HIF in Transition

Please welcome Lynn Arndt as HIF’s Interim Executive Director

Lynn brings a wealth of experience from both the for-profit and nonprofit sectors.  Lynn spent the early years of her career practicing law in Rochester, New York, working as an attorney and lobbyist in Washington DC and as a consultant in government contracts. In 2010, Lynn transitioned to the nonprofit world working first as a Volunteer Coordinator for Community Reach (formerly CMR) and ultimately as its Deputy Director. As such, Lynn was responsible for managing the organization’s four programs which serve as a safety net to the most vulnerable of our county. She also oversaw the Development Program for both Community REACH and its subsidiary, the Mansfield Kaseman Health Clinic. She then transitioned to serve as the Chief Operating Officer for Interfaith Works.  

In late 2019, Lynn broadened her nonprofit experience as CEO of BlackRock Center for the Arts. In this role, Lynn managed the arts organization through the pandemic and supported the creation of The UpCounty HUB, a critical food distribution program, now its own 501(c)3 nonprofit. Most recently, Lynn has served as a consultant to Community REACH as it completed its search for a new Executive Director.  

When asked about the opportunity of this role with Healthcare Initiative Foundation, Lynn says, “It is an honor to step into the role of Interim Executive Director for the Foundation during this time of transition. Under the leadership of Crystal Townsend, the Foundation has been essential in creating lasting partnerships and raising the voice of nonprofits in our community. I look forward to working with the incredible staff and continuing the work soon.”  

In addition to Lynn joining the HIF team, the Board of Directors also welcomes Jessica Fuchs back.  From 2019 to 2023, Jessica served as the Director of Grants and Community Impact at HIF.  As Communications Consultant, Jessica will use her knowledge of the Montgomery County health and wellness landscape, HIF’s mission and vision, and grantmaking portfolio to support the continuity of messaging with our community partners.   

Continuity of messaging during transition

In addition to Lynn joining the HIF team, the Board of Directors also welcomes Jessica Fuchs back.  From 2019 to 2023, Jessica served as the Director of Grants and Community Impact at HIF.  As Communications Consultant, Jessica will use her knowledge of the Montgomery County health and wellness landscape, HIF’s mission and vision, and grantmaking portfolio to support the continuity of messaging with our community partners.   

The HIF Board of Trustees and staff appreciate your partnership during this time of transition.  The HIF team – Lynn, Elissa, Faye, and Jess—are here to answer any questions you have regarding the Foundation’s transition plan, grantmaking calendar, upcoming site visits, or just to say ‘Hi!’.   

Crystal can be reached in her new role at The Washington Home Charitable Foundation at [email protected] and cell (301) 524-5369.

HIF is Hiring

POSITION OVERVIEW:

The Director of Grants and Community Impact is responsible for mission-driven and program-related grant investment programs including: development of strategy and approach, identification of investment opportunities, due diligence, and implementation and monitoring of HIF grantees. The Director plays a highly visible role in the community and meets with grantee partners and other stakeholders to develop and implement strategies to advance mutual goals. In addition, the Director serves as liaison to the Board of Trustees’ Grant Advisory Committee and is responsible for providing content expertise on a portion of the grant portfolio to the Grant Advisory Committee (GAC) and Board of Trustees. This is a full-time, exempt position which reports directly to the HIF President and CEO. HIF’s general business hours are 9am-5pm, Monday through Friday with occasional early morning, evening, and weekend meetings and events. Most of the work is performed onsite though there may be occasional.

COMPENSATION:

Salary ranges between $80,000- $100,000 and will be commensurate with qualifications and experience.

APPLICATION PROCESS:

Please send an email with a cover letter summarizing your qualifications as they relate to the position description, a resume (as a Word document or pdf), and your salary requirements to [email protected]. No phone calls please.

Deadline: Applications will be accepted through June 1, 2023 at 5pm.

View full position details here.

Sheppard Pratt Launches Community Wellness Hub

Ten nonprofit partners co-locate to service community

In June of 2015, the Healthcare Initiative Foundation (HIF) embarked on an unexpected seven-year journey.  While sometimes fraught with obstacles, Foundation staff and the Board of Trustees are grateful for the lessons learned and partners who have joined along the way who are now a part of the Sheppard Pratt Community Wellness Hub and the Thriving Germantown Partnership. The Community Wellness Hub was launched on November 1st in Germantown, MD, one of HIF’s priorities communities that has historically been under-invested and experiences one of the lowest life expectancies rates in the county[1].

Germantown zip codes have some of the lowest life expectancies in Montgomery County. Produced in 2018 by the Virginia Commonwealth University (VCU) Center on Society and Health for the Metropolitan Washington Council of Governments (COG) Health Officials Committee, ‘Uneven Opportunities’ examines the health of the community at the census tract level, focusing on life expectancy and the factors that shape health.

Since the first meeting at Captain James E. Daly Elementary (Daly) to connect the school and its community with nonprofit services, the Foundation realized that the Germantown region was truly a ‘service desert,’ meaning the population was growing but the availability of quality and comprehensive services were not meeting the community’s needs.  At Daly, children were hungry, thorough vision exams were lacking, behavioral and physical healthcare services were inaccessible, and there was insufficient understanding about trauma-informed practices.  These conversations reinforced that not all communities have equitable access to the essential resources and that our nonprofit services and philanthropic investments were not reaching those who needed them.    

