Opioid Related Harm Treatment & Prevention Grants FAQ
Have a question? Please submit it via this form. We'll post answers publicly on a rolling basis up through the submission deadline.
Questions Answered:
- Program Background
- What's California's definition of HIAA?
- Award Amounts and Grant Period
- Who is eligible to apply?
- I work for a local Education Agency and our program may be a good fit. Can we apply?
- How to Apply
- Can my organization submit more than one project for this opportunity?
- Can we use this opportunity to apply for General Operating Support?
- We are a nonprofit behavioral health facility, expanding our current programs in South County. Would we be eligible to apply?
- Will there be a webinar?
- What is the rubric?
- Who are the reviewers?
- We host multiple eligible programs, but one program addresses multiple Impact Areas. Do I submit a comprehensive app for that program or one per Impact Area?
- Does "nonprofit" include 501(c)(6) organizations?
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Program Background
The County of Santa Cruz Health Services Agency Behavioral Health Division has contracted with Community Foundation Santa Cruz County to make grants for the prevention, early intervention, harm reduction, treatment and recovery of opioid related disorders and harm.
From 1999 to 2021, close to 645,000 people died in the United States from an overdose involving any opioid, including prescription opioids. To deal with some of the local impacts, Santa Cruz County, in 2018, filed a complaint against opioid manufacturers, distributors and pharmacies alleging that they falsely marketed, unlawfully promoted, and dispensed opioids in ways that the industry knew to be dangerous, addictive, and prone to abuse. The County’s case was combined with thousands of other opioid cases for joint administration purposes.
These combined cases paved the way for national settlements with many of the defendants. The settlement agreements, each hundreds of pages long, are available at www.nationalopioidsettlement.com.
The County’s share of the total settlement amount is approximately $26 million over 18 years (the “Opioid Settlement Funds” or “OSF”). The County began receiving OSF in November 2022.
The national settlements require that OSF be used to abate the impacts of the opioid crisis. The allowed uses are detailed in an attachment to the national settlement agreement known as Exhibit E.
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What's California's definition of HIAA?
Because the national settlement funds are being administered through participating states, each state has its own process for distributing funds to cities and counties within those states. The State of California required participating subdivisions of the State to enter into the California State Subdivision Agreement, which mandates participating cities and counties abide by Exhibit E and adds additional requirements regarding spending on “High Impact Abatement Activities” or “HIAA”).
The State of California defines HIAA as follows:
- Provision of matching funds or operating costs for substance use disorder facilities within the Behavioral Health Continuum Infrastructure Program.
- Creating new or expanded substance use disorder (SUD) treatment infrastructure.
- Addressing the needs of communities of color and vulnerable populations (including sheltered and unsheltered homeless populations) that are disproportionately impacted by SUD.
- Diversion of people with SUD from the justice system into treatment, including by providing training and resources to first and early responders (sworn and non-sworn) and implementing best practices for outreach, diversion and deflection, employability, restorative justice, and harm reduction.
- Interventions to prevent drug addiction in vulnerable youth.
- The purchase of naloxone for distribution and efforts to expand access to naloxone for opioid overdose reversals.
In addition to the HIAA described above, OSF are allowed for purposes described in Exhibit E of the settlement agreement.
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Award Amounts and Grant Period
A total of $810,000 will be distributed in Fiscal Year 2024/2025. Awards will be granted up to $400,000 and grantees will have a grant performance period of up to 2 years to spend the grant funds; funds must be expended by 06/30/2026.
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Who is eligible to apply?
501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations with service delivery in Santa Cruz County are eligible to apply.
To be eligible for an award of these funds, applicants must detail how these funds will be spent within the County of Santa Cruz.
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I work for a local Education Agency and our program may be a good fit. Can we apply?
Government agencies are not eligible for this Community Grant program.
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How to Apply
- To respond to this call for proposals, access the Foundation’s grant portal (bit.ly/cfscc-glm). Use your login, or if you don't have one, create an organizational profile.
- From the Applicant Dashboard, click ‘Apply’ in the toolbar at the top of the screen.
- You’ll be brought to a page listing our open opportunities.
- Navigate to the Opioid Related Harm, Treatment & Prevention opportunity, and click 'Apply' to be brought directly to the application!
- The application will save periodically, but you can save manually by scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking ‘Save Application’.
- Apply by 11:59pm July 10
Click here to review this guide with screenshots.
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Can my organization submit more than one project for this opportunity?
- Repeat steps 1-3 from 'How to Apply' above.
- Navigate to the Opioid Related Harm, Treatment & Prevention opportunity, and click 'Apply'. If you have already begun an application for this program, a dialog box will appear listing your current active request(s).
- To begin a draft for a different project, click ‘Apply’ within the dialog box to continue into a new application.
- If your organization is submitting more than one program to be considered for a grant, please use the initial text field to provide a unique Project Title for each submission.
- The application will save periodically, but you can save manually by scrolling to the bottom of the page and clicking ‘Save Application’.
Click here to review this guide with screenshots.
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Can we use this opportunity to apply for General Operating Support?
This opportunity is for specific projects and activities related to opioid harm, so it cannot be general operating support. It needs to have expenses that are directly tied to education, prevention, treatment, etc.
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We are a nonprofit behavioral health facility, expanding our current programs in South County. Would we be eligible to apply?
Yes.
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Will a webinar be offered to review the RFP, to present the process, and to offer an opportunity to ask questions?
While we’ve not scheduled an info session yet, we’ll be happy to offer one in the coming weeks if multiple people request one. Stay tuned.
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What is the rubric for determining which projects are funded?
Requests will be evaluated for alignment with the HIAA listed in the RFP. Responses to each of the 10 questions in the application will be considered for the rationale, significance, and feasibility of the proposed work. The most weight will be given to the strength of the intended outcomes (Question #8).
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Who are the reviewers for this grant?
Reviewers are Health Services Agency and Community Foundation senior leaders.
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If an organization houses multiple programs, and one of those programs is submitting an application with multiple components/activities, do we submit one, comprehensive proposal that covers all of the interventions or one proposal for each activity/intervention under the program?
A single organization can submit more than one application if it’s seeking funding for multiple eligible programs. If a sole program will address multiple HIAA, please submit one comprehensive application for that program.
Click here to review this guide to submitting more than one project for this opportunity.
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Does "nonprofit" include 501(c)(6) organizations?
No, this opportunity is only open to 501(c)(3) nonprofit organizations.