Supporting Community Nonprofit Networks to Partner for Better Community Health

NATIONAL — Nov. 15, 2018 — A new initiative, ARCH (Advancing Resilience & Community Health), will help networks of nonprofit community-based organizations (CBOs) develop new contracts, payment models, and partnership approaches with large healthcare organizations to achieve better health outcomes across the United States.

Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF), with support from the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF), is focusing the initiative on existing networks of CBOs that address food, housing, and other social issues critical to community well-being.

“Everyone deserves an opportunity to lead healthier and happier lives – which requires us to look beyond the doctor’s office and address things like hunger, homelessness, and addiction,” said Nima Krodel, Vice President at NFF. “We’re assembling a group of partners willing to discover and create the bold and practical things it will take – relationship building, pricing analysis, contracting approaches, and more – to deliver better health through stronger collaborations.”

CBO networks selected to participate in the ARCH initiative will work with their network members and with healthcare providers and payors to:

• Develop fair approaches to contracts and payment models for successful collaborations
• Build relationships that will lay groundwork for formal partnerships
• Establish a peer learning community
• Identify ways that stronger partnerships between clinical and social services providers can build healthier and more equitable communities

Participating CBO networks will receive tailored, expert assistance in areas such as financial planning, business model development, and cost analysis, and get stipends to support their participation in the initiative.

Despite increasing recognition of the role that social determinants of health play in overall well-being, CBOs and healthcare organizations are still learning how to work together. Across the country, early pilot projects are connecting organizations around shared health goals. This project will build on these pilots and speed the development of broadly applicable fair funding models and contracting approaches.   

NFF will develop resources from the ARCH initiative to support broader field readiness for productive partnerships. ARCH learnings and stories will be shared widely through NFF’s networks as well as in coordination with other initiatives that are working to improve community health outcomes. This project builds on NFF’s substantial prior work on community health in partnership with RWJF and others.

Participants will be selected in early 2019. To learn more or to suggest a CBO network for initiative participation, please contact [email protected].