Human Services Funding Priorities

Human Services grants focus on:

• Aging – with a special emphasis on helping seniors remain in their homes and actively engaged in their communities;
• Health – including access to health care interventions and advocacy for better access to quality health care—including dental care and mental health services—for children, low-income families, victims of violence, recovering addicts, ex-prisoners, and other disadvantaged populations;
• Family economic security – including a variety of related efforts to prevent and alleviate homelessness, help job seekers find, keep, and advance in careers in specified industry sectors, provide working families with access to income supports, and teach low-income families about saving, managing, and growing their assets beyond earned income.

Within these priority areas, BCF is most interested in funding the following specific kinds of work:

• Innovations in direct service that lead to demonstrable improvements for participants and can serve as models for the field;
• Development of standards of practice, indicators of success and methods of evaluation to ensure the effectiveness of current investments;
• Capacity-building: strategies that enable organizations to operate more efficiently, extend the reach of proven programs and move toward a sustainable business model;
• Collaboration among organizations and across disciplines;
• Advocacy that results in increased public awareness of the issues and leads to positive public policy reform.