Mission

To leverage the action, investments, and leadership of the philanthropic community to advance a holistic, culturally effective, community-based health and social service strategy to address substance use, misuse and addiction that is rooted in individual and public health policy and practice.

Purpose

Fortunately, momentum is growing for a new direction in substance use (SU) policy and practice. Foundations, federal, state, and local government agencies, and other payers have taken a new look at issues of substance use, misuse, and addiction, have examined more closely the environmental contexts in which people use substances, and have slowly begun to shift away from primarily punitive impulses. To this end, a diverse group of philanthropic entities, some who are newer and others who have been in the SU field for decades, whose strategies span health promotion and prevention, harm reduction, treatment, and recovery support, have come together to develop a funders collaborative to organize their efforts and provide a platform for shared learning. Founded on the belief that working together will maximize impact, the group seeks to decrease duplicative efforts, identify, and fund innovation in areas where there are gaps, work in areas where there is little funding, and improve visibility about issues that are typically left out such as prevention and harm reduction. The coalition seeks to learn and work together to support philanthropic efforts that: (1) eliminate all forms of discrimination and stigma; (2) increase recognition of SUD as health condition requiring a non-punitive individual and public health approach; (3) increase access to and support for culturally and linguistically effective evidence informed practices and practice based evidence across the substance use spectrum — spanning prevention to recovery support; (4) strengthen research and evaluation of current culturally and linguistically effective practices and promote innovation; (5) share learning to expand current knowledge of effective policies and practice; (6) include the diverse voices of those impacted by substance use and past punitive responses to use including justice, child welfare, education, housing and other societal systems.