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Can you get grant funding for your private practice? What is the problem that your private practice solves or tends to in your community? How can you find the best organizations to connect with in your wider community to reach more of your ideal clients?
In this podcast episode, LaToya Smith speaks about how to get grant funding for your practice with Dr. Omolara Uwemedimo.
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Meet Dr. Omolara Uwemedimo

Dr. Omolara Thomas Uwemedimo is a healthcare founder, social entrepreneurship coach, healthcare practice funding consultant and growth strategist for women of color in healthcare. She is also the host of the podcast, Funding Your Healthcare Vision.
Her career as a pediatrician spans almost 2 decades and includes her work as a public health researcher & professor for over a decade. Her work has been defined by a passion for social justice, serving as an advocate and working as a global physician across sub-Saharan Africa, Asia, and the Caribbean.
Visit Strong Children Wellness and Melanin & Medicine. Connect on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
FREEBIE: Sign up for Dr. Omolara’s Workshop!
In This Podcast
- Vet your practice
- Identify your pipeline
- Packaging
- Pitching
- Partnership agreement
- Promotion!
Vet your practice
We have to see whether your practice can be positioned as what we call a “social enterprise” … is your practice in any way taking care of a population that might be disadvantaged, neglected, [or] underserved? It doesn’t have to be that they’re low income, it could just be that … there’s a healthcare inequality.
Dr. Uwemedimo
Does your practice solve a solution problem? Does your practice offer a group of people in your community a direct service or solution to a need of theirs that either hasn’t been met before or is not met by the services already provided?
We need to stop explaining your practice as what you do and [rather] explain it as what’s the problem you solve.
Dr. Uwemedimo
Your chances are a lot higher for receiving grant funding for your private practice if you can prove that the work that you do directly serves a need that’s been either unaddressed or underrepresented in the past.
However, since there is a huge need for mental health services in general at the moment, most private practices might qualify, so give it a go either way.
Identify your pipeline
That pipeline is referring to [looking at] potential partner organizations, potential foundations who might fund [you] … and if any, grant opportunities.
Dr. Uwemedimo
Some of the research that you do is to identify your pipeline.
It’s a great process for you to assemble so that you know which of the already-existing organizations around you would be beneficial to partner with throughout the journey.
Packaging
The nice thing about a partnership with a non-profit is that you can usually choose and partner up with a non-profit that already has a development officer or a grant writer.
You want to build out an executive summary which is your one or two-pager that you can give to different organizations to explain what you do, how you solve it, what the partnership would look like, and how much it is going to cost.
The grant writer is very pleased and happy to have that because now there’s no more back and forth. They can literally do their job and go to the funder with that in tow.
Dr. Uwemedimo
This is called packaging, how you wrap up your private practice and present it to the grant writer, which takes you into the next step, which is pitching.
Pitching
This is your short and sweet attempt at connecting with your preferred organizations. It is something that you say to someone to explain:
- What you do
- Why it’s important
- What’s the impact it will have
During that time, if they’re interested, there will be a discussion [around], “Okay, this is what we can provide. This is what I can provide” … and you start to build out what the partnership terms look like.
Dr. Uwemedimo
Partnership agreement
You can find contract templates to make sure that you can share information with your new partnership, ensuring that the terms of how you’re going to work together and give services are clear.
Remember that this is something for your lawyer to do, and you can sit in on the discussion, but at the end of the day, your lawyer is the one who’s meant to sign off on the fine print.
Promotion!
You don’t have to always do this alone! You can create a workforce of interns or new employees to help you set out the plan.
These interns can help collect paperwork, reply to emails, and schedule calls, and so forth, helping to increase your reach and your growing network of connections.
That promotion part also includes [those interns] starting to get information from what’s happening through your partnership and getting that on LinkedIn so that you can attract more funders.
Dr. Uwemedimo
Useful links mentioned in this episode:
- Don’t waste any more of your time, and try TherapyNotes and use the promo code JOE to receive your first two months for free!
- Visit Strong Children Wellness and Melanin & Medicine. Connect on Instagram, Twitter, and LinkedIn.
Check out these additional resources:
- The Power of A Counseling Collective with Avery Rosser and Nafis Ricks | GP 166
- Practice of the Practice Network
- Group Practice Launch
- Group Practice Boss: www.practiceofthepractice.com/grouppracticeboss $149 a month
- PoP Group Practice Owners Facebook Group
- Free resources to help you start, grow, and scale
- Work with us
- Practice of the Practice Network
Meet LaToya Smith

LaToya is a consultant with Practice of the Practice and the owner of LCS Counseling and Consulting Agency in Fortworth Texas. She firmly believes that people don’t have to remain stuck in their pain or the place they became wounded. In addition to this, LaToya encourages her clients to be active in their treatment and work towards their desired outcomes.
She has also launched Strong Witness which is a platform designed to connect, transform, and heal communities through the power of storytelling.
Visit LaToya’s website. Connect with her on Facebook, Instagram, Strong Witness Instagram, and Twitter.
Email her at [email protected]