Mid-Iowa Health Foundation has quietly provided scores of nonprofit organizations in Greater Des Moines with more than $16 million in funding support in its 27-year history. Its mission is to partner with organizations that are providing opportunities and resources to the most vulnerable in the community who otherwise wouldn’t be able to access those resources.

Going forward, “we’re going to try to dive even deeper into healthy children’s development,” said Suzanne Mineck, Mid-Iowa Health Foundation’s president. The foundation recently decided to invest more than $1 million during the next three years into initiatives and organizations that support children’s healthy development in Greater Des Moines.

“Helping our community to provide the resources necessary for our kids in this community to grow up healthy – that’s our challenge to ourselves and the community,” Mineck said. “We live in a phenomenal community with tremendous resources, yet we still have children and families without the support and resources they need.”

Formed in 1984, the Des Moines-based foundation is funded by an endowment from the proceeds of the sale of Northwest Community Hospital, and currently has assets of approximately $15 million.

The foundation’s annual distributions, which in 2011 included 28 grants totaling $480,000, are divided about equally between its community response grants, which are awarded to nonprofits each fall on a competitive basis, and its health initiative grants, which are provided by invitation.

An example of recent funding support by the foundation is a $30,000 grant to Visiting Nurse Services of Iowa, which is working with the Health Care Coverage for Kids Coalition to increase enrollment of eligible children in Healthy and Well Kids in Iowa (hawk-i), the state children’s health insurance program. Mineck previously worked as a fund-raiser with St. Jude Children’s Research Hospital in Memphis and most recently did consulting and training for nonprofits around the country. She joined Mid-Iowa Health as its president a year ago.

“It’s a fund-raiser’s dream to be on the other side (of fund raising), giving out money,” she said.