Funding Youth Mental Health: Frequently Asked Questions

Our latest report, Funding Our Future: Solutions for Youth Mental Health Philanthropy, explores barriers and key solutions to philanthropic investment in youth mental health. Below, we answer some commonly asked questions about this new resource.

Click here to download the full report.

Click here to read Part 1 of this blog series. 

How do I use this report? 

This resource is intended for funders of all shapes and sizes who are interested in funding youth mental health, including both those who have already started to invest in this area, and those who have not. In this report, you will find key background data on the youth mental health crisis, as well as key findings from Mindful Philanthropy’s research on key barriers that funders face in supporting this topic. You will also find five key solutions to overcoming those barriers, including deep dives on how to apply each of those to your work and implications for the field more broadly. 

How do I measure outcomes in youth mental health? 

The lack of consensus indicators in both the mental health space more broadly and in youth mental health specifically make it challenging for funders to measure impact. In lieu of these, funders can look to the measures required by public funding sources for mental health, as well as payers (including private insurance and Medicaid). Funders can also support nonprofits in measuring their impact using well-researched clinical tools and metrics such as Teen Screen (for assessing depression and suicide risk in teens) and GAD-7 (for assessing anxiety). Funders can also borrow strong indicators of mental health impacts from other sectors, such as graduation rates, job retention rates, rehospitalization rates, and contact with law enforcement or the criminal justice system.

Funders should avoid measuring outputs (such as the number of people trained in an intervention), rather than outcomes of impact. Generalized support to well-being measured by metrics such as life satisfaction is also unlikely to have a significant impact on mental health unless it is focused on key mental health outcomes. 

My funding is insufficient to make a big change. How can I amplify my impact? 

No matter what the funding amount, funders can make a difference for our nation’s youth. Using strategic gifts to unlock public funding and collaborating with other funders are two key strategies to amplify your impact. We encourage funders to understand the broader ecosystem in which they are operating to identify key gaps and opportunities. This often requires putting aside individual goals to focus on larger investments that further the field. Funders can also consider teaming up with others in the same geographic area, or who are working on adjacent issue areas such as child welfare or criminal justice. 

The Mindful team engages with funders of all shapes, sizes, and geographies every day. To learn more about how we can connect you with fellow funders, contact info@mindfulphilanthropy.org. 

How was your research conducted? 

Mindful Philanthropy developed and distributed a short survey to leaders of philanthropic groups and foundations across the country, between November 2022 and January 2023. The survey was shared with funders who do fund youth mental health, as well as those who do not. We received 81 survey responses from funders representing different geographies, issue areas, and foundation types. We also conducted a series of semi-structured qualitative interviews with other philanthropic funders to supplement the survey findings. See our “Study Background and Methodology” section on page 12 of the report for more details.