities that have been exacerbated by COVID-19. For funders, it means making a bigger effort to listen and fund leadership of communities that are most impacted, understand that the aftermath of COVID-19 will be long-lasting and as severe, and help organizations to migrate to online services without losing touch with their communities.
Palencia wants to assure the grant writers that they should not let a proposal rejection dissuade them from trying again. But, he says, most funders will be focused on COVID-19 mitigation efforts for the foreseeable future, as there will be no quick rebound from the economic and health impacts.