Your SIHF LOI Is In : Now Prep Your Full Application: 3 Data Moves Before September 1

In today’s competitive grant market, submitting an LOI is only the first step toward securing meaningful multi-year support. You often have limited staff capacity, scattered program data, and no time to rebuild your reporting process once the full application opens. This is where focused data preparation becomes invaluable.

If you submitted an LOI for the Southern Indiana Health Foundation (SIHF) Strategic Partnerships Fund, you have a short but critical preparation window before September 1. Use it to build the evidence base that can make your full application more credible, measurable, and competitive.

According to the SIHF grants program, the Strategic Partnerships Fund will provide $1.89 million over three years, or $630,000 annually, to a limited number of current and past SIHF 501(c)(3) nonprofit grantees. The fund supports organizations serving Southern Indiana, including Clark, Floyd, Harrison, Washington, Scott, Crawford, and Orange counties.

The LOI cycle runs from August 10 through August 25, 2026. Organizations receive notification on September 1, and invited applicants submit full applications between September 1 and September 30.

The smartest move is simple: do not wait for the invitation email.

1. Use the Gap to Prepare

The period between LOI submission and full-application notification is not downtime. It is your best opportunity to organize your evidence before the application clock starts.

You may have only six calendar days, from August 26 through August 31, to prepare before invitations and full applications begin on September 1. That window is short, but you can use it to identify the metrics, clean the records, and assemble the reporting structure you will need.

SIHF’s published evaluation criteria include strategic alignment, community impact, organizational capacity, feasibility, and evaluation and measurement. A strong narrative matters, but your data should demonstrate that your organization can manage a multi-year investment with discipline.

For example, if your LOI describes expanding youth mental health access, you should already know how many people you served, how quickly participants entered services, how consistently they engaged, and what changed after participation. By preparing those answers now, you can spend September strengthening your strategy instead of searching through spreadsheets.

You can begin with three practical questions:

• Which outcomes did you promise or imply in your LOI?

• Which records support those outcomes today?

• Which gaps could weaken your full application?

Your answers will show you where to focus first.

2. Build a Mental Health KPI Library

Your first data move should create a short KPI library tied directly to your proposed mental health work. A KPI, or key performance indicator, is a defined measure that helps you track progress toward an important outcome.

A focused library should include four KPI families: access, engagement, retention, and improvement. You do not need dozens of measures. You need a small set that your team can define consistently and review every month.

For access, you might track referrals received, eligible participants enrolled, time from referral to first contact, or the percentage of participants who overcome a documented barrier to care. For engagement, you might measure attendance, completed sessions, follow-up contacts, or participation in prevention activities.

Retention measures whether participants remain connected long enough to benefit. Examples include 30-day, 60-day, or 90-day retention. Improvement measures what changes after participation, such as a validated screening score, self-reported well-being, crisis frequency, school attendance, or progress toward an individualized goal.

For example, a youth-serving organization could define these measures:

• Access: Percentage of referred youth who receive an intake within 14 days

• Engagement: Average number of completed sessions per participant

• Retention: Percentage of enrolled youth active after 90 days

• Improvement: Percentage showing improvement on an approved behavioral health assessment

The key is to define every KPI before you place it in an application. For each measure, document the formula, data source, reporting frequency, responsible staff member, baseline, and target.

Research from Bridgespan’s nonprofit dashboard guidance emphasizes that effective dashboards connect organizational priorities to a focused set of performance measures. By creating your KPI library now, you can show that your proposed evaluation plan already has a practical operating foundation.

3. Clean the Data Behind Your Story

Your second data move should focus on data quality. A persuasive outcome claim becomes less useful when duplicated records, inconsistent definitions, or missing service logs make the number difficult to verify.

Start by reviewing the records you expect to use in your full application. You can check participant counts, service dates, referral sources, demographic fields, outcomes assessments, and program completion statuses. You should also identify whether different staff members use different definitions for terms such as “served,” “enrolled,” “active,” “completed,” or “improved.”

A practical first target is 95% or greater completeness for the fields required to calculate your core KPIs. This is a working readiness target, not a claim that every nonprofit must meet it immediately. It gives you a clear way to prioritize missing information before September 1.