Over the next seven years, HIF hosted and facilitated more than 50 meetings, community conversations, and forums and these discussions with residents, the public sector, funders, nonprofits, school system, and civic organizations guided HIF in the design of Thriving Germantown, the placed-based model that centers investments around trauma -informed, interdisciplinary, multi-sector, and intergenerational service-delivery. It was during the launch and implementation of Thriving Germantown, which was a program of Family Services, Inc. at the time, that HIF and partners realized the necessity for a cost-effective way to bring more organizations to the communities experiencing a lack of resources.  The concept of a nonprofit service hub was born. 

Partners at the Sheppard Pratt Community Well Hub include American Diversity Group, Upper Montgomery County Assistance Network (UMAN), The Upcounty Hub, Healthcare Initiative Foundation, Care for Your Health, EveryMind, Casa Ruben Foundation, Thriving Germantown, Feed the Fridge, and Germantown Global Connections.

This work also allowed the Foundation to reflect on its own practices. Realizing that as an investor, we needed to change our strategy to one that offers greater intentionality and focus—moving from investments that serve all 1.1M Montgomery County community members towards investments that help nonprofits target communities with the greatest disparities.  To this end, HIF is proud to note that since our 2020 investment cycle we have moved from investing 44% in the ten historically underinvested communities to 99% in our 2022 cycle.  

In the coming year, HIF will embark on a strategic planning journey that will guide commitments and priorities moving forward.    Part of this planning will include reinvigorating the intersectoral data collection with Thriving Germantown partners to assess trends and tell the story of our impact; engaging more Thriving Germantown partners and strengthening existing ones; establishing protocols for warm referrals amongst the partners; and creating similar models for other communities throughout Montgomery County.

Leadership from Sheppard Pratt and Healthcare Initiative Foundation are joined by Maryland State Delegates and Montgomery County Executive to officially open the Community Wellness Hub.

The Foundation would like to thank the following leaders, advocates, and partners who helped to make the Community Wellness Hub possible.

  • Maryland State Delegate Kirill Reznik,
  • Montgomery County Executive Marc Elrich,
  • Councilmember Craig Rice
  • Montgomery County Council,
  • Nora Dietz, formal Principal of Captain James E. Daly Elementary,
  • Mike Knapp, Healthcare Initiative Foundation (HIF), Board of Trustee,
  • HIF Board of Trustees,
  • Mike Ginsberg with the Germantown Coalition,
  • Marilyn Balcombe, Gaithersburg Germantown Chamber of Commerce,
  •  Sue Myers, Independent Consultant,
  • Cathy Matthews, former UpCounty Regional Services Center Director & Greg Wims, Director, UpCounty Regional Services Center
  • Kylie McCleaf, former CEO & President of Family Services – Sheppard Pratt
  • Scott Rose, Scott Birdsong, Angelo Knox, & Karla Hoffman, Sheppard Pratt,
  • Mark Luckner, Maryland Community Health Resources Commission,
  • Adam Luecking, Clear Impact,
  • Kim Jones, former Executive Director of the Nonprofit Village,
  • Pamela Jones, former Executive Director of Crittenton Services of Greater Washington,
  • Kaiser Permanente,
  • Mead Family Foundation,
  • MCAEL,
  • Cafritz Foundation
  • Children’s Opportunity Alliance (formerly Children’s Opportunity Fund),
  • The Community Foundation of Montgomery County,  
  • Holy Cross Hospital,
  • Washington Regional Area Grantmakers and the Healthy Communities Working Group,
  • Montgomery County Public School System, and
  • Thriving Germantown Partnering Nonprofits.

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To learn more about the launch of the Community Wellness Hub at Sheppard Pratt, visit their website for the press release.  To view the grantmaking priorities of Healthcare Initiative Foundation, click here

Pictures from the November 1, 2022 ribbon cutting can be found:

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[1] According to the 2018 Census Data.  View more at www.hifmc.org/uneven-opportunities

Building Nonprofit Capacity Recordings

Workshop Recordings Now Available

If you were unable to join the two-part virtual workshop series hosted June 14 and 16 or wanted to re-watch the sessions to recapture the information shared, the recordings are now available.

To view the June 14th session featuring Maryland Nonprofits and Nonprofit Montgomery, click here. Maryland Nonprofits has also made available their PowerPoint Presentation here.

The June 16th session featuring Institute for Public Health Innovation, Montgomery County Food Council, and Montgomery County Volunteer Center will be posted shortly.

FY22 Nonprofit Forum

FY22 Nonprofit Forum – Recording Available

If you were not able to attend HIF’s October 4 Nonprofit Forum, the recording is now available. If you have questions about the forum, please reach out to an HIF Team Member.

To view the recording of the October 4 forum, click here.

A sincere thank you to the community and grant partners who attended and offered candid feedback. Thank you to MCAEL, Crittenton Services, CaringMatters, and Manna Food Center for taking time to help HIF facilitate the breakout sessions during the forum!

