Grants to North Carolina state and regional nonprofit organizations to collaborate with community-based organizations to further health equity and system-level change. The goals of this program are to ensure that the perspectives of CBOs working directly with those experiencing inequities are represented in local ARPA planning and strategy development efforts and to promote an approach to planning and funding allocation that identifies and addresses the systemic factors that create barriers to health and health equity. Eligible applicants have an active partnership with local CBOs and priority will be given to applicants that currently work with communities of color and rural communities.

The Blue Cross NC Foundation is issuing a funding opportunity to support regional and state-level organizations (“intermediaries”) to work with local stakeholders to support community-identified ARPA priorities at the county and municipal level to promote health equity and system-level change.  

Additionally, the Blue Cross NC Foundation seeks to identify and spread effective tools, practices, and approaches through resource sharing among grantees and their CBO partners. Over time, the Foundation will work with grantees identified through this funding opportunity to develop a platform that will promote broader awareness and utilization of tools and resources they have found to be effective. This work will be further developed in partnership and consultation with the selected grantees and funded through a separate process.

The primary goals of this funding opportunity are to ensure that perspectives of community-based organizations working directly with those experiencing inequities are represented in local ARPA planning and strategy development efforts and to promote an approach to planning and funding allocation that identifies and addresses the systemic factors that create barriers to health and health equity.

More specifically, this funding opportunity aims to support state and regionally focused capacity-building intermediaries working with a targeted network of community-based organizations with whom there is a pre-existing relationship and a mutual desire to partner on this project to:

• Facilitate technical assistance and consultation to community-based organizations to develop new partnerships and practices to address systemic barriers to good health.
• Share examples of effective models and approaches across counties and issue areas.
• Where possible, target efforts in communities directly related to the Foundation’s focus areas such as healthy food, oral health, and early childhood.

Intermediaries: In the context of this funding opportunity, an intermediary is a state-level or regional (multi-county) organization that has the capacity to provide policy, advocacy, and communications support to community-based organizations and the capacity to regrant funding.