The Shalem Mental Health Network does not receive sustained government funding, which allows it to innovate new best practices in mental health. The Network’s innovative edge is the creation of new, different partnerships between communities, including faith communities, and the professional mental health sector—building the capacity of communities to care for their most vulnerable members and of professionals to embed themselves in communities. The growth, the results and the attention the work is receiving among leaders in the mental health field are extraordinary.

This approach is also generating a new, more sustainable business model in support of community-based mental health. No community-based mental health service can operate without some form of third-party annualized funding. The Shalem Foundation provides this to the Network, as an alternative to government funding. Diligent efforts are underway to significantly enlarge the Foundation’s endowment fund for this purpose. Because of its rootedness in communities, the Network requires much less from this source (about 30% of its overall budget) than do other mental health agencies (typically 85% to 95% of their overall budgets come from government funding, which is under extreme pressure in today’s fiscal climate). Both the Foundation and the Network are fully committed to balanced budgets.