With the economic crisis and the shifting landscape of health reform, community health centers face unprecedented challenges. To flourish, clinics will need to simultaneously collaborate and compete for resources.
The $500,000 California Catalyst Fund, launched in 2012 by the California HealthCare Foundation and the Blue Shield of California Foundation and administered by the Nonprofit Finance Fund, provides technical assistance to California community health centers exploring or implementing strategic collaborations and restructuring projects.
The fund builds upon earlier foundation efforts to help California clinics with collaborative strategies to expand services, achieve operational efficiencies, and fulfill their roles as health leaders in their communities.
The California Catalyst Fund connects community-based primary care providers and partners with technical assistance to develop and implement strategic restructuring projects. Examples of community clinic restructuring are administrative consolidation and joint programming, as well as more formal long-term partnerships such as joint ventures, organizational mergers, and the creation of management service organizations.
How the program works:
- The fund will underwrite technical assistance to nurture promising strategic restructuring projects involving existing or potential partnerships between two or more organizations.
- Support for technical assistance ranges from $10,000 to $40,000, depending on the scope of the proposed project and its point on the planning continuum.
- Projects at all stages of development will be considered, from preplanning and feasibility studies to implementation of a detailed restructuring plan.
To date, the fund has supported 15 projects in the areas of financial management, readiness assessment, implementation planning, and negotiation facilitation. Projects have included administrative consolidation and joint programming, joint ventures, corporate mergers, and the creation of management service organizations.
The deadline to apply for the second round of funding was March 15, 2013. Applications received after this date will be considered on a rolling basis given remaining fund availability.
The California Catalyst Fund welcomes additional local, regional, and national funding partners. Please contact the fund manager with inquiries at cacatalystfund@nffusa.org.