Leon County to Vote On $1.445 Million in Community Human Services Partnership Funding

Leon County to Vote On $1.445 Million in Community Human Services Partnership Funding

The Leon County Commissioners will vote on authorizing $1.445 million in funding for Community Human Services Partnership (CHSP) agencies at their meeting on Tuesday.

The CHSP, a collaboration between Leon County and the City of Tallahassee, was established in 1997 to effectively distribute funding to human services agencies in the city and county.

According to the meeting agenda, in January 2020, the County Commissioners directed staff to create a new Promise Zone category which includes high poverty census tracts located mainly in the 32304 zip code.

In March 2020, the Commissioners voted to approve an increase in CHSP funding from $1,300,000 to $1,445,000 for FY2021. $145,000 of the funding will be allocated to the Promise Zone. The total represents year one of the CHSP’s two-year funding and application cycle.

There were 59 agencies that applied for 101 human services programs, for a total request of $6.403 million. The total County and City funding allocation to CHSP for FY 2021 is $4.046 million which represents a 25% increase over FY 2020 ($3.236 million).

The allocation of the funds to the ten programs for FY2021 are shown in the table below.

CHSP Outcome Measures

Dr. Gary VanLandingham, a professor at Florida State University’s Askew School of Public Administration, is developing CHSP outcome measures. VanLandingham previously conducted a peer review of the CHSP Needs Assessment.

According to the meeting agenda, staff requested that VanLandingham develop outcome measures to gauge how effective the CHSP programs are in addressing the community’s highest human service needs. VanLandingham will work with Ph.D. candidates to complete the recommendations.

“The recommendations are expected to be completed in early fall and will then be presented to a workgroup comprised of County and City staff, the United Partners for Human Services Executive Director, human services agencies, neighborhood leaders, and the Leon County Health Department,” staff reports. “The workgroup will provide additional input on the outcome measures developed by Dr. VanLandingham prior to consideration by the Board.”

The outcome measures will then be presented to the Board in early 2021 and be implemented by both the City and the County on Oct. 1, 2021.

5 Responses to "Leon County to Vote On $1.445 Million in Community Human Services Partnership Funding"

  1. I thought we had the United Way to provide funding to all these groups. You don’t need a pledge card for the County to just take your money.

  2. Let the citizens of Leon County choose the non profits that will receive funding by funding them themselves through donations! I would like to know how much each commissioner contributes to non-profits. If it’s not worth a commissioner’s own money why is it worth our tax money!

  3. The FIRST thing they need to do is Cut off EVERY Nonprofit from the Budget and make them ALL reapply giving full details of where their Money goes, down to the last Penny and NOT as a Pie Chart or a Percentage Chart. THEN they must give their Business plan and How many people they actually help THEN the Commissioners need to go through them all and weed out the ones that over lap others and go from there.

    We have too many Nonprofits receiving our Tax Dollars and THEY don’t pay Taxes. To much of the money they receive is spent on Salaries, Rent & Utilities before it is even used on the actual programs to help people.

  4. I sure hope they develop a mechanism to ensure funds go to those who need assistance and greatly cap administrative costs. We don’t need another >$500,000 compensation package to a non-profit CEO

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