What are the funding priorities? Can we apply for more than one category?
Applicants must apply for funding to serve pregnant women living with substance use disorder, mothers living with substance use disorder living with minor children, or fathers living with substance use disorder living with minor children.
Applicants can apply for more than one category.
How long will the funding last? Is there a maximum and minimum amount of funding to request?
Funding for all categories start 1/23/2025 and ends 12/2/2025 (12 Months)
Funding Amount Per Category:
Pregnanat Women: $100,000.00
Mothers: $100,000.00
Fathers: $100,000.00
How many awards will be given?
There are a total of 6 awards available.
Pregnanat Women: 2 awards
Mothers: 2 awards
Fathers: 2 awards
Can we focus on drugs besides opioids?
Yes. We invite you to support pregnant women, mothers, and or fathers who have a confirmed substance use dependency, no matter the substance.
Who can we contact for questions?
For programmatic questions, contact Jeremy Triblett, Prevention Integration Manager at [email protected]
For administrative and funding questions, contact Wendy Weckler, Executive Director at [email protected]
Their email addresses are on page 5 of the Information Packet.
Can we apply as a group? Do all partner representatives need to be present for all important award dates?
Yes, applicants can apply as a group. No, a representative from each partner does not need to attend each meeting as long as a rep of the lead agency is present.
We ask that collectives, action teams, coalitions and groups apply via a single representative.
Can faith-based organizations apply?
Faith-based organizations are welcome to submit an application. As with most grant opportunities, while faith-based organizations are fully eligible, the services provided using the grant funds should be secular in nature.
Who will score applications?
The Better Ways to Cope team developed a scoring rubric. A diverse team of panelists will score the applications.
Are grantees with headquarters outside Milwaukee eligible to apply?
An entity could have headquarters outside of Milwaukee County, but the organization would need to have an established presence in Milwaukee County and do all its work exclusively in Milwaukee County.
Would an acceptable use of funds include paying stipends to peer mentors?
Yes, you can pay stipends to people providing a service.
Do we need to cover all services in the sections? Can we choose specific topics?
You will indicate which service(s) you will provide, but you do not need to provide all the services. If you’re going to provide multiple services, you need to talk about each service.
When applying for a grant, do collaborations of 2 or more companies need 1 set of financial statements, or does each company need to provide their own?
Each company would provide a separate set of financial statements. In the application, though, the budget should be one budget for the work they will do together.
How should collaborations complete the application?
Collaborations should determine a lead agency to represent them to complete and submit the application. Information about the collaboration should be included in the application narrative.
When a collaboration receives the award for the grant, how is that disbursed amongst the companies?
Payment will be disbursed in one check to the lead agency that submitted the application. Organizations that are a part of collaboration need to decide how payments will be disbursed amongst themselves. The lead agency who submitted the application will receive 6 checks disbursed equally, every other month in 2025.
Some agencies that provide grants have a request/requirement of a separation of duties, financial and tracking of goals. Does your agency have this requirement or request?
There will be a template that all agencies fill out and submit each month. There will be consistent reporting every month in the provided template for review.
Could you clarify the amount? Is it up to $100,000 per award or per category?
It is 6 awards of $100,000 each. Grant requests should be equal to $100,000.
The application says responders say use the table provided. Where is the table and what format should the information be in?
The requirement to complete the table has been removed from this application process. Exclusion of a table will not impact scores in any way.
Does this grant apply to teen moms?
Yes, pregnant or parenting mothers or parenting fathers of any age.
Can programs that support women in recovery who are working to regain custody of their children apply?
Yes, if the child is theirs and they are working to regain custody, the grant can support mothers or fathers in this situation.
Would funded programming also be available to parents w/o substance abuse issues as well? (example: parenting group at shelter)
Funding is specifically focused to parents that have substance use issues. If there is a group with 10 parents, and 7 have substance abuse challenges, the data would need to be measured only among the 7 with those challenges.
Is there a target number to be served?
There is no specific number to be served. The budget narrative needs to explain how the costs for each line item or category are directly connected to the implementation of the proposed project.
Is there a space we can provide additional budget explanation? We want to explain Medicaid revenue and there does not seem to be a spot for this?
This information should be explained in the budget narrative.
Can someone create a new business (LLC) to apply for this program?
No. We need to have historical financials available to us, so, this wouldn’t align with a brand new business.
Can the clients be involved in other state programs?
The agency can be involved in other state programs. Clients can be involved in other state programs, but we need to be very cautious about supplanting funds. A State funded program should pay for itself. These funds would need to provide something additional to the state funded program. For example (as a purely hypothetical example) if there was a program funded to give bikes to 7 year olds, this grant could fund helmets, but not bikes.
For those offering services to 2 different groups of people, can the wording for the 2 groups be similar as the programs are similar but slightly different in the clients served?
The applications would be separate and care should be taken to make sure that the needs between the 2 populations are differentiated. Applications may look similar beyond that.
If you are not a new business, but have only been in business 2 years and have only used your own money to fund it, would that qualify?
At a minimum we would need to see either a 990, OR a balance sheet & agency budget. The funds do not need to come from grant sources, but we do need to see that overall agency budget and balance sheet to provide evidence of the revenue and expenses of the agency have been accounted for. This would be for one fiscal year.
For clarification on Supplanting, do you exclude participants that are already participating in another grant funded program?
It would need to be a separate and distinct line of programming. The funds need to be very targeted to who the population is and providing distinct grant services in line with the goals in the application. Participants can be involved in multiple systems and multiple programs.
Does an agency need to be a nonprofit to apply? The agency in question has been self-funded, how do they provide documentation of financial history?
No, they would just need to provide most recent year of financial history. Financial history doesn’t need to prove external funding, we just need to see sources of income, expenses, etc. Sources of revenue are how you’re funded, so, it could be personal donation, loan, church donation, grant, etc.
Does the program participant need to have a documented substance abuse disorder? Can we reach our parents who may be on the road to substance abuse and help prevent.
This grant is for individuals who are known to be individuals who are living with a substance use disorder. This is not a prevention program, although previous iterations of BWTC have been.