King County Healthcare Coalition
SUSTAINABILITY FUNDAMENTALS


STRUCTURE MAINTENANCE
This is an area for careful planning. Healthcare Coalition staff are currently working through several of the questions surrounding the next steps for developing a lasting Coalition structure. These questions include:

1. Do you create a 501 (c) (3) not-for-profit organization that can hire staff, seek grants, and raise money?
2. Do you fold the Coalition under an existing community structure, e.g. a community health council or United Way agency?
3. Do you connect it to the Health Department?

It is important to anticipate some of the issues surrounding different structures and to consider what will be most useful during a response.

STAFF AND INFRASTRUCTURE
Another step that is needed in addressing sustainability is to identify the core staff required for the on-going maintenance of the Coalition. Key questions about staffing an infrastructure include:

1. Can the Coalition be embedded in another organizational structure to reduce administrative overhead?
2. Can existing staff that have sufficient time to support the Coalition be used but also have other responsibilities, or does dedicated staff need to be hired?

It is a likely assumption that individual health care organizations (hospitals, large medical groups) cannot provide the infrastructure to support the Coalition and even if they can, it may create a greater sense of impartiality if no one provider is employing the staff or providing the majority of the funding.

FUNDING
Ongoing funding is a different challenge than start up funding. If the Coalition can take on work that has more immediate, day-to-day benefits for members (for example, addressing community health issues such as Emergency Department usage, prevention, quality, continuity of care across sectors), it may create greater incentive for the members to provide core funding for the Coalition. Additional funding can be sought from grants or contracts related to preparedness work and help the Coalition sustain for the long term.