To view the PDF of the PowerPoint presentation, click here.

Registration is now open for HIF’s annual grantee training on October 26th from 10-11am. To register, click here.

Food Provider Grantees Announced

Montgomery County awarded $1,126,100 in grants to twenty-eight nonprofits to build additional capacity for their food assistance programs

For a second grant round, the Healthcare Initiative Foundation partnered with Montgomery County HHS, the Montgomery County Food Council, and the Greater Washington Community Foundation to provide nonprofit food assistance providers with funding to support their programmatic operations. Montgomery County issued their press release announcing all twenty-eight grantees on Monday, August 17th. The full release is available below.

For Immediate Release: Monday, Aug. 17, 2020

“Montgomery County has awarded $1,126,100 to 28 local food assistance providers to improve their infrastructure and expand their capacity to provide food access to hard-to-reach communities in Montgomery County during the response to and recovery from the COVID-19 pandemic. This program was funded by the Federal CARES Act as appropriated by the County Executive and Montgomery County Council, the Community Food Rescue mini-grants program, and the newly launched Food Security Fund at the Greater Washington Community Foundation.

The COVID-19 Emergency Food Assistance Provider Capacity Building Grant is a partnership between the Montgomery County Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS), the Montgomery County Food Council (MCFC), the Healthcare Initiative Foundation (HIF), and the Greater Washington Community Foundation (The Community Foundation). The County’s Food Security Task Force, formed by the County’s Office of Emergency Management and Homeland Security (OEMHS), reviewed and determined all grant awards. The HIF and The Community Foundation are the fiscal agents for the program and will award the money.

These grant awards will support community nonprofit purchases of refrigerators and freezers, shelving and space enhancements, vehicles, forklifts, hand trucks, computers and software, as well as repairs to existing infrastructure. Funded investments will directly expand these organizations’ ability to store and transport larger quantities of shelf-stable and cold-stored food and are estimated to increase community-wide capacity for food assistance distribution and delivery to over 31,000 households.

“I am proud to be part of a community where our nonprofit and faith-based organizations work tirelessly to ensure our residents have access to nutritious and culturally appropriate food, especially during this national pandemic,” said County Executive Marc Elrich. “Providing funding to help these organizations improve their infrastructure and increase their capacity to feed more residents is money well spent.”

Special consideration was given to organizations who formed partnerships to better serve the community and provide culturally diverse food access services. Despite funding limitations more than half of the applications were awarded full or partial funding. As the County’s food security response to the pandemic continues, it is anticipated that additional funds will be made available to further support initiatives that address the significant food security needs of our community.

“Food insecurity is currently being experienced by more residents in our community than ever before,” said County Council President Sidney Katz. “So many of our neighbors are feeling the instability caused by the health crisis in so many ways. It is incumbent upon us to provide culturally appropriate food to those in need and these funds will do just that. I want to thank all of the nonprofit and faith-based organizations who are forging partnerships to reach out to the communities hardest hit by the pandemic.”

Nonprofit organizations were eligible to apply for up to $85,000. The organizations receiving grants, ranging from $1,075 to $85,000, are:

Adventist Community Services of Greater Washington, Inc.

American Diversity Group

Bethesda Cares

Caribbean Help Center, Inc

Chinese Culture and Community Service Center, Inc.

Clifton Park Baptist Church

Damascus HELP Inc.

Guru Gobind Singh Foundation

Indonesian American Association

Islamic Center of Maryland

Kingdom Fellowship African Methodist Episcopal Church

Kings & Priests Court International Ministries Inc.

Liberty Grove United Methodist Church

Manna Food Center

Meals on Wheels of Takoma Park and Silver Spring

Montgomery County Muslim Foundation

Nourish Now Inc

Rainbow Community Development Center

Shepherd’s Table

Small Things Matter

So What Else, Inc.

Southern Bethany Baptist Church

Camillus Church Food Pantry

The Living Legends Awards for Service to Humanity

The Salvation Army

Up 2 Us Foundation

Vietnamese Americans Services, Inc.

Women Who Care Ministries

DHHS, along with Montgomery County Public Schools, MCFC, and a network of over 110 local food assistance providers and community partners have been working during the COVID-19 pandemic to address the dramatically increased need for food assistance across the county. To address food insecurity and plan for a greater need, OEMHS created the Food Security Task Force, made up of County staff, community partners and food assistance recipients to create and implement a comprehensive and innovative Food Security Response Strategy.

Montgomery County Government recently partnered with The Community Foundation to launch the Food Security Fund to galvanize private sector and individual support of food access initiatives in the County in response to the COVID-19 crisis. Visit the Food Security Fund website to learn more and contribute. 

For the latest COVID-19 updates, visit the County’s COVID-19 website and follow Montgomery County on Facebook @MontgomeryCountyInfo and Twitter @MontgomeryCoMD.

Put the “count” in Montgomery County! Be sure to complete the Census online, by phone, or by mail. It’s safe, confidential, easy, and important. #2020Census #EveryoneCountsMCMD”

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Media Contact: Mark Hodge, [email protected].