Four Ways Aging-Focused Funders Are Taking Multisector Collaboration National

We’ve been covering the rise of place-based, multisector partnerships and the often instrumental role that philanthropy plays in bringing together disparate groups to solve major problems facing cities and counties today. Some issues, however, are bigger than any one city or region. They require solutions that take a more expansive view of “place.” Philanthropy is responding by backing multisector collaborations of national scope in a variety of areas — and that includes aging, a demographic shift necessitating a host of regulatory and infrastructure adaptations nationwide. Funders are also tackling ageism, a pervasive, destructive cultural force that harms individuals and communities.

Aging and ageism matter: Our nation and our world are growing older, yet our policies and practices have not caught up. By 2030, one out of every five people in the U.S. will be 65 or older. By 2034, the number of adults older than 65 will be greater than the number of children under 18. In California, where I live, a quarter of the state’s population — nearly 11 million people — will be 60+ by 2030.

Aging can seem like a downer topic at times (such as when confronting one’s own sudden, bizarre back pain or ever-more-forgetful aging parents). But funders I’ve spoken to over the past year have sounded uniformly upbeat — excited, even. This enthusiasm, I’ve concluded, is fueled by the traction they’ve gained from working together across sectors.

Spearheading state-level plans for aging and multistate collaboration

Less than 2% of philanthropic dollars go toward traditional aging-related programs and services, but philanthropy has played a transformative role in increasing the pool of people who consider aging their concern. “It began with the realization that aging was not just a medical or social services issue. People are realizing that aging is multifaceted and touches every sector,” said Lindsay Goldman, CEO of Grantmakers in Aging (GIA).

Aging-related funders’ collaborative mindset stemmed, in part, from their involvement in the Age-Friendly States and Communities movement. Now a program housed within AARP’s Livable Communities initiative and part of a global network of similar projects, this was an early effort to unite elected officials, nonprofits and community leaders around a vision of creating more age-friendly neighborhoods. For philanthropy, this work evolved, in part, into today’s big investment in multisector, state-based, master plans for aging (which this year were renamed “multisector plans for aging,” or MPA).

The MPA movement is designed to motivate states to dedicate more attention and resources to aging. States appoint a lead person or agency to this effort. That leader then encourages other agencies — parks, libraries, transportation, housing — to make changes to accommodate older adults in their midst.

In addition to seeding these statewide collaborations, which have generated millions of dollars for aging-related services and supports in states like California, philanthropy is also funding multistate learning groups to help states implement their plans.

One such group, the Multisector Plan for Aging Learning Collaborative, brought together cross-sector teams from 20 states during the past two years. With funding from The SCAN Foundation, West Health and the May & Stanley Smith Charitable Trust, and leadership by the Center for Health Care Strategies, the collaborative offers state planners 12 months of peer-to-peer exchange, networking and learning. This year, participant states include Connecticut, Iowa, Maryland, Massachusetts, Missouri, Nevada, New Hampshire, Pennsylvania, Utah and Washington state.

Meanwhile, this movement is itself becoming more national in scope. Kirsten Gillibrand, the U.S. senator from New York, proposed a national multisector plan for aging. GIA issued a funders’ guide and convened a funders’ community on this national plan. As Goldman said at the GIA conference in October, there is significant momentum around MPAs, catalyzed by philanthropy, and for good reason. “MPAs can help pilot, spread and scale effective policies and practices, break down administrative and operational silos, leverage more funding sources and track impact.”

Talk may be cheap, but ageist language has expensive ramifications

Another example with a national orientation from the start, the Reframing Aging Initiative seeks to identify and eliminate ageist language as a way to promote better policy for our aging nation. It began in 2012, when leaders from eight national organizations, including AARP, Grantmakers in Aging, the American Federation for Aging Research and the National Hispanic Council on Aging, gathered to figure out why policymakers were failing to respond to the profound demographic shift of an aging society, as I’ve written.

With support from John A. Hartford Foundation, Archstone Foundation, Endowment for Health, Fan Fox and Leslie R. Samuels Foundation, Retirement Research Foundation, Rose Community Foundation, and other funders, the Reframing Aging Initiative hired the social science research firm FrameWorks to identify how Americans think about aging.

