Please join us in congratulating the four organizations — Community Health Initiative of Orange County, National Health Foundation, Alzheimer’s Orange County, and Watts Labor Community Action Committee — that were awarded grants as part of Archstone Foundation’s second Supporting Diverse Communities and Advancing Racial Equity for Older Adults through Capacity Building & Innovations RFP.
With our RFP, we are seeking to support organizations that serve a diverse population and whose work aligns with Archstone Foundation’s mission, directly serving adults 65 and older. During our review process, special consideration is given to organizations serving racially and ethnically diverse and/or LGBTQ+ older adults, and whose leadership reflects the population served.
Capacity building grants seek to strengthen the leadership and management of nonprofit organizations directly serving older adults by helping them build systems and find resources to facilitate the organization's progress in achieving their goals. Innovations grants support the implementation or adaptation of evidence-based programs to better serve and support BIPOC older adults.
This work represents an important pillar of our new strategic plan in that a focus on diversity, equity, and inclusion and a focus on reducing health disparities represents an explicit share of our grantmaking and a core value of Archstone Foundation that will be an important consideration throughout all of our grantmaking.
Meet the Grantees
Four one-year grants for $50,000 were awarded to the following organizations:
Capacity Building
Community Health Initiative of Orange County (CHIOC) will develop a business plan for a formalized older adult services model for the enrollment of a newly eligible Medi-Cal population, which expands the full scope of benefits to low-income adults aged 50 and older, regardless of immigration status. Many of the newly eligible older adults will be undocumented immigrants, as this group is the largest uninsured group in California. In preparation for this newly eligible status to take place in May 2022, CHIOC will obtain all training, licensing, and certifications required for staff to enroll clients into Medi-Cal, while developing partnerships with organizations in Orange County that primarily serve older adults to aid in referrals for services