Navigating the funding landscape continues to be a challenge for community-based mental health initiatives (CBMHIs). Transformation across stages of the funding process is needed to better support these organisations. A survey conducted by Ember Mental Health, the SHM Foundation’s flagship programme, provides insights into key challenges for CBMHIs and what this transformation might look like for funders.

Meeting global mental health needs is an immense challenge, complicated by the scale of the need and its diversity: there is no one-size-fits-all approach. CBMHIs are singularly equipped to provide tailored mental health care in communities, responding to local priorities in ways that are relevant, culturally sensitive, and sustainable.

However, CBMHIs encounter significant difficulties, including inadequate funding. Mental health remains underfunded across sources. The evaluation of Ember’s 2020-2021 partnerships revealed that funding was a primary threat to initiatives’ sustainability and in the last open call for partnerships, 84 percent of applicants cited funding as a pressing challenge.

To seek a deeper understanding of this problem, Ember ran a survey to explore both the current funding situation of diverse CBMHIs and the barriers and facilitators to applying and reporting to grants. Ember’s network of 350+ initiatives and partners were invited to participate and asked to share further within national and international networks.

Over 110 initiatives completed the survey from 28 different countries, working across a diverse range of mental health focus areas. 76 percent of the initiatives were based in Africa, 17 percent in Asia, 6percent in Latin America, and 2percent worked globally.  Although team sizes were mostly small – 73 percent had teams of 25 or smaller – almost 70 percent of initiatives noted supporting 500 people or more, speaking to the high demand that CBHMIs respond to.

So, what did they tell us?

Funding opportunities are hard to find out about

Only 42 percent of initiatives reported currently receiving external funding – 37 percent had never done so. Finding funding opportunities was described as hard and strongly dependent on having the right network. Online searches, emails from networks and word of mouth were highlighted as the main channels to hear about them.

‘If you are not in a system that exposes you to the calls […] you won’t know that they are there.’

Opportunities fail to align with the day-to-day realities of CBMHIs

Participants expressed concerns that current funding requirements often favour larger, more established initiatives with ties to institutions in the Global North and prior grant experience. Difficulties were also noted in assembling teams with the necessary skills to apply, including grant-writing, English proficiency, and budgeting.

Suggestions to streamline the application process included pre-application discussions with funders, technical support during submission, simplified language, and shorter initial forms with more in-depth checks later. Participants proposed offering skills-building opportunities within grant cycles to enhance long-term internal capacity.

‘The process is not easy for grassroots like our organisation and the same documents required from [large humanitarian organisations] [are] required from the grassroots organisation.’

Overall, initiatives called for more funding that supports smaller CBMHIs, that adopts an intersectoral approach to mental health and that includes requirements more suited to younger initiatives. Importantly, teams called for grants to include flexible funds that could cover core costs (e.g. team salaries, training, etc.), essential for sustainability.

‘Our clinical education systems are so poor in our country, that we have to invest in training, mentoring […] and there is SO little funding for this – investing in what it takes to build a team that can deliver.’

Grant cycles are too short-term

88 percent of initiatives receiving external funding reported facing short grant cycles of one year or less, hindering staff retention, long-term vision, and sustainability efforts.

This highlights the need for both longer funding cycles that enable programme sustainability and the importance of organisations being able to diversify funding sources. Although changes are needed in current funding processes to better support CBMHIs in accessing grant-like funds, this is only one type of income stream available for CBMHIs. This diversification remains important to reduce programme reliance on a single funding source. Being self-funded, receiving private donations from networks, generating income through external consultancies or events, and payment for services, were the most mentioned sources of additional income amongst survey respondents currently receiving external funding.

‘I think the very difficult thing with funding being so unstable, is that it then also affects the work that you do, […] which is just a shame, considering the impact that it has.’

The funding process takes a toll on the mental health of teams

Respondents found application processes time-consuming and burdensome, placing demands on their limited resources and time. Due to high service demand and potential burnout risks, some teams cannot allocate time for funding applications, with 19 percent of those that had never received external funding citing lack of capacity as a reason for this. Funders should account for this, beyond the application stage, as only 15 percent of respondents currently receiving funding said this included funds for teams’ wellbeing.

Applying and reporting can be a constructive exercise

Despite challenges, initiatives saw the funding process as a potentially educational, reflective and motivating exercise, particularly when receiving feedback from funders, including in cases of unsuccessful applications.

Initiatives called for funders to value both qualitative and quantitative reporting. Ideas to facilitate the exercise included covering teams’ time for this, providing clear templates early on, including prompts for responses, and offering reporting options in grantees’ native language. Quarterly or bi-annual reporting frequencies, visual and data-driven reporting, and direct communication (e.g., Zoom calls) at key points were also recommended.

‘Most often we hardly get feedback when we send in proposals or requests, a process I would say is discouraging since we don’t get to know where exactly we went wrong.’

It doesn’t take huge amounts of funding

Considering the limited funding available for mental health initiatives, Ember has questioned whether funders hesitate to invest in CBMHIs due to uncertainty about required investments. We asked initiatives about their ideal yearly budget, covering current projects and core costs. 63 percent of respondents suggested a figure below $75,000.

We have seen that many of the solutions to the mental health crisis are already out there, being led by social entrepreneurs, community leaders, and local networks at the grassroots level. To help them grow and thrive, we need a bold shift in the approach to funding for global mental health – the results of this survey highlight key practices that as funders we can take on to drive this change.

June Larrieta is Head of Impact at the SHM Foundation, a philanthropic organisation working globally to drive positive social change in the areas of mental health and wellbeing, education and livelihoods, and access to the arts.