Our usually dyspeptic Congress recently passed the Bipartisan Safer Communities Act AKA Gun Reform Bill, which has funding for new discretionary grant programs in it. Since the advent of COVID in 2020, Congress has passed a series of trillion dollar-plus spending bills containing many grant opportunities for nonprofits, public agencies, and businesses involved in stuff like electric vehicle batteries, geothermal energy, solar panel research and construction, and much more. We know, as S + A has been at, near, or over full capacity for most of the past 2.5 years; we thought this flood would slow, as it did in 2010 following the 2009 Stimulus Bill. But we were wrong, which is great news for us grant writers—and for nonprofits and public agencies.
In addition to a raft of reforms aimed at (pun intended) rising gun violence, the 80-page Gun Reform Bill has $750M to “incentivize” states to pass Red Flag laws. Translated from Washington-speak, this likely means big formula grants to the states, which will in turn likely pass through much of their federal funding into RFPs for local agencies to “do something.” The “something” won’t be all that important, as the goal will be to get the money to the streets. The Bill also allocates billions to schools and communities (this means CBOs, or community-based organizations) to expand mental health programs. These new funding rivers—they’re too big to be mere “streams”—will likely flow through the Department of Education, SAMHSA, HRSA, OJJDP, HUD, etc., in the form of RFPs over the next few years.
Other grant ornaments will emerge from the Gun Reform Bill, proposed Climate Emergency executive actions, and additional legislation this and next year that addresses emerging problems. The feds like to throw money at problems, call the money “important action,” and see what sticks. Around the time of the Columbine shooting in 1999, President Clinton and Congress ramped up funding for odd things like “Midnight Basketball,” as well as one of our favorites, the 21st Century Community Learning Centers (21st CCLC) program, and many other programs that were supposed to improve school mental health services, mentoring, and provide safe after school hours activities. Since then, we’ve seen the Sandy Hook school massacre, the Uvalde school massacre, and many others. But we’re doing something. In the first decade of the 21st Century, we wrote at least 50 funded 21st CCLC and similar grants.
The FY ’23 federal budget year begins October 1, and smart local agencies will start planning now to get their piece of the mental health and related grant pies. Even if your agency has little behavioral health experience, this is the time to develop some and form partnerships to make your grants applications more believable than they might be otherwise.