The Funding Prevention in Communities: Lessons From Evidence2Success report, written by Margaret Flynn-Khan, Lynn Tiede, and Katherine Gaughen of Mainspring Consulting, aims to help community coalitions fund and sustain evidence-based prevention programs to promote healthy child development on a large scale. It focuses on communities that have implemented the Annie E. Casey Foundation’s Evidence2Success® framework and shares their successes, challenges, and lessons from the field.

The Evidence2Success framework equips participating communities with technical assistance and resources so that they can think strategically about how to fund evidence-based prevention programs and the infrastructure capacities they need long term.

Readers will learn about a five-step strategic financing process that helps communities thoughtfully fund evidence-based programs and support infrastructure by leveraging existing resources and developing diverse and sustainable sources of support. The report also identifies six key infrastructure capacities to fund: continuous quality improvement; strategic finance planning and administration; advocacy and communications; and project management.

According to the report, these strategies that have emerged as the most successful in terms of supporting the work in Evidence2Success communities:

• Focus on financing from the start if you want to sustain the work.
• Start moving with key champions and welcome others as they are ready to come along.
• Use the data to find the “sweet spot” where multiple partners’ priorities intersect.
• A big, compelling vision leads to big dollars.
• Be clear about partner roles in the financing work.
• Cut your losses where you need to.

“The report is written in practical language so that it can be readily used by communities,” said Sarah Chilenski, associate research professor at the Edna Bennett Pierce Prevention Research Center (PRC) at Penn State and principal investigator for the evaluation component of Evidence2Success.

“The authors break down the big challenge of sustainability into bite-sized chunks,” added Jochebed Gayles, assistant research professor with the PRC and Evidence2Success co-investigator. “They have an amazing understanding and compassion for what we do in the field of community prevention.”

Since 2012, the PRC has partnered with the Annie E. Casey Foundation to support community coalitions to effectively use data to achieve their goals. There are now Evidence2Success coalitions operating in Rhode Island, Alabama, Utah, Florida, and Tennessee.