For 2025, the McLean County Board of Health is dedicating $1.8 million to behavioral health, and it announced it will be taking area health nonprofits' suggestions on how to spend some of that money.
Applications go live Monday on the Health Department website for organizations to bid for grants that fund proposed projects and programs to help address what they believe to be the community's most pressing mental health and substance abuse needs.
Since the pandemic, Amy Hopper with the Health Department said the board had largely been renewing existing grants among nonprofits. For fiscal year 2025, members decided to start from scratch.
“Just because of so many of the changes on so many levels within behavioral health,” said Hopper, the Health Department’s behavioral health program manager.
Hopper added that the board took its spending advisements this way pre-pandemic.
Nonprofits that choose to apply will be entered into a competitive process that will determine whether and how much money their proposals get. Hopper said the board decided not to give guidance on dollar amounts or areas of focus because they wanted to see what might come in.
“We really want to see proposals that support and advance behavioral health needs of our community members,” she said. “The behavioral health needs locally and statewide and nationally have exacerbated, unfortunately, as a result of the pandemic. And so we're really hoping to be able to get a wide range proposals from some of our current grantees, and any new programming that will be able to do that.”
Hopper said it's entirely possible for current grantees to submit proposals for the projects that have been funded over the last few years.
The only requirements for proposals are that they somehow relate to the community’s Mental Health Action Plan or the Community Health Needs Assessment. The Board of Health stipulated that applicants also need to demonstrate an understanding of the Social Determinants of Health, which include access to care, economic stability and environment.
Grants may not wind up being equivalent to $1.8 million, but the Board of Health said it plans to budget that much in total for behavioral health next year, including for other initiatives not identified in proposals. Last year, the Board allocated $1.7 million to behavioral health.
