Leadership development is easy to support in theory. But finding room for it in the budget may require some creativity.
Strong leaders are essential to a strong workforce. But when budgets tighten, leadership development can quickly get pushed into the “nice to have” category. That can be a costly trade-off. For behavioral health organizations facing workforce shortages and tight budgets, finding sustainable leadership development funding can be challenging.
Behavioral health organizations are navigating persistent workforce shortages alongside rising demand and increasing operational pressures. In that environment, retaining and developing the people already in your organization becomes even more important. Leadership development can be part of that strategy, strengthening the managers responsible for supporting staff, translating organizational priorities into action and keeping teams connected.
The challenge is finding the resources to make that investment possible.
The good news? Your organization’s training budget doesn’t have to be the only answer. Grants, partnerships, sponsorships, registration revenue, and other approaches can help organizations build a more sustainable funding strategy.
Here are some tips for getting started.
Before deciding how to fund leadership development, establish why your organization needs it.
Organizations often promote strong clinicians and other technical experts into supervisory or management positions. But technical expertise and leadership effectiveness require different skill sets. New managers may suddenly be responsible for coaching employees, managing conflict, setting expectations, giving feedback, and making difficult workload decisions without having received formal preparation for those responsibilities.
Effective managers can create clarity around priorities and expectations, coach employees before problems compound, build connection and trust, and make thoughtful decisions about workload and capacity.
Those capabilities connect leadership development to bigger organizational priorities, including retention, succession, quality, and risk management.
Start by gathering:
Then put your own numbers to the problem. Organization-specific salary, turnover, and vacancy data can make a more relevant case for investment than national benchmarks alone.
The question shifts from “Can we afford leadership development?” to “What does it cost us not to develop and retain effective leaders?”
Once you’ve established the need, broaden the search for funding.
Philip Atkins, Chief Healthcare Officer at Harbor Behavioral Health, has pursued workforce investments through federal grants, managed care organizations (MCOs), private foundations, health system community benefit funding, and partnerships with other organizations. He has also secured MCO community reinvestment dollars for supervisor development and plans to use those dollars to put a group through the National Council’s Middle Management Academy.
Potential sources to explore include:
Instead of approaching a funder with an ask to pay for leadership training, reframe the conversation to focus on how leadership development advances outcomes the funder already values, including workforce capacity and health outcomes.
Atkins’ advice is an important reframing: “Never think that this is just about training. This training exists in a context.”
“Never think that this is just about training. This training exists in a context.”
— Phillip Atkins, Chief Healthcare Officer, Harbor Behavioral Health
Atkins also recommends defining how outcomes will be measured, explaining how the work will continue after grant funding ends, and braiding multiple funding sources to reduce reliance on a single funder.
Relationships matter, too. Particularly with foundations, he recommends getting to know project officers and their priorities outside an active funding cycle rather than letting a cold application become the first introduction.
Before pursuing an opportunity:
Sometimes the most sustainable solution isn’t finding one large funding source. It’s combining several smaller opportunities. The Nebraska Association of Behavioral Health Organizations (NABHO) offers one model.
Nicki Behmer-Popp, Executive Director of NABHO, wanted to bring the National Council’s Middle Management Academy to Nebraska while keeping participation affordable and limiting the association’s financial exposure. The approximate $37,000 investment was significant for a small association, so NABHO developed a model designed to help the training support itself.
First, NABHO informally surveyed members to determine demand. When registration opened, all 35 available seats filled almost immediately.
NABHO charged $1,250 per participant. With 35 registrations, the association generated $43,750 in registration revenue against approximately $37,000 in National Council cost, creating room for additional expenses associated with hosting the training.
From there, NABHO approached funding in layers:
The goal isn’t necessarily to use every funding source available. It’s to build enough layers that no single source has to carry the entire investment.
When building sponsorship opportunities, you don’t need to find one company or partner willing to fund an entire leadership program.
NABHO broke the opportunity into smaller, more accessible components. Potential sponsorships included meals and networking, individual sessions, participant materials, and workbook printing. Even a sponsorship that covers one necessary expense changes the overall economics of delivering a program.
Behmer-Popp also recommends looking at organizations you already know and work with. A local bank or another business partner that supports your mission may be a more realistic prospect than a large company with no existing connection to your organization.
Consider packaging opportunities around:
This approach can lower the barrier for potential sponsors while steadily reducing the amount your organization needs to absorb.
A program can work financially on paper and still strain an organization’s budget if the money arrives at the wrong time.
For NABHO, registration timing meant the association didn’t have to pay the approximately $37,000 core program cost first and then wait to recover those dollars.
As Behmer-Popp explained: “Sometimes when the money comes in is almost as important as how much money comes in.”
“Sometimes when the money comes in is almost as important as how much money comes in.”
— Nicki Behmer-Popp, Executive Director, Nebraska Association of Behavioral Health Organizations
When evaluating a funding model, map expected revenue against deposits, invoices, and other program expenses. This is especially important for smaller organizations that may have less flexibility to absorb a large upfront expenditure.
The most compelling part of NABHO’s model may be what it has planned next.
After its first cohort, the association began exploring a larger second cohort. Behmer-Popp explained that increasing participation could create additional margin, which could eventually help establish scholarships for members with smaller budgets.
In other words, scale could do more than reduce financial risk. It could expand access.
She summarized the approach in three phases: “Year one, prove the model. Year two, scale the model. And then ultimately, year three, reinvest in access.”
Growth then becomes about more than generating revenue. It creates an opportunity to extend access to leadership development to organizations and individuals with fewer resources.
You don’t need to solve the entire funding challenge at once. If leadership development is a priority for your organization but funding remains an obstacle, start with these steps:
There isn’t one right way to finance leadership development. The opportunity is to look beyond the traditional training budget and build an investment strategy around your organization’s needs, resources, partnerships, and goals.
Want more ideas? Watch the recording from our Beyond the Training Budget: Innovative Ways to Invest in Leadership Development webinar and hear the full discussion.
Ready to strengthen leadership capacity across your organization? Explore the National Council for Mental Wellbeing’s Leadership Track to find the right approach for your managers and leaders.
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