The following are answers to some of HCF’s most Frequently Asked Questions about our funding and online application process. If you do not see the answer you are looking for, please submit a FAQ request.
The best website for information about the ACA is healthcare.gov. This is also the website where residents of Kansas and Missouri will access the health insurance marketplace.
In addition, you can get information about the law and have your questions answered by calling 1-800-318-2596. Starting on October 1, you can also enroll in insurance coverage by calling this toll-free number.
Information for Kansas residents can also be found at www.insureKS.org and for Missouri residents at www.coverMissouri.org.
The health care system in the U.S. does many things well. We have widespread medical technology, plentiful specialty care and state-of-the-art facilities. Despite all this, however, we trail other developed countries in measures of access, quality, and cost.
The U.S. spends at least twice as much on health care as any other nation on earth, yet nearly 50 million people are uninsured and outcomes for many treatable conditions are poor. Our system has much to commend it, but still much room for improvement.
Health care is expensive, so health insurance can be costly, as well. The ACA includes tax credits and other subsidies to help people pay for insurance and health care services. Eligibility for these credits and subsidies depends on income, family size, and other factors. It is expected that most people who purchase insurance in the new marketplaces established under the ACA will qualify for some level of assistance.
One of the ways insurance companies manage their risk and cost is by denying coverage to people with “pre-existing conditions.” If the insurer determines that you’re likely to need a lot of health care services, they may decide that you’re too risky to insure. Alternatively, they may offer a policy to those with pre-existing conditions, but charge a higher premium for it or sell a policy that doesn’t cover certain diseases or body systems. The list of conditions that will get someone closed out of the insurance market is extensive, ranging from high blood pressure to cancer and heart disease.
Under the ACA, insurance companies will be required to sell policies to anybody who wants to buy one, regardless of health status or pre-existing conditions. In addition, they may not charge more to those with pre-existing conditions or exclude diseases or body systems.
Requiring insurers to cover everyone regardless of health status may make the pool of insured people relatively sicker and increase insurers’ risk. As a result, the ACA requires nearly everyone to get health insurance. Including young, healthy people in the insurance pool should mitigate the increased risk of covering those with pre-existing conditions by spreading the cost of care over a larger population.
When the navigator program is fully operational, navigators and other consumer assisters will be available in place such as hospitals, clinics, local health departments, area agencies on aging, and community mental health centers. Other community organizations, such as libraries, senior centers, and social services agencies, may also make space available for navigators to meet with consumers. When the program is operational, navigator locations will be available at healthcare.gov and by calling 1-800-318-2596.
In addition, many Federally Qualified Health Centers (FQHCs) have hired staff specifically to help their patients and other consumers understand their options and enroll in insurance in the new marketplace. You can find an FQHC in your area at this website.
Dental coverage for children is considered an “essential health benefit” and will be included in all plans offered in the marketplace. Dental coverage for adults will be available in stand-alone plans and may be offered as a benefit in comprehensive health plans sold in the marketplace.
Your eligibility for plans in the new marketplace is based on place of residence, so you should shop on the exchange of the state in which you live. If you use health care providers located near your workplace, you should make sure they’re part of the network of the plans you consider.
In Kansas, the marketplace will include health plans from Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas, Blue Cross Blue Shield of Kansas City, and Coventry. All of these insurers will offer multiple plan choices.
We don’t yet know what companies will offer plans in Missouri.
Medicaid is a shared federal-state program that provides health coverage to some low-income people. The income eligibility requirements are different in each state.
The ACA standardized Medicaid so all people with annual income below 138 percent of the Federal Poverty Level ($15,856 for a single person, $26,951 for a family of 3) would have been eligible for coverage in 2014. In Kansas and Missouri, several hundred thousand currently uninsured residents would have gained insurance coverage under this provision of the law.
The Supreme Court, however, ruled that expansion of Medicaid is optional for states. To date, both Kansas and Missouri have decided not to expand their programs. As a result of these state decisions, many people who would have been covered by insurance under the ACA will remain uninsured.
There is no deadline on state decisions to expand Medicaid and states may revisit this question in the future. If you’re interested in this issue, you may choose to contact your governor and state legislators to weigh in.
A gap between the Medicaid program and the ACA is created when an individual's income is too high to qualify for the current Medicaid program, but too low to qualify for tax credits to help purchase private insurance in the new marketplace (tax credits are available to people with income between 100 percent and 400 percent of the federal poverty level, or $11,490-$45,960 for a single person and $19,530-$78,120 for a family of three). If you fall into this coverage gap, you will still be eligible to buy insurance in the marketplace, but may find it to be unaffordable. In this case, you will be exempt from the mandate to purchase insurance and will not have to pay a tax penalty.
