Case Study: St. Louis County Children's Service Fund achieves performance-driven grantmaking and streamlined reporting with Bonterra Apricot

St. Louis County Children’s Service Fund - Customer Case Study

St. Louis County Children’s Service Fund is a voter-created, performance-driven local fund that invests in child mental health and substance-abuse services using a ¼ cent sales tax (about $40M/year). Launched in 2010, the new organization faced a tight timeline to award grants and the challenge of building a performance-focused culture and standardized outcome measures from scratch so it could aggregate grantee data, hold agencies accountable, and demonstrate impact.

To meet that challenge the Fund adopted Social Solutions’ ETO® platform, codified a theory of change and standardized outcomes, and moved its grant applications and reporting into an electronic system. The change streamlined scoring and reporting (cutting grantee reporting time in half), improved service delivery and organizational performance across grantees, produced strong audit and assessment scores, and earned high marks in an independent grantee perception survey.

St. Louis County Children’s Service Fund

Julie Russell

Deputy Director