Plunket Otago-Southland area manager Barb Long said the grant would allow the service to run two days a week, rather than one.
Since the service began about a year ago she estimated about 40 women and their families had been helped.
Demand was such that there were more referrals than the one-day service, conducted from its centre at Macandrew Rd, could cope with.
Mothers who had used the service had found it valuable to be able to talk with others who had postnatal depression and to learn skills and strategies for coping with their depression.
It is estimated about 160 women seen by Plunket in Dunedin each year would be affected by post-natal depression.
Ms Long said it was difficult for such a service to rely on the generosity of fundraisers and options for future long-term funding were still being explored.
It was possible that there would be opportunity to do this with the new Southern Primary Health Organisation, which will come into existence later this year.
She was hoping the value of the early intervention programme, where women got well and their families were being cared for, would be recognised.
It meant women were having to visit their general practitioner less often and also not entering mental health services.
The service got off the ground with money raised from the Zonta Club of Metropolitan Dunedin fashion show, after plans in 2007 for a more comprehensive, $140,000 service, which Plunket had expected would be funded through the Otago District Health Board, controversially fell through.
The Plunket Society had been identified as the preferred provider by the board, but then it advised it would not fund it because of concerns over the board's ability to fund the service in the long term.
Lion Foundation chief executive Phil Holden said funding the service would help support many more young lives, promote positive parenting and help make families stronger, something the foundation considered was critically important to the welfare of the country.
