Cincinnati city funding for human services will go toward new priorities starting next year. Council voted Wednesday to update the structure of the Human Services Fund administered by the United Way.
Those priorities haven’t been updated since 2020.
“We have now refined them by first starting with, how do we define the problem that we want to solve for each of these priorities?” said Council Member Meeka Owens, who proposed the changes. “That leads to strategy.”
The Human Services Fund this year is about $8 million and is divided among dozens of nonprofit organizations. The groups apply for funding every two years; the Human Services Advisory Committee reviews the applications and recommends which should be funded.
The biggest change for next year is that up to a third of the total fund will go toward one project for eviction prevention and housing stabilization.
“We're making a commitment to impact by allowing for a significant amount of human services funding to go towards addressing a huge market failure,” Owens said.
Known as the Impact Award, its priority will change each year. The new structure won’t go into effect until the next fiscal year, which starts next July.
The new priorities are:
- Between 25% and 33% for an Impact Award — in this case, eviction prevention and housing
- 20% to youth gun violence prevention and reduction
- 25% to comprehensive workforce development
- Between 10% and 18% for supporting, securing and stabilizing housing for high-risk populations
- 10% for Project LIFT (direct support for emergency anti-poverty programs)
- 2% for overhead
The previous priorities were:
- 29.83% to reduce homelessness
- 29.83% for comprehensive workforce development support
- 16.10% for Project LIFT (direct support for anti-poverty programs)
- 10.89% to addiction prevention
- 8.62% to violence prevention
- 2.84%% to senior services
- 1.89% to overhead
