How we Work
As a funder, community leader, and partner we work to meet our mission through program development, grantmaking, community partnership, and advocacy. We are deeply committed to the success of our grantee partners and our 17-town region. We approach our relationships with grantee partners from a place of trust, rather than suspicion. We select grantees with care and attention and offer guidance and support beyond the grant. We aspire be a true partner, so organizations can focus on their mission and community needs.
Our Focus Areas
Our strategic framework directs the foundation’s focus towards the underlying conditions impacting health – external factors such as our homes, schools, workplaces, and neighborhoods which create opportunities for health and well-being. From this framework, FCH identified three focus areas:
We believe that the strength and resiliency of the nonprofits that serve our region is key to improving the health for the over 52,000 people who call our region home.
Our Strategies
- Build resiliency and effectiveness of nonprofit organizations
- Support nonprofit organizational health
- Create opportunities for leadership development
- Seed pilot initiatives of bidirectional collaborative efforts
We actively invest in existing assets of our community, like schools and other community anchors, so more parts of our rural region can act as health access points.
Our Strategies
- Leverage existing community assets, such as schools and libraries, to advance health access and well-being
- Invest in local infrastructure needs related to broadband, food, and housing
- Support school-based oral health and rural transportation operational resiliency and effectiveness
We believe that when decision-makers have the tools and resources to make more inclusive and equitable decisions then they will.
Our Strategies
- Strengthen engagement between decision-makers and those most impacted by policy decisions
- Make community health needs information accessible and actionable for local decision-makers
- Support planning, pilot, and demonstration projects of our municipalities that are participatory and consider the social determinants of health
Evaluating and
evolving
We’re dedicated to learning and continual improvement. For us, this means centering the experiences of our grantee partners, practicing mutual accountability, and learning from failure. We regularly act on what we learn to make improvements to our work and freely share how the foundation’s resources have been put to work. Our current strategic framework was developed from feedback from community stakeholders and our grantee partners.
Members of the McCall Behavioral Health Network team. Based on feedback shared by McCall, we piloted a ‘grant check-in’ in lieu of a written report, in an effort to reduce administrative burden. We now use grant check-ins with a majority of our grantee partners.
Photo by Anne Day.
Learning & Evaluation
We evaluate to be accountable to the region we serve, learn with the organizations we partner with, and to determine if our strategies to improve health, well-being, and equity are working. Understanding our impact and being open to improvement helps us be a better partner, funder, and community leader.
Photo of North East, New York one of 17 towns served by FCH.
Photo by Olivia Valentine.
Accountability & Transparency
We’re accountable to the people we work with and serve. As a hospital conversion foundation, we recognize that we’re stewards of public assets and freely share FCH’s financial reports and the organizational documents that guide us.