HLTH 6473 Module 3 Grant and Fundraising Strategy Example

Fewer Eggs, Better Baskets: A Grant and Fundraising Strategy to Stabilize a County Child Passenger Safety Program

Student Name

American College of Education

HLTH6473: Finance and Fiscal Management in Public Health

Module 3 Assignment

Instructor Name

August 17, 2026

Introduction

The child passenger safety program in a composite central Indiana county costs $95,784 a year. Module 2 showed that it relies on a state highway safety grant of $36,000 that is renewed each October, a federal injury prevention allocation of $32,000, a one-year hospital foundation gift of $9,000 and $18,784 from the county general fund, including an unfunded indirect cost gap. This paper sets out a three-year strategy to make the program's funding more stable. It identifies and ranks potential sources, prepares a case for support, sets a calendar, establishes rules for accepting gifts and plans how donors and funders will be thanked and kept informed.

Diversify or Concentrate?

Conventional advice holds that organizations should diversify revenue to reduce risk. The evidence is more mixed than the advice. Using national data on nonprofits, Chikoto and Neely (2014) found that concentrating on a few revenue sources was associated with growth in total revenue over time, and that growth required investment in administrative and fundraising capacity. The lesson for a small program is not to chase every possible donor but to secure a few reliable sources and invest the staff time needed to keep them. The strategy therefore aims for four or five dependable sources rather than a dozen small ones, consistent with the administrative burden of many small grants noted in Module 1.

Source 1: Highway Safety Grant Renewal

The state highway safety office, which administers federal highway safety funds, remains the program's anchor. The strategy is to strengthen the renewal application with outcome data from the evaluation in Module 2, such as how many seats were still installed correctly when families returned after six months, and to request a two-year award where the office allows it. The program will also ask whether the office can approve the full indirect rate or allow some indirect costs to be covered by other sources, since the cap creates a recurring gap.

Source 2: Hospital Community Benefit

Tax-exempt hospitals must assess community health needs and adopt strategies to address them. A national study covering more than 1,800 tax-exempt hospitals found that community benefit spending averaged 7.5% of operating expenses, but more than 85% went to charity care and other direct patient care, and community health improvement activities that hospitals ran themselves accounted for only about 5% (Young et al., 2013). Both county hospitals named child injury in their most recent needs assessments. The strategy is to ask each hospital for a three-year commitment of $12,000 a year, framed as a way to meet its own implementation plan, with the hospital named as a partner on materials and its nurses invited to train as technicians.

Source 3: Medicaid Managed Care Plans

Many Medicaid managed care plans offer value-added benefits beyond required services, and some have offered car seats to pregnant members who complete prenatal visits. The program already serves many of these families. The strategy is to seek agreements with the two largest plans in the county under which the program provides the check and education and the plan supplies or pays for the seat for its members, at about $62 per convertible seat. If the plans cover 120 of the 390 seats, the program's seat budget falls by about $7,400.

Source 4: Foundations

The foundation of the county's largest auto insurer funds traffic safety projects, and the county's community foundation has a children's fund. The strategy is to apply to the insurer's foundation for $15,000 a year for seats and outreach and to the community foundation for $10,000 in the first year to support the bilingual aide, with a plan to shift that position to more stable sources by the third year, since foundations prefer to fund new efforts rather than ongoing costs.

Source 5: Community Giving and In-Kind Support

A sponsor-a-seat campaign will invite civic clubs, churches, businesses and individuals to give $62 to provide a seat, with a goal of $6,000 a year. Rotary and Kiwanis clubs have supported similar causes in neighboring counties. In-kind support is equally important: fire departments provide the station bay and volunteer technicians, and a hospital provides space for monthly events. These contributions will be valued and reported, so that funders see the community's investment.

Case for Support

Every request will rest on the same short case. Crashes kill more of the county's children than any other kind of injury. Most seats checked have at least one error. A systematic review found strong evidence that giving seats together with education increases correct use (Zaza et al., 2001). The program checks 700 seats and gives 390 a year for less than $100,000, and it reaches families who cannot afford a seat. Each funder's version will add what matters to that funder: community benefit for hospitals, member health for health plans, traffic safety for the insurer and local pride for clubs.

Calendar, Gift Policy and Stewardship

The calendar is set by funders' cycles: hospital budgets in spring, the highway safety application in early summer, the community foundation in fall and the sponsor-a-seat campaign in September, when Child Passenger Safety Week takes place. The department will adopt a gift acceptance policy: no funder may require its product to be endorsed or distributed, seat donations must be new and meet federal safety standards and any gift from a company that sells car seats will be reviewed for conflicts. Stewardship means thanking donors promptly, reporting results twice a year and inviting funders to see the station at work.

Risks in the Strategy

The strategy carries its own risks. Hospital community benefit budgets can shift when a new needs assessment names different priorities, so the program will ask to be written into each hospital's implementation strategy, which runs for three years, rather than funded as a discretionary gift. Health plan agreements depend on each plan's contract with the state and could end when contracts are rebid; the program will keep the plans' share of seats below a third so that losing one plan does not stop distribution. Foundations may decline to renew after an initial award, which is why foundation money is directed to start-up costs such as the aide's first year rather than to permanent needs. Community giving is small and unpredictable, so it is treated as a bonus rather than a base. Finally, the coordinator's fundraising time is time not spent at the station; if applications crowd out service, the grants office will take on more of the writing.

Cost of Fundraising and Targets

Fundraising has costs. The coordinator will spend about 10% of paid time, roughly 125 hours a year, on applications, reports and donor contact, and the department's grants office will review applications. The target for year three is a budget in which the highway safety grant provides about 35%, hospitals 25%, health plans and foundations 20%, community giving 6% and the county general fund no more than 14%, down from nearly 20% today.

Conclusion

The strategy concentrates on a few sources with a natural interest in children's safety, hospitals, health plans, an insurer and the state highway safety office, while building community giving and in-kind support. It invests coordinator time in keeping those funders, protects the program's integrity through a gift policy and sets measurable targets for reducing reliance on the general fund. Module 4 turns to how the department allocates its flexible dollars among competing programs.

References

Chikoto, G. L., & Neely, D. G. (2014). Building nonprofit financial capacity: The impact of revenue concentration and overhead costs. Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly, 43(3), 570-588. https://doi.org/10.1177/0899764012474120

Young, G. J., Chou, C.-H., Alexander, J., Lee, S.-Y. D., & Raver, E. (2013). Provision of community benefits by tax-exempt U.S. hospitals. New England Journal of Medicine, 368(16), 1519-1527. https://doi.org/10.1056/NEJMsa1210239

Zaza, S., Sleet, D. A., Thompson, R. S., Sosin, D. M., & Bolen, J. C. (2001). Reviews of evidence regarding interventions to increase use of child safety seats. American Journal of Preventive Medicine, 21(4 Suppl.), 31-47. https://doi.org/10.1016/S0749-3797(01)00377-4