MEHAF: Community Responsive Grants Program

The Maine Health Access Foundation (MeHAF) offers the Community Responsive Grants Program, which promotes community-led solutions to health care challenges in Maine. This initiative focuses on empowering local organizations to address barriers to health equity through innovative projects that reflect community needs. Eligible applicants include 501(c)(3) organizations and governmental entities. MeHAF aims to enhance health access and outcomes by funding initiatives that challenge existing policies and practices.

We offer responsive grant opportunities, a Discretionary Grants program for small, discrete, projects, and Meeting Support grants for local and statewide meetings.
Annual Responsive Grant Programs
The Maine Health Access Foundation offers two responsive grant programs: Systems Improvement and Innovation Grants (SIIRG) and Community Responsive Grants (CRG). These programs are offered annually and provide project-based funding for initiatives that are responsive to needs identified by people in communities across the state.
The Community Responsive Grants (CRG) program is based on the idea that those closest to a problem often have the best ideas about potential barriers and solutions. The purpose of this program is to use those community-led solutions to respond to community needs. These may be to address emerging opportunities, or to test new, or creative ideas. They may also be solutions that are based on the community’s experience and what it sees as the best ways to overcome the barriers to health equity it experiences.
CRG projects focus on changing policies, practices, and perceptions that create barriers to health care and good health and respond to community needs, address emerging opportunities, test innovative approaches or new ideas, or implement programs informed by the experiences of communities on how to address barriers to achieving health equity.
Projects funded through this program have leadership from the communities facing inequities in health access or outcomes and community members play a central role in developing and implementing the solutions proposed.

Eligibility

Eligible organizations for any MeHAF funding must be:A 501(c)(3), local, state, or tribal government entity or educational institution
In compliance with MeHAF’s nondiscrimination policy.

Ineligibility

Across all funding opportunities, MeHAF does not fund the following activities:Direct care costs
Public awareness campaigns focused on a specific disease or health condition