Philanthropy has taken steps to respond to America’s growing mental health crisis — but it’s not doing nearly enough. That is the conclusion of a report recently published by Mindful Philanthropy. In what it describes as a “first-of-its-kind analysis of philanthropic giving toward mental health, addiction, and wellbeing in the United States,” the report, “Mental Health at the Center: U.S. Funding Landscape,” provides an overview of mental health funding from 2015 through 2022, tracks trends in giving and opportunities to leverage change, and underscores the need for more philanthropic investment.
Mindful Philanthropy has gained increasing visibility since it opened its doors, urging funders to step up, and offering research, regular convenings, and support to help them do so. Mental health funders, including Peg’s Foundation, Well Being Trust, the Scattergood Foundation, and The John Heller Fund, founded the organization in 2020. The timing is no accident, of course: The pandemic heightened awareness of a growing mental health emergency in the U.S. — the U.S. Surgeon General has called it “the defining public health crisis of our time” — and a failure to adequately respond.
Philanthropy isn’t solely responsible for that failure, of course, but it could be doing far more; despite an upward trend over the past several years, mental health still makes up only a small fraction of philanthropic funding. Last year, as IP reported, Mindful Philanthropy challenged the sector to up its game — and its investments — with a call for philanthropy to boost its mental health support five-fold by 2035, to $35 billion a year “through greater collaboration and bigger, bolder bets.”
Mindful Philanthropy makes a point of calling the new analysis “guidance” because it seeks to provide the sector with the information and support it needs to take a bigger role. To prepare the new guidance, the organization reviewed existing research, conducted its own surveys and research, and worked with Candid to chart the current mental health funding landscape; it also identified resource gaps and ways funders can incorporate mental health into their funding strategies.
The new guidance is the third in a series called “Mental Health at the Center,” which the organization developed to inform the sector. “This body of work came about because we were asking funders what they need to increase their funding, and to be more confident in funding,” said Alyson Niemann, Mindful Philanthropy’s CEO. “A few things bubbled to the surface. One was, ‘we need a shared vision for the field.’ And ‘we need shared goals for the field. We need shared metrics, and we need to understand who’s leading in the field, and how we can collaborate more effectively.’ So we started thinking about how to put out the tools and the resources that philanthropy would need to answer those questions.”
Funding outpaced by need
The bottom line? Philanthropic funding for mental health continues to lag. The guidance found that funding increased only slightly, from 1.5% of total U.S. philanthropic funding in 2015 to just under 1.7% in 2022, and represents only a small fraction of health funding: less than 6% in 2022. As Mindful Philanthropy concluded, “In spite of increases, funding levels are being outpaced by need and do not reflect the growing public attention to issues of suicide, opioid and other drug use, and specific mental health conditions such as depression and anxiety.”
The analysis also noted some positive trends. Close to two-thirds of funders who were already committed to mental health increased their support by over 10% in that timeframe, for example, and one-third increased it by more than 25%.
Still, the number of funders making the “bigger, bolder bets” that Mindful Philanthropy called for last year remains small, making funding for mental health, like many other areas, a top-heavy environment. Just a handful of foundations provided over 20% of funding for mental and behavioral health between the years 2020 and 2022, with five funders giving more than $100 million.
The guidance includes a list of top givers to mental health: Ballmer Group, Bloomberg Family Foundation Inc., St. David’s Foundation and MacKenzie Scott. It cited the Colorado Health Foundation, the Duke Endowment, “and a collection of community trusts or foundations and donor advised funds” as additional leading funders since 2020.
The small number of major funders addressing the issue is concerning, given the scope of the problem and the number of people affected. As Mindful Philanthropy pointed out, “this trend contrasts sharply with common funding patterns observed in other disease areas, such as cancer, diabetes or heart disease, given investments in treatment or prevention [in those areas] are more straightforward and measurable, whereas addressing mental health, mental illness, and addiction requires a more nuanced and comprehensive approach.” In addition, overly top-heavy funding exposes a cause to greater risk should one or more of its leading grantmakers pull out or reduce their commitments.
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Levers to impact
Mindful Philanthropy’s guidance also identified some specific areas where greater philanthropic engagement would have an outsized impact.
One of those areas is policy and advocacy to build and strengthen the field.
