Building Bridges: How One Aging-Focused Funder Learned from its Peers

The term “site visit” in philanthropy generally means foundation staff going out to see the work of a grantee. But in a twist on the concept, St. David's Foundation of Austin visited grantees of other funders — in Portland, Oregon and Los Angeles — then built on what it learned to launch a new intergenerational portfolio of its own.

The process started around 2015, said Andrew Levack, senior program officer of the Austin-based foundation, when the board and executive leaders issued a charge to staff to better engage and harness the strengths of the older adults it was helping serve. With this mandate in mind, Levack went to the 2016 Grantmakers in Aging conference held in Portland. There, he joined a site visit to Bridge Meadows.

“We were funding work to help older adults live safely and independently in place. But our leadership kept asking, ‘How are we celebrating the assets that older adults are bringing to the community?’ We were addressing these needs but looking to fully engage older adults in our community. Then I saw Bridge Meadows and I thought, here’s a way to do it,” said Levack.

Bridge Meadows runs affordable housing communities that include both older adults and foster youth living in kinship families. It has created an intergenerational program in which seniors volunteer with the foster youth. (Bridge Meadows itself has an interesting inspired-by-others backstory; after reading about Hope Meadows community in Illinois, Wes Smith, Rhonda Meadows and Pam Resnick went to visit the community in 2004, then returned to create something similar in Portland.) It is supported by a range of local and national funders and individuals, which have included Bank of America Charitable Foundation, Collins Foundation, Seattle Foundation, May & Stanley Smith Charitable Trust, Walsh Construction and Harry & Jeanette Weinberg Foundation.

St. David’s Foundation’s learning process is a prime example of how visiting programs funded by other foundations can inspire confidence in a potential new investment, especially valuable when entering a field such as intergenerational programming, still a relatively new area for philanthropic focus. After all, it’s one thing to think that an idea sounds promising in theory, but another to see it in practice. “I think it gives boards and leadership more comfort to take a risk as you enter a new field when they see an organization already doing something. You know that you’re not alone in it, and that there is a field around it,” said Levack.

Helping older folks give, not just receive

The Bridge Meadows model capitalizes on the two-way benefits of intergenerational programming, a much-lauded approach to solving a range of problems from loneliness and isolation in older adults to low reading scores among children. Funders and nonprofits in the aging space are increasingly looking for ways to harness and combine the varied strengths of older and younger adults, or older adults and children. The vision, as articulated by CoGenerate, a leading nonprofit in this area, is “bridging generational divides to co-create the future.”

Levack saw this bridge in action and came away inspired. “I talked to one older resident there who had lived in a low-income housing development in downtown Portland. She said the highlight of her day in the past had been looking out her window in the afternoon when the school bus would come to drop off kids, and watching kids come off the bus. Now, the highlight of her day is walking to the bus stop and picking up these kids she cares for. That’s amazing.”

Eager to learn more, Levack next traveled to Los Angeles to meet with Trent Stamp, CEO of the Eisner Foundation, the largest funder solely focused on intergenerational work, as I’ve written before, and a pioneer in the field. In L.A., he saw a variety of intergenerational programs, including a housing complex that fosters intergenerational connection, a literacy program with a strong mentorship component, intergenerational gardening, and the Eisner-funded Heart of LA Intergenerational Orchestra.

“You find this amazing special sauce, this reciprocity that everyone gets from intergenerational programs,” said Levack. “We got really excited, and said, ‘How could we start facilitating some of that work in central Texas?’”

Bringing the learning home

Like the rest of the nation, and much of the world, the population in Central Texas is growing older. St. David’s serves both isolated, rural older adults and those in the ever-expanding suburban sprawl around Austin. It is a place-based, community-focused, equity-driven funder that gives out about $80 million in grants each year in five counties in and around Austin, Texas: Travis, Hays, Williamson, Bastrop and Caldwell. Through a partnership with St. David’s HealthCare, a hospital system in Central Texas, it reinvests hospital proceeds back into the community. Its five main impact areas include resilient children, healthy women and girls, thriving rural communities, clinics as community hubs for health, and older adults aging in place. Levack oversees this last program.

There are about 200,000 people over the age of 65 in the five-county area the foundation serves, and that number is projected to reach 800,000 in 2050. Nearly a quarter of these older adults live under 200% of the federal poverty level, according to the foundation. While many of them qualify for Medicaid, the process is complicated, and those just over the Medicaid threshold are often left unserved. Many people of color often face the compounding challenges of aging and decades of living with structural disadvantage.

The foundation began its foray into intergenerational funding by supporting an arts program serving older adults and kids in elementary schools, run by the Austin-based arts programmer Creative Action. Then, in 2019, it put out an RFI: a “request for ideas.” The RFI asked for a one-page description of the program idea and a budget. Potential grantees could apply for an “innovation grant” of $20,000 a year for two years or a “strategic grant” of $100,000 a year for two years. This latter grant category was designed for organizations to envision intergenerational programs that would require more staff. “We called it a request for ideas because we wanted people to be flexible and have a year of planning,” said Levack.

The foundation chose 12 grantees — two at the “strategic” level and 10 “innovation” grantees — and began funding in 2019, making an initial commitment of about $1 million in total to this new portfolio. It also hired Generations United to provide technical assistance and coordinate a learning collaborative for grantees, spending about $60,000 a year for this help.

Then COVID hit. The notion of getting older adults to hang out with young children became an “idea deferred,” said Levack. Some grantees launched virtual programs, but the majority focused on planning. In 2022, the foundation renewed those first 12 grants for another two years and re-upped its commitment to Generations United.

Now, grantees are really getting down to work. Strategic grantee Austin Area Urban League is using its money for a youth-led digital history program. Austin Bat Cave, the other strategic grantee —which, no, does not take intergenerational groups to view bats under the bridge— is using the money for a journaling and creative writing program in local schools.

The 10 innovation grantees include several intergenerational gardening programs, such as one offered by the Alliance for African American Health in Central Texas and programs that bring older adults into elementary schools as volunteers, including one through Bastrop County Cares, a county-wide nonprofit that focuses on place-based, multi-sector partnerships, a growing trend in philanthropy. Other innovation grantees include a program by BookSpring, a Library of Congress Literacy Award Winner that brings retirees and other older adults into early childcare centers to read aloud, and El Buen Samaritano, which focuses on the needs of Latino and Spanish-speaking residents in Travis County and beyond.

The future of sharing ideas on intergenerational funding

A next step for St. David’s, said Levack, is incorporating an intergenerational framework into more of the foundation’s work, rather than only within this new portfolio. He also hopes the foundation's work will inspire others. St. David’s just hosted the 2023 Grantmakers in Aging conference in Austin this October, which included site visits to several of its grantees.

“I think there is great value in spending time with other foundations, visiting other foundations, and learning what they do,” said Levack. “Rather than reinventing the wheel, seeing the work of other funders in a potential new impact area lets you learn from others’ efforts. It will make your initiative stronger if you can understand the approach that other foundations have taken."

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