There are no requirements for employers to provide insurance coverage to employees. Some large employers that don't offer coverage that meets certain minimum standards, however, may be required to pay a fine (called a "shared responsibility payment") starting in 2015. This has sometimes been called the "play or pay" requirement.
Businesses with less than 50 employees are not subject to the "play or pay" requirement and are under no legal obligation to offer insurance to employees. If they do, however, they may be eligible for federal tax
credits to help cover the cost.
Starting in 2015, businesses that have 50 or more employees and don't offer insurance coverage to full-time employees will be subject to fines if any of their employees purchase insurance in the new marketplace and receive federal tax credits to help cover the cost.
Extensive information about the ACA and how it affects businesses can be found at this website: healthcare.gov/businesses/
Under the ACA, businesses with 50 or more employees must offer insurance coverage to full-time employees or pay a fine, a so-called "shared responsibility payment." Full-time employees are defined as those who work 30 hours per week or more. There have been reports in the media of some businesses reducing staff hours to less than 30 hours per week to get around this requirement.
Whether these reductions are a direct result of the ACA is difficult to determine. Businesses increase or reduce employment because of many factors, including insurance costs and other costs of doing business. Most
employers do not make these decisions lightly; in addition to the effect on employees, there may also be increases in training and other costs associated with moving workers from full-time to part-time positions.
There may well be some employers who have cut staff hours in response to the ACA. There is little evidence, however, that this is happening on a broad level. State and national labor and economic data do not show any recent increase in part-time versus full-time work. The federal government estimates that less than 1 percent of employees have weekly hours slightly above the 30-hour cutoff, are employed by businesses affected by the employer mandate, and do not already have health insurance.
The Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City services Kansas City, MO and Cass, Lafayette and Jackson counties in Missouri as well as Allen, Johnson and Wyandotte counties in Kansas.
The Foundation funds three major areas: Safety Net Health Care; Healthy Lifestyles; and Mental Health.
Limits to the amount an applicant organization may request can vary per grant cycle. Please refer to the grant cycle's RFP, or call HCF to inquire at 816.241.7006.
Please consider the following when determining how much to request for your program:
Templates can be found on the HCF Website under ‘Grant Information, then ‘Online Applications' .
FDG attachments can be found on the left side of the page; ADG attachments can be found on the right side of the page.
If your organization does not have certain required documents in an electronic file (for example – IRS 990 form) and does not have the capacity to scan the document in order to upload it, simply upload a Word document that states that your organization cannot send these documents electronically and you may send them via U.S. mail, or you may deliver them personally to our offices instead.
Each organization that will receive a portion of the grant funds must provide a Letter of Commitment on the organization’s official letterhead. Letters of Support are not required but may be used to strengthen a proposal.
Letter of Commitment: The letter must state the organization’s commitment to the project, indicate the specific role it will fulfill, and state its share of the grant proceeds. Note: In-kind resources also require a Letter of Commitment (e.g. the value — salary and benefit expense — of staff time contributed to the project, the value of office space, equipment or training that is donated, or the value of volunteer time or other forms of direct or indirect support such as the cost of utilities and supplies.
Letter of Support: Letters of Support should be from entities that would be affected by the program for which you are requesting funding. There is no limit on the number of Letters of Support an applicant may submit, but more than 8 is cumbersome.
Your organization's Diversity Statement may be included as an appendix and it will not count in the 12-page limit; however, you are still required to explain specifically how your organization's mission, governance, staffing and operations reflect a commitment to diversity under the section entitled "Diversity" in your narrative proposal - particularly in relation to the project/program for which you are requesting funding. NOTE - attaching your Diversity Policy does not fulfill the requirement of the diversity section.
Grant reviewers are very interested in knowing how your mission, governance, staffing and operations reflect a commitment to diversity. Do the demographics of your staff members working on this project reflect the demographics of the clients you are serving or who you hope to serve? And, If your staff or Board is not very diverse in terms of ethnicity and gender, you could use this section to explain why and to indicate how your organization plans to improve upon that in the future if necessary.
Many applicants also attach their organization's Diversity Policy as an appendix to their application to help address this section. Please note that, while your diversity policy will not be included in the page count of your application, it should not be submitted in place of this section, but in addition to it.
