Services Provided:  Aided in Submitting Complicated Governmental Request for Proposal Response, Identified Foundations to Provide Further Funding for Project


Our Successes:

• Helped the National Alliance on Mental Illness of New York City (NAMI – NYC Metro) submit an RFP response for a complicated bid process from the city Department of Mental Hygiene.
• Passed on insider knowledge that when it comes to city contract additional funding is often needed to cover project costs.
• Identified foundations and other possible sources of funding that has enabled NAMI – NYC  Metro to raise the additional needed money.

NAMI NYC Metro

When the National Alliance on Mental Illness of New York City (NAMI-NYC Metro) needed to put together a Request for Proposal response they turned to Community Resource Exchange.  What they got as an added bonus was tutorials from CRE on the nuances of city contracts and the need for and ways of obtaining additional funding to make their project viable.

Wendy Brennan, executive director of NAMI-NYC Metro, says her grassroots organization which provides support, education and advocacy for individuals with mental illness and their families, was interested in bidding on a contract New York City's Department of Health and Mental Hygiene had put out as part of a new system the city was developing to provide a variety of support services for families and youth involved with the mental health system.

But NAMI-NYC Metro had never submitted a Request for Proposal, or RFP, response as the city was requiring and Brennan soon found out the government RFP process could be daunting for the uninitiated. While chatting up her problem with a NAMI board member, who is also an executive director of a large mental health housing agency, he had a suggestion; "Call Fran Barrett at CRE."

NAMI's request quickly filtered from Barrett, CRE's founder and executive director, to a senior consultant who had expertise in drafting government RFP responses.

"This was the first one (government RFP responses) we ever did and it was an overwhelming process and the CRE consultant was just terrific," Brennan says. "CRE helped us organize our response team, helped us to think through the response and were the primary drafters. They just did an extraordinary job."

With the primary mission accomplished, CRE's work could have ended right there. But it didn't.

Brennan said the CRE consultant passed on some knowledge that would be
impossible to know if you weren't well versed in government contracts; the amount being awarded for the project rarely covers how much it will cost to actually do the work. Additional funding is almost always needed.

"The consultant said to us 'you're going to need to supplement the
contract,' he said we should really seek foundation funding to support those contracts," she said.

To that end, CRE's consultants helped identify several foundations that seemed like a good potential match for supplemental funding for NAMI's project, enabling them to move forward.

"The CRE people are truly extraordinary and anybody who asks me about getting a consultant or needing assistance, I would send them to CRE,"
Brennan says. "I absolutely think it's a quality organization and the staff is very talented and we're just very fortunate to have been able to work with them."

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