Minnesota Infrastructure Fund Innovation Projects: Application and RFP

Full question: In the project description, prompt number 2 says, “Describe what led you to this project and why it is important to the project partners.” We are a current grantee and are applying for continuation funding. Should we describe what led us to the original project concept, or is it asking us to describe what led us to the new or expanded activities we’re proposing for continuation funding?

Answer: For prompt number 2, focus on the historical context. In your response to questions 8 or 9 (which are only being asked of applicants applying for continuation funds), you can provide information about the reasons for the new or expanded activities you are proposing.

There are a couple of additional questions at the end for continuation projects. Current projects should consider whether the work you are proposing is fundamentally the same work or not. If it’s substantially different work—for example, a different foundational area or capability, apply as a new project. If it’s the same work with an added jurisdictional partner, apply for continuation funds. 

In addition, continuation projects will need to make a case about why they should be continued. Why would Minnesota’s public health system benefit from funding the work for an additional two years? What value would the project generate for the project partners, the region, and the public health system more broadly? For more information about how applications will be evaluated, please review the evaluation criteria: Minnesota Public Health Infrastructure Fund: Application Score Sheet Guide (PDF)

It's not a continuation of that specific grant because this is a different funding source with its own specific purpose. These funds are intended for cross-jurisdictional collaboration. Tribes who have completed a capacity assessment in partnership with Red Star International may have identified places where they want to work closer with MDH, a county health department, or another tribal health department. This grant could support piloting those collaborations. 

This grant application does not ask for a specific work plan with the application itself. You don't need to have the details of the model all figured out, but you do have to have a specified goal or idea, a plan for how you want to develop that goal or idea, and the partnerships in place to collaborate with others to test the idea. Your idea needs to be clear enough that you have buy-in from partners and you can sufficiently answer the application questions. A more detailed project plan will be a deliverable of the grant that will be due within a few months from when the agreements are signed. 

The MDH Center for Public Health Practice anticipates that some projects, depending on the area of focus, may intersect with program areas at the Minnesota Department of Health. In the project description, applicants should describe any potential needs from or impacts on, relevant program areas at MDH that they can foresee. Applicants should be aware that these funds cannot be used to support MDH FTEs, and applicants should not include MDH staff as primary partners in the proposed work.

If you foresee potential overlap with MDH program areas, we recommend that you talk to relevant MDH program staff in advance of applying to identify any questions or concerns and to determine the interest and ability of the program area to partner in the work.

If selected for funding, staff and leadership from the Center for Public Health Practice and the Public Health Strategy and Partnership Division will help facilitate any cross-agency support that might be necessary.

The funding source is the same funding source as the first round of grants. It's state funding that's in the base budget. MDH gets an annual appropriation of $6 million per year to support this work, so the funding source is the same. What's different this cycle is that we’ve had a second round of consultation with SCHSAC and the Joint Leadership Team prior to launching this round of grants. MDH is required to consult with SCHSAC on the best way to distribute these funds. And so, as we were coming up on a new grant cycle, MDH did another round of consultation with those partners to update the guidance and make sure it was still meeting the needs of our statewide system. The funding source is the same state funding and in the base budget, but the guidance has been updated from the first initial application.

Currently funded projects can apply for an additional two years of funding. If you're applying as a new project, you would be applying for two years with a possible two-year option to renew. The current grantees have already had their first two years, so they can apply to continue for two more years. But, if you're a brand new project, if this is a community health board that didn't apply last time, a tribe that didn't apply last time, they get that same two years with the two-year option to renew. So, in total, current grantees will have four years if they get selected for continuation, and the new projects also get four years.

Yes. There's a tighter purpose statement for these funds that was developed in the last round of consultation with our partners. It really is about testing new approaches that benefit our system across jurisdictions. For example: You would need to be able to say we're doing the same work, but we're pulling in additional partners to make sure you're meeting the updated recommendations. However, you could decide that the purpose statement is so different that you want to do totally different work. You don't have to fit yourself into the continuation application rubric. You can say, based on this updated guidance, we're going to shift altogether to something different and do something else. People who have an existing grant can apply as a new project if the work looks substantially different.

 if there's a group of public health departments that want to explore that and know what they would like to do and how to do it, this guidance wouldn't preclude them from applying.  as long as it fits within the foundational public health responsibility framework.

Full question: Regarding the RFP’s language on the requirement to ‘Collaborate across jurisdictions,’ with jurisdictions being defined as community health boards or tribes, does this mean that multicounty community health boards would need to collaborate with another community health board to be eligible to apply for the grant? 

Answer: Yes, for this next cycle of funding, you are required to partner with other community health boards and/or tribes. Potential partners do not need to be your immediate next-door neighbors but can be any community health board or Tribe with whom you share mutual interests or common challenges.

Depending on your community health board's needs and the needs of potential partners, other funding sources may be a better fit for supporting/sustaining the work you started with the initial grant. There may also be opportunities to expand on what you started in partnership with others. There are many ways to work with potential partners so that more than one entity benefits from the work.  

In addition, community health boards might share common interests with some counties that are part of a multi-county community health board, but not every county in that multi-county community health board. Applicants do not necessarily have to partner across all that multi-county community health board's jurisdictions. That is, if your community health board wanted to partner with one or two counties associated with a multi-county community health board near it, but not all of the counties were ready or interested in that partnership, you could move forward with the interested counties and would still meet eligibility requirements.

MDH staff cannot be listed as a primary partner in the proposal. However, an applicant can acknowledge places where their proposed work may interface with MDH activities, such as those of the Office of American Indian Health or Tribal Health Consultant.  

If you have more than eight partners, prioritize the partners most directly involved in project planning and implementation. You could also use a partner field to represent a group. For example, if there are community health boards that will benefit from the work but aren’t directly involved in project planning or implementation, you could fill in the Name as a description of the group (e.g., “local public health customers”) and describe that role (i.e., name them as best you can and describe the role they play), and describe any expectations for those community health boards in the “responsibilities” field. Another example: if there is a group of community health boards that make up a leadership or steering team, you could name that group in a partner field (“Leadership Team”), then name the participants and their role in the project in the role field, and describe the expectations of that group in the Responsibilities field.

The MDH Office of American Indian Health has shared the funding opportunity with Tribes since they are eligible to apply for the grant. However, MDH has not explicitly let them know that local health jurisdictions might be reaching out to partner with them. 

Yes, a jurisdiction can be part of multiple applications. 

No, it does not matter if the jurisdiction is a fiscal host.