For HCF purposes, a fiscal agent or fiscal sponsor is an organization that receives, disburses and accounts for grant funds on behalf of another organization. Fiscal agents assume the accounting and financial reporting responsibility for grant funds. As such, they receive grant payments on behalf of, and disburse funds to the grantee, and they record and document grant-related transactions according to appropriate accounting principles.
A fiscal agent must be a nonprofit organization, must be designated as one of the types shown above, and must have annual financial audits.
If the Health Care Foundation awards a grant to an organization that meets either condition below, the applicant organization must receive its grant funding through a fiscal agent/sponsor:
The Health Care Foundation has an agreement with Support Kansas City, Inc. (SKC), a nonprofit outsourcing firm, to provide fiscal agent services for HCF grantees. The Foundation covers the cost of the services and refers applicants to SKC once they have a pending grant award. SKC reviews the applicants’ financial record-keeping procedures to determine whether the firm can expect timely, accurate and appropriate information about grant expenditures from the grantee.
Also, applicants can pursue other sources for these services. Sometimes an affiliate organization of the applicant can serve as a fiscal agent. Occasionally small, grass roots organizations find a fiscal sponsor among the larger partner organizations that they work with. Also, the Greater Kansas City Community Foundation provides fee-based fiscal agent services.
No. Gov’t Orgs need only to submit the following:
This is the law passed to specify the name, purposes, functions, and powers of a governmental administrative agency. Most organizations have this document in their archives; however, it can be found on the Secretary of State website.
The Foundation will pay for up to 8 hours with a grantwriting consultant for eligible applicants. Please contact Andres Dominguez at 816.241.7006 or via email at with inquiries.
For Gov’t Orgs/Cities/Schools/Hospitals/Universities: Our organization’s operating budget is an extremely large file. Do you want us to submit all of it, or just the portion that relates to our program?
The portion of the operating budget that pertains to your department is sufficient.
ADG and FDG Online Application links can be accessed on the HCF Website by going to the HCF home page, clicking on the "Grants" tab, which will display the "Online Applications" tab. The application links are located on this page.
NOTE – there are two 2) links you will need to use per application: one for BEGINNING an APPLICATION, and a second link to RETURN to a SAVED APPLICATION; Be sure you click on the right link!
I completed a portion and saved my application but, when I try to go back to it, it’s as though I never started one (or, I can’t find the one I started, or the new data I entered isn’t showing up)!
If you plan on saving an application and returning to finish it later, be sure to EXIT COMPLETELY OUT OF YOUR INTERNET BROWSER. If you save your application, but leave the internet browser open and then try to return to your application, it will not reflect any updated data you may have input. Exiting out of the internet browser will refresh your data so that your application will be up-to-date the next time you access it.
Also, if you did not exit out of the browser before trying to return to your application, you may have accidentally created one (or more) new applications by simply clicking on the link. This is not a big deal, but you may want to delete the additional applications from your account so that you do not get confused as to which one you are working on.
To avoid having to continually exit out of internet browsers, an applicant may also delete the cookies on their computer (which track/record your internet browsing, but also interferes with the online application software.) To delete the cookies on your computer:
Open an internet browser and go to Tools at the top of the page; then, select Internet Options; under the ‘Browsing History’ section, check the box that says “Delete browsing history on exit,” then click on Delete. A box will pop up asking if you are sure – click ‘yes.’
You will need to send the email address of the person responsible for submitting the application to who will transfer the account to the new email address. Once the update has been made you will receive an email indicating the account has been transferred. You may then update your password.
No. The applicant may view the application in their online account under ‘Submitted Applications,’ but the application cannot be edited/re-submitted.
An email acknowledging the electronic submission of the grant application will be sent to the applicant immediately. If you do not receive an email confirmation please contact or .
Please send the attachments via email to , or and we will attach the documents to your file.
HCF received notice from the company that hosts our online application service regarding a technical issue which may cause some applicants difficulty when attempting to upload attachments to their online application. The technical issue will affect those applicants who currently use Symantec AntiVirus 10:
ISSUE: When uploading a file to an online application, if an applicant has the Symantec AntiVirus 10 File Auto Protect Feature enabled, the Symantec file scan may delay the file upload to the online application (that is, it will take a LONG time to upload, potentially disrupt the application process, and cause much frustration for the applicant!)
SOLUTION: If an applicant’s computer is currently using Symantec AntiVirus 10, to decrease the amount of time needed to upload files, we recommend considering one of the following options:
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Health Care Foundation of Greater Kansas City • 2700 East 18th Street, Suite 220 • Kansas City MO 64127 • 816-241-7006