New Impact Investing Fund Will Support Nonprofits And Better Health Outcomes

New York – December 14, 2017 – Nonprofit Finance Fund (NFF) today announced a groundbreaking fund to help community providers of health and human services play their crucial role in achieving better health outcomes. 

The AIM Healthy fund launches with $13 million, supported by Blue Shield of California Foundation, the California Community Foundation, The California Endowment, Dignity Health, and The Kresge Foundation. 

AIM Healthy loans and lines of credit can, for example, help a recuperative-care nonprofit to add beds that provide a bridge between the hospital and permanent housing – combatting homelessness as well as hospital and jail readmissions, or a food-as-medicine nonprofit to partner with a health plan to lower costs and improve outcomes for patients with chronic diseases.

With the country's increasing focus on healthcare quality and cost has come a wider recognition of the role that social determinants of health – such as housing, food security, education, employment – play in the well-being of people and communities. Prioritization of the “Triple Aim” (higher-quality care, with better health outcomes, at a lower cost) is driving changes at both systems and organizational levels, including shifts to value-based payment models, and partnerships between community-based organizations (CBOs) and hospital systems, particularly in low-income communities. 

But community nonprofits that provide these critical services – such as supportive-housing providers, after-school programs, elder-care agencies, health centers – need capital to expand programs; pilot new care and payment models; upgrade systems and facilities; hire staff, etc., to be able to orient their programs and partnerships toward better health outcomes. 

AIM Healthy is a new resource targeted precisely at this need in California, where health outcomes innovation is happening across the public and nonprofit sectors. AIM Healthy offers customizable facility loans, loans for growth or expansion, bridge loans, lines of credit, and equipment loans to help organizations bridge gaps in their capacity and infrastructure. These loans are investments that ultimately will yield reduced health disparities and improved health and resilience for low-income individuals and communities. NFF will work with each borrower to develop and track measurable objectives.
 
Along with the AIM Healthy capital pool, NFF will offer financial management advice and consulting to select borrowers, and will capture and disseminate learnings about how flexible loan capital can help community organizations to expand health services.

“AIM Healthy builds on NFF’s three decades of work in nonprofit finance, applying tried and true product and sector knowledge to frontier work at the intersection of health and human services,” said Norah McVeigh, Managing Director of Financing at NFF. 

“Nonprofits have a critical role to play in advancing better health outcomes in America’s underserved communities,” said Antony Bugg-Levine, CEO of NFF. “NFF is proud to invest in and partner with organizations that are dedicated to advancing the social, as well as the clinical, determinants of health.” 

Interested borrowers and investors can learn more by emailing [email protected].