The worrisome senescence of our current presidential candidates points to another major issue facing the nation: our aging population. The number of Americans 65 and older is projected to increase by 47% between 2022 and 2050, up to 82 million. We’re older today than we’ve ever been before, as this fact sheet on aging explains.
Philanthropy is stepping in to prepare the path forward. Or maybe “shuffling in” is more accurate. Take this oft-cited figure: Just 2% of philanthropic dollars go toward funding traditional aging-related programs and services.
That said, during the past few years of writing about aging-focused funders, I’ve been consistently surprised by their energy and dynamism, particularly given that they’re focusing on the stage of life when vitality and verve are on the wane. (Is it just me? I don’t think so.) Funders and nonprofits in this space actively make the most of their money by collaborating, creating multisector partnerships, investing in narrative change, and taking the time to explain to fellow funders, government agencies and others why older people are actually their concern.
Lindsay A. Goldman, CEO of Grantmakers in Aging (GIA), has a good vantage point on the activity of aging-focused funders. GIA had just over 90 members when Goldman started in January 2021 and is up to 145 members now. IP caught up with Goldman to find out what’s new at GIA and what funders, grantseekers and advocates will be seeing in the future of aging.
So GIA has really grown. To what do you credit the rise in membership?
Extensive outreach on our part. And I think we help people to see the intersection of aging and every other funding priority by articulating why, if you’re concerned about health equity, you need to be concerned about aging. If you’re interested in childhood and early child development and investing in those areas, but not investing in those children in later life, you’re working against your own investment. Today’s children are tomorrow’s older people. We want to be concerned about the long-term outcomes. People are beginning to understand some of those intersections. We exist to ensure that aging doesn’t get left out of policy and funding decisions, which it sometimes does.
Also, funders are aging. As people experience it themselves, often as caregivers for their parents, they come to appreciate the work that we’re doing in a new way. It’s all personal. Aging is the one thing we will all do. If we’re lucky.
We’ve been using this figure of 2% as the share of philanthropy dollars routed toward aging-related programs and services for a while. Is that number still true?
No one really knows. I don’t like to use that number because no one really knows the methodology used to calculate it and I don’t like it because it segregates out aging dollars in a way that is antithetical to our vision for an age-integrated society. Aging is a cross-cutting issue. Pretty much any priority on Giving USA’s list intersects with aging. I would say instead it’s an underfunded priority, given the growth and needs of the population and the fact that we don’t have a system in this country for financing and delivering long-term care. We need more philanthropic dollars, and we need to apply an aging lens to all investments.
After age 65, the likelihood of needing long-term care at some point in our lives is 70%. And 75% of people believe Medicare is going to pay for that care. They learn very quickly that it is not. That’s a big problem. Usually, you figure out that there is no system once you’re in the middle of a crisis. There’s a lack of understanding in the general public and in philanthropy.
The statewide Master Plan or (as it’s now called) “Multisector Plan” for Aging movement has been a huge focus of aging-related funders over the past handful of years. Where do things stand with these statewide plans?
Major progress. So much momentum. A national framework was just released. The vision is a national, multisector plan on aging. The framework is out for commentary now, until September. Three of our funders are funding listening sessions with older people in four states on behalf of ACL [Administration for Community Living, the federal agency responsible for the nation plan]: the SCAN Foundation, the John A. Hartford Foundation and West Health. It’s what we want to see: state multisector plans on aging and a national, multisector plan on aging.
It’s a good example of government and philanthropy partnering. There was a federal appropriation for the coordinating council for the first time ever. Philanthropy bolstered that commitment by investing in the listening sessions. It’s built on the state plans, and more than half the states are exploring, initiating or implementing multisector plans, and much of that is driven by philanthropy.
Could this get tanked depending on who wins the election?
I think the big questions will be around implementation and funding. I think there is bipartisan recognition that we need a plan.
OK, to pivot to another area we’ve been covering in aging funding, the intergenerational movement. Are you seeing more aging-focused funders supporting intergenerational grantees, or what do you see as the trend there?
There are very few funders that invest in intergenerational work. It’s more common to have funders funding in an age-stratified way. In some cases, that can’t change; it’s stipulated in the charter, so we are working within certain parameters. If we were starting from scratch, we wouldn’t say, “We’re going to fund a meal for a 60-year-old person” when there is a nine-year-old child in the house. Everybody is sharing the food and still hungry. In an ideal world, we would address food insecurity of the entire household.
Instead, we need to figure out, when public and private funders have age-eligibility requirements — and many of them do — how do we make sure that funding is not further segregating older people? We try to reinforce that in our messaging, focusing on aging within a relational context, and using funding to bridge generations rather than further divide them. Sometimes, that’s by partnering. We’ve worked with early childhood funders, for example. The opening plenary of our Detroit conference this October has a number of funders who do not identify as aging funders, but the work they are doing can help to better integrate older people into their communities and leverage the strengths of older people.
What are you excited about now in terms of funding for aging and GIA’s work?
The Older Americans Act was signed 60 years ago on July 14, 1965, and is set to expire September 30. It needs to be reauthorized. The Senate just released a draft bill for reauthorization. This is the first time GIA has directly engaged in policy work and we’ve made it front and center in our mission statement, as of 2023.
Just remind us of what the Older Americans Act does?
It provides federal funding for programs and services that address the social determinants of health as we age — case management, meals, falls prevention, health promotion programs, senior centers, adult day programs — all of the social needs people experience as they age that are typically not covered by healthcare but are so critical to health and wellbeing.
How is GIA getting involved in policy work around the Older Americans Act?
We launched an unprecedented partnership with Grantmakers in Health at our conference in Austin in October 2023 to collaboratively raise money to support a campaign to reauthorize the act. We had partnered with them before, but never on a fund. It’s called the Champion Fund, and we raised $375,000 from 13 funders. We’re looking to raise a total of $450,000, so it’s still ongoing.
Through that partnership, we’ve done a lot of education for members about what they are and are not permitted to do in terms of lobbying, given their tax status, including the difference between lobbying and educating representatives. A lot of our members are funding Older Americans Act programs, so we have something to say about this. We have a network of funders who are deeply passionate about aging but have never been activated around aging policy.
The OAA is one of the only federal programs we have to address social needs as we age. We brought our two networks together and have been doing a lot of work to elevate the sector in policy conversations. This is an ideal public-private partnership. For every federal dollar allocated for OAA, an additional $3 to $4 are leveraged from private sources.
We’d never done anything like this, so it was a big risk for my board. We took a piece of bipartisan legislation, the OAA, and this became our policy priority: to have it reauthorized with doubled appropriation to adequately address the increased demand. We put that out as our priority, had a lot of dialogue at conferences. We’ve been out there in a way that we never had before, as an organization that had been quite insular. We have a one-pager, five things Congress can do and five things philanthropy can do to reauthorize the act. You can see this on our newly designed website; the navigation is: learn, network and act. We want people to see us as a place where they can take action.
I feel like, if you work in philanthropy, you don’t get to opt out of the policy context. We have to be more coordinated to maximize impact and avoid funding gaps, redundancies and inequities.
Having a more public-facing presence has also increased our numbers. Last year, we had 100 new people at our conference — 100 of the 250 attendees were new. We have a first-time attendees’ reception and the space was totally inadequate, and people had trouble getting a drink and it was hot. But it was amazing to have that many new members.
All of our work is helping funders connect, collaborate and co-fund. That’s now our tagline. Our mission statement also changed. A lot has changed.