For example, your program team may count a participant as served when a referral is received, while your finance or grants team counts the participant only after an intake occurs. That difference can inflate reach numbers and create confusion when a funder compares your narrative, budget, and evaluation plan.

Your cleanup checklist should include:

• Dedupe participant and household records

• Standardize county, program, referral, and service-status fields

• Confirm that service logs include dates and staff or program identifiers

• Identify missing intake, attendance, and outcome assessments

• Reconcile participant totals across your CRM, spreadsheets, and grant reports

• Document any assumptions used to calculate historical results

Data quality does more than improve accuracy. It protects your credibility. The National Council of Nonprofits’ dashboard guidance reinforces the value of using dashboards to connect financial, operational, and program information for better oversight.

By cleaning the data behind your story, you can answer follow-up questions with greater confidence and demonstrate stronger stewardship of potential SIHF funding.

4. Prototype a Monthly Outcome Dashboard

Your third data move should turn your KPI library into a simple monthly dashboard. A prototype does not need to be visually complex. It needs to show how you will track progress across the grant period.

A useful dashboard can include your baseline, monthly target, actual result, variance, trend, and brief explanation. You can build the first version in Excel, Microsoft Power BI, Salesforce, or another tool your team already uses. The important point is to create a repeatable reporting view rather than a one-time application spreadsheet.

A monthly dashboard gives you 12 reporting checkpoints in a typical year. Over a three-year grant term, those checkpoints can help you identify whether a program is on track, whether access barriers are increasing, and whether outcomes differ across counties or participant groups.

For example, a dashboard for a mental health access initiative could show:

KPI	Baseline	Monthly Target	Current Result	Status
Days from referral to intake	21 days	14 days	16 days	Watch
Participants enrolled	85	25 new	28 new	On track
90-day retention	54%	65%	61%	Watch
Participants reporting improvement	48%	60%	57%	On track

You can also include a short narrative field explaining what changed and what action your team will take next. That connection between metric, interpretation, and action helps your dashboard become a management tool instead of a collection of charts.

According to SIHF’s Strategic Partnerships Fund criteria, applicants should demonstrate measurable impact, organizational capacity, feasibility, and a clear evaluation plan. A working dashboard can support all four areas because it shows how you will monitor implementation and make decisions throughout the grant.

By doing so, you walk into the full application with evidence of a reporting rhythm: not just a promise to create one later.

5. Show That You Can Steward a Multi-Year Award

SIHF is not positioning the Strategic Partnerships Fund as a short-term project grant. The Foundation describes it as a sustained investment in organizations with proven programs, capacity to grow, and a commitment to measuring impact.

That distinction matters. A multi-year funder wants to understand not only what your program can accomplish, but also how you will manage progress, identify problems, and adjust over time.

The fund represents $1.89 million in total investment, which means the full application will likely require more than a compelling description of community need. You should be prepared to connect your requested activities to measurable outcomes, staffing, budget assumptions, partnerships, and reporting responsibilities.

The need across the region is significant. Reporting from Extol Magazine cites County Health Rankings data showing one mental health provider for every 370 residents in Clark County and one for every 561 residents in Floyd County.

For example, if your organization proposes expanding care coordination, you can strengthen your case by showing your current referral volume, average response time, referral completion rate, partner network, and plan for monitoring access across the counties you serve.

Your evidence does not need to suggest that every challenge has already been solved. It should show that you understand the current position, have defined the desired change, and can measure whether your strategy is working.

Final Thoughts

Your LOI opened the door. Your data can help you make the case for walking through it.

By preparing a mental health KPI library, cleaning your source data, and prototyping a monthly dashboard, you can improve your application’s credibility, strengthen your evaluation plan, and show that your organization is ready for long-term partnership.

Genesis Consulting can help you complete a Board + Funder Reporting System through a focused reporting diagnostic, KPI dictionary, data-quality review, and dashboard prototype. The goal is to help you walk into the September 1–30 full application window with a live view of your outcomes: not a promise to build one after funding arrives.

If you are a current or past SIHF grantee serving Southern Indiana, now is the time to schedule a Genesis Reporting Diagnostic. Don’t wait for the email. Build the evidence now, and give your full application the strongest foundation possible.