Editor’s Note: This article was originally published on November 24, 2025.
The nation and world are aging, yet public infrastructure and policymaking are struggling to keep up, like an elderly driver going 20 in the 50-mph lane — to use a simile aging-focused funders and those rallying behind the “reframing aging” movement will hate. Indeed, reframing aging is an effort to help policymakers and the rest of us notice these kinds of negative stereotypes about older adults and change them, such as by using the pronoun “we” instead of “they” to signify the fact that older people are a vulnerable population we will all join, if we’re lucky.
Philanthropy for aging also lags behind the need, even before the federal government began its all-out assault on the vulnerable. Still, those funders that do focus on serving older folks bring an exciting array of tools and approaches to the effort, often collaborating with each other and with policymakers, government agencies and nonprofits to pilot local and national programs. This highly cooperative sector does a lot with a little, and has to; the percentage of philanthropy that goes toward traditional aging-related services is generally cited as 2%. The Multisector Plan for Aging movement, which we’ve covered over the years, is a key example of how aging-focused funders have reached out to government leaders to put older adults on the radar of those working in city parks, housing and transportation departments.
So how are aging-focused funders dealing with the federal funding cuts and threats of cuts? Many have stepped up their efforts to find both short- and long-term approaches that will elevate aging as an issue in policymaking, budgeting and public discourse, said Lindsey Goldman, CEO of the funders’ affinity group Grantmakers in Aging (GIA). Additionally, some funders have made immediate, crisis-averting grants.
“But the big story here is pooled funding,” said Goldman. “We just announced a new Aging Advocacy Fund.” The fund is seeded by RRF Foundation for Aging, Next50, Archstone Foundation and a New York-based funder, The Congregational Home Legacy Fund.
RRF, Next50, the John A. Hartford Foundation and AARP also are funding a nonpartisan Social Security Rapid Response Collaborative to coordinate the Social Security protection efforts of the National Academy of Social Insurance, the Center on Budget and Policy Priorities, the Urban Institute and AARP. “The Trump administration scrapped proposed regulations that would have made the largest cuts to Social Security’s disability programs in history. That’s a major win. It’s part of our protect-and-defend strategy,” said Goldman.
Meanwhile, the age-old challenge for these funders remains: convincing people that the government does not actually have adequate safeguards in place to protect us as we age.
“Most people will need some kind of assistance in later life and believe that Medicare will pay for that assistance. In fact, that’s not true. To me, one of the most important things is dispelling the myth of the Medicare Fairy. We don’t have what we need in place, and to me, that’s terrifying,” said Goldman. “Now that we are seeing the threats to the very imperfect system we have, I think all attention needs to be on aging as a budget and policy issue at every level of government.”
Here’s a look at some of the most influential foundations in aging right now — those spending the most money, partnering the most effectively, or leading with the most creativity and courage.
The John A. Hartford Foundation
The John A. Hartford Foundation (JAHF) is one of the most influential funders focused exclusively on aging. It has been a leading funder in many of the hottest movements in growing older today, such as the National Center to Reframe Aging, which also has support from many others on this list, including Archstone Foundation, RRF Foundation for Aging, The SCAN Foundation, and Next50. This New York City-based national funder is known for its leadership, vision, collaborative nature, and laser-focused attention to its three funding priorities: creating age-friendly health systems, supporting family caregivers, and improving serious illness and end-of-life care.
With total assets of $675 million, as of 2023, JAHF has given out more than $737 million in grants since 1982. It is a supporter of CAPABLE (Community Aging in Place Advancing Better Living for Elders), a program created by the Johns Hopkins University School of Nursing that helps older adults stay in their homes through the support of a team of experts such as occupational therapists, registered nurses, and handypersons. Interventions, which cost between $3,000 and $5,000, lead to better medication management and problem-solving skills, strength, balance, mobility and nutrition, and can cut medical expenses by an average of $30,000.
The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation
The Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Foundation, headquartered in Maryland and with an office in Hawai‘i, has been very effective in spreading and scaling the CAPABLE model. With a mission to “fight poverty and build strong, vibrant communities where everyone can thrive,” this foundation doesn’t focus exclusively on aging, but does include aging as one of its five core focus areas, along with housing, health, education and jobs.
With about $3.1 billion in total assets and annual grantmaking of approximately $150 million, it is one of the few aging-focused foundations that funds capital projects — as in buildings that can help keep older people housed, a big issue in aging. An example of this is the Harry and Jeanette Weinberg Center for Elder Justice at the Hebrew Home at Riverdale, New York. The foundation provided a $1 million matching grant for the start-up costs of the center, which was established in 2004 as the nation’s first shelter offering a holistic set of services for older adults experiencing abuse.
The foundation is also known for its work codifying, evaluating and scaling the PACE (Programs of All-Inclusive Care for the Elderly) model of eldercare, which helps older adults stay in their homes by connecting them to community adult day centers that offer primary care, therapy, meals and recreation. Most participants qualify for Medicare and Medicaid. The Weinberg Foundation is also part of the Alliance for PACE Innovation and Quality, which helps support new PACE programs and has a goal of reaching 200,000 participants by 2028. Since the vast majority of people say they want to age at home, expanding PACE is a priority for funders.