Some funders are hesitant to get involved in advocacy work because of 501(c)(3) restrictions on political lobbying, according to Niemann. “We talk to funders a lot about this, and some don’t understand or want to be really careful around where the line is between advocacy efforts and lobbying efforts,” she said. “We do some educating about what they can do. We also remind them that philanthropy has a whole suite of tools besides their dollars. They have incredible relationships and platforms and connections that can be used to support policy and advocacy. This is a place where a funder can leverage their funding and it often doesn’t take a lot of money to build coalitions, to get policy efforts on the table, and it can offer a huge return on that investment.”
Another area that could use more philanthropic investment is research, which actually declined in recent years, Mindful Philanthropy found, even as the mental health crisis has grown more severe. Giving for mental-health-related research and evaluation stood at 12.7% in 2015, according to Candid data, but fell to 3.1% in 2022. The guidance calls for “Strategic investments in building the case for [mental health] investment, as well as ensuring access to better data to inform policy and funding decisions.”
Mindful Philanthropy sees funder collaboratives as another lever to greater impact, and a way for funders new to the topic to plug in: “While many funders don’t know where to start, collaboration, both with peer funders and other stakeholder types, can help to overcome many of the barriers that funders express when tackling the most challenging issues.” As just one example, the Blank Family Foundation backed the Community Foundation of Greater Atlanta’s Georgia Youth Mental Health Funder Collaborative with a $1 million matching commitment last year. According to Mindful Philanthropy’s guidance, “collaboratives represent approximately $400 million in committed or distributed funding for mental health.”
The organization helps facilitate and support such collaboratives when it can.
“Mindful is what’s often called a field catalyst,” Niemann said. “We fill in the gaps and connect the dots. In some cases, a funder collaborative has already stood up and we may be connecting more funders into that collaborative. In other states, we’re actually helping funders think about the work that a collaborative could do, who’s at the table, and what they can learn from other efforts across the country.”
Are the parents all right?
The analysis found that youth mental health is a major priority for funders: “83% of surveyed funders indicated youth and their support systems as a current grantmaking priority.” This is no surprise, given the urgency of the issue and the widespread attention it has received in recent years. IP has reported on a number of funders, including the Blank Family Foundation, The Goodness Web, Pivotal Ventures and the Susan Crown Exchange, that are committed to youth mental wellbeing, and the impact of technology in particular. In addition, Morgan Stanley is supporting efforts to address the mental health of very young children, while the Bob Woodruff Foundation has stepped up for military children.
At the same time, Mindful Philanthropy found an overall discrepancy between what is being funded (the analysis cites mental health in schools, access to clinical services and suicide prevention) and what young people say they need.
What do young people need? The Mindful Philanthropy team has been tracking preliminary research that shows that a large number of young people express a strong desire for belonging. “They’re about community and about relationships,” Niemann said. “They’re also about having positive mentors and adults in their lives.”
The report amplifies concerns about parents’ mental health, an issue that has received little attention until recently. The American Psychological Association found that 48% of parents say that on most days, their stress is completely overwhelming, compared to 26% of other adults, and in August, the surgeon general issued an advisory titled “Parents Under Pressure.”
“This is something that funders aren’t paying as much attention to: parents and their support systems,” Niemann said. “We need to support parents, caregivers and other support systems — coaches and teachers, for example — because if they have good mental health and they’re creating that environment for youth, then youth are more likely to get the support they need and the relationships they need. This is another area that could use more investment.”
From interest to investment
There wasn’t much about the recent analysis that surprised Alyson Niemann. Still, she and her team were a little surprised that the increase in philanthropic support turned out to be so small.
“One of the things our team expected was that there would be a deeper increase in funding overall, given the attention around mental health coming out of COVID,” she said. “But that hasn’t translated into the funding necessary or commensurate with the need.”
However, Niemann is confident that more funding is on its way, and attributed the lag to the often slow inner workings of the philanthrosphere. After all, Mindful Philanthropy has only seen funder interest grow; its network now numbers almost 1,100 funders, and many in the sector seem eager to find out how they can fit in. Since the guidance was released late last month, many funders have already reached out to the organization to learn more.
“What we see with funders is that it typically is two to four years of a learning journey for a funder to come to this space and start funding,” Niemann said.
Niemann is optimistic that several funders will be making significant investments in the near future. “I hope so and I think so,” she said. “We know that a number are in the process of making the case to their boards to increase funding and to implement strategies in this area. So I hope that there will be a really substantial increase in funding, and that that will translate to coordinated funding, smart funding, going to the places that will produce the most impact.”