We have a pretty negative view of growing older, as it turns out. To address that issue, FrameWorks created specific verbal “reframes”— new ways of talking about growing older — to help Americans adopt a more inclusive, positive view of aging and recognize the assets older adults bring to society. This work rests on the idea that narrative change (supported by philanthropy, in this case) can prompt real action in the public sector. In other words, changing our conversations will change our thinking, which will, in turn, motivate policymakers to create more support for all of us as we age.

According to Marcus Escobedo, vice president of communications and senior program officer at the John A. Hartford Foundation, the foundation had encountered lackluster interest from policymakers and health system leaders. “No one wants to talk about aging. No one sees themselves as an older adult. A 75- or 80-year-old in this country? Not old. No one wants to be old. All of that creates barriers to our work. That’s why we invested in this project.”

The initiative went on to create the National Center to Reframe Aging. Led by the Gerontological Society of America, the center offers a variety of resources for nonprofits, business, academics, government and ordinary citizens. Its mission: to help us notice ageism, call it out, and change our own speech, combating ageism and sparking better policy and programs in the process.

Banding together to increase connectedness

Old age can be a lonely, isolated stage. This is due to a confluence of common occurrences. Children grow up and move away. Retirement squelches work-based friendships. The “grey divorce,” which is on the rise, and spousal death leave people home alone. Aging-related physical changes can mean eschewing previously enjoyed activities, such as downhill skiing or Zumba. A slew of research shows the potentially harmful impacts of loneliness and social isolation, including an increased risk for high blood pressure, heart disease, obesity, anxiety and depression, cognitive decline, and even Alzheimer’s disease.

Social connectedness, on the other hand, helps us stay healthy. It is also another aging-related issue getting national, multisector support, backed by philanthropy. The Surgeon General recently announced the Framework for a National Strategy to Advance Social Connection, a multisector vision grounded in research and interventions that have been funded by philanthropy. The strategy includes six pillars and a series of recommendations “to heal our epidemic of loneliness and social isolation.”

Philanthropy has also backed Healthy Places by Design, an evolution of the former Active Living By Design, backed by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation. Healthy Places by Design works to create a paradigm shift and multisector action on the role of the environment in supporting health. As its website puts it, “We have partnered with foundations and communities across the country to help shift the conversation toward one that recognizes how the places where we live affect our health.“

Healthy Places by Design recently released a 50-page report offering solutions for social isolation. Its suggestions include designing, maintaining and activating inclusive public spaces, creating affordable housing that facilitates community, and prioritizing connection in transportation options — which, by the way, sounds like the exact opposite of the current roll-out of driverless taxis cruising around my neighborhood. GIA worked with Healthy Places to create a toolkit for its network of aging-focused funders.

Collaborating around caregiving

Caregiving is a huge need in our aging society, and another area where multisector collaboration will be increasingly crucial in the years ahead. The Care for All with Respect to Equity (CARE) Fund, which focuses on public care infrastructure, is another multisector collaboration with national impact, as I wrote last year.

The CARE Fund launched in 2021 with the aim of amassing and giving away $50 million over five years to impact policy and transform systems to improve caregiving and the lives of caregivers. Initial and early funders included the Ford Foundation, the W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Schusterman Family Philanthropies, the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the Heising-Simons Foundation, the Perigee Fund, Pivotal Ventures and Open Society Foundations. By 2022, five more funders had joined.

This fund focuses on caregivers for young children and others, as well as for older adults. Bringing together funders and nonprofits focused on young children with those dedicated to older adults makes sense because the caregiver population for both groups tends to comprise people from similar demographics — women of color and/or recent immigrants. As CARE Fund Executive Director Anna Wadia told me last year, “The devaluing of care and caregiving, whether by paid caregivers or those providing unpaid care to loved ones, has its roots in sexism and the idea that women’s work should be done for free.”

Caregiving is also hard work. There is an increasingly national recognition of the financial and emotional toll that unpaid caregiving takes, and a growing awareness of the need to support caregivers of all types. One promising development comes with backing from the White House itself. The first National Strategy to Support Family Caregivers launched in 2022, with significant support from philanthropy. Earlier this year, a Biden administration executive order bolstered the strategy with more than 50 directives for federal agencies and new funding from the Administration for Community Living. “As funders, if we value aging, we must equally value those who provide paid and unpaid support to us as we age," Goldman said.

These are just a handful of many examples of national and even international multisector initiatives happening in the aging space. They show that aging is one area where philanthropy's capacity for forging cross-sector collaborations is thriving.

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