Archstone Foundation
The Archstone Foundation has been working to improve the lives of Californians aged 65 and older for more than three decades. It is known for its role in helping seed California’s Master Plan for Aging. As I noted before, California began working on its master plan in 2019, using $200,000 from eight funders to get it going, including not only Archstone, but also West Health, The SCAN Foundation, Metta Fund and the May and Stanley Smith Charitable Trust. The California plan has become a model for many other states seeking to create their own “multi-sector plan for aging,” as the movement is now called.
Archstone was formed as part of a nonprofit HMO conversion in 1985. It was one of the key funders who helped establish GIA, along with the Retirement Research Foundation (now RRF Foundation for Aging), JAHF, and the AARP Andrus Foundation. It had $107 million in total assets as of 2023. It has what some might call a very “California” ethos, with its focus on models that integrate health, social services, and justice and DEI principles.
RRF Foundation for Aging
A collaborative Chicago-based funder, the RRF Foundation for Aging supports advocacy, direct service, professional education and training, research and capacity-building — and offers a lot of information about how to apply on its website. It was incorporated in 1950 by John D. MacArthur and endowed at the time of his death in 1978. Since 1979, RRF has awarded more than $250 million to support projects that enhance and improve the quality of life for older people. Its current endowment is approximately $145 million, and it gave out about $7.9 million in 2024 in its four main priority areas: caregiving, economic security in later life, social/intergenerational connectedness, and housing. While nearly half of RRF grants support programs in the Midwest, the foundation also supports innovative solutions that assist older Americans nationwide.
For a midsized funder like RRF, advocacy is one of the best ways to make the most of its resources, CEO Mary O’Donnell told me recently, giving as an example food insecurity among older adults. While funding a food pantry would help people in a specific neighborhood, RRF can’t fund food pantries in every locale. “But if we fund system-level approaches, such as SNAP eligibility and access reform, then we can hit hundreds of thousands of older people facing economic insecurity later in life,” she said. RRF also is making a big advocacy push for caregivers, including in a recent letter to the editor of the Chicago Sun-Times by O’Donnell.
It also took the lead on the Caregiver Nation Network, an initiative led by the National Alliance for Caregiving (NAC), for which GIA serves as the fiscal sponsor. The initiative empowers coalitions of caregivers in 10 states (and growing) to advocate to state and federal policymakers. It also provides seed funding, collaborative learning, policy education, enhanced data and insights about caregiving, and hosts a national advocacy summit, which just happened this month.
The SCAN Foundation
The SCAN Foundation, a national aging-focused funder based in Long Beach, California, has put its money behind many of the aging-related initiatives we’ve covered: reframing aging, the California Master Plan for Aging, the rise of multisector partnerships in the aging space. It not only makes grants but also does impact investing, as well as policy work and research. “We work at the diverse intersections of aging with partnerships that expand across the aging, healthcare, disability, policy, social entrepreneur, racial justice and social justice sectors,” the foundation says of its work. It focuses on marginalized older people and their networks of support. It had total assets of $259 million as of 2023. Its annual report is a surprisingly uplifting read about some exciting projects.
One such exciting project: The SCAN Foundation collaborated with the Public Policy Lab to create “The People Say,” a repository of stories of older adults based on more than 100 hours of interviews in several languages with people in seven states. Interviewees share their lives and how they’ve been impacted by specific policies. This qualitative research project is designed to be used by advocates and to educate policy makers.
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Gary and Mary West Foundation
The Gary and Mary West Foundation awards grants to groups based on “their potential to advance successful aging in America,” and as such, it is a funder of PACE and very active in the multisector plan for aging movement. It also funds geriatric-serving emergency departments, beginning with the Gary and Mary West Senior Emergency Care Unit established at UC San Diego Health in 2016. It was a philanthropic cofounder of the nation’s first nonprofit generic drug company, Civica RX, which formed in 2018 to make and distribute at cost generic versions of drugs that older adults need and often can’t access due to cost or chronic drug shortages. In 2024 alone, Civica RX made 175 million doses of 80 different medications, enough for 75 million people.
The foundation was started by Gary and Mary West in 2006 after they sold their stake in the tech-driven communications company they founded. It has given out more than $600 million through more than 750 grants and collaborations. The Wests also established the West Health Institute and the West Health Policy Center in Washington, D.C. Together, these groups “are dedicated to lowering the cost of healthcare and advancing sustainable, high-quality delivery models with the potential to improve care for seniors and their families.” The foundation shares this startling fact on its website: “We are in the midst of one of the biggest demographic shifts in U.S. history as baby boomers turn 65 at the rate of 10,000 a day.”
Next 50
The Denver, Colorado-based Next50 foundation, which turns 10 next year, focuses on promoting independence and dignity for older adults. Its three focus areas include ending ageism, advancing digital equity, and supporting aging in place. It is another leader in collaboration. It had $224 million in total assets in 2023, and funds nationally. It recently funded Leverage Colorado, a new advocacy organization to build infrastructure for aging advocacy that could be adopted in other states.
As Goldman said about this funder’s advocacy work, “We need advocacy. We need people to have a better understanding of what later life is like and demand some changes.”
