50 years, 50 stories: Coordinated Funding

An Innovative Community Partnership
Working to Meet the Needs of our Community’s Most Vulnerable


Launched in 2011, the Coordinated Funding initiative seeks to improve the way local funders and health & human service agencies work together to improve the lives of our most vulnerable residents.  

The local funding partners include the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation, RNR Foundation, United Way of Washtenaw County, and the Office of Community and Economic Development which represents the City of Ann Arbor, Washtenaw County, and the Washtenaw Urban County. The partners work together to respond to our community’s needs across six priority areas: aging, early childhood, hunger relief, housing and homelessness, safety-net health, and school age youth.

Each year the Washtenaw Coordinated Funders award $4.8 million in grants through a joint decision-making process to support more than 50 local human service agencies. An independent evaluation conducted in 2012 confirmed that Coordinated Funding is already yielding real benefits. Working together has provided a deeper understanding of needs across Washtenaw County, and provided a framework in which local agencies can work together toward common goals and outcomes.

Neel Hajra, COO and Vice President for Community Investment at AAACF, notes , "The Coordinated Funding model is gaining national recognition as a unique public-private partnership. In an environment where increasing need is outpacing available resources, it’s especially important we’re working together to ensure local grant dollars provide the greatest impact possible in helping to improve people’s lives."

One of the many ways the Ann Arbor Area Community Foundation
supports all that is good in our community.

Read more "good" stories at: aaacf.org/stories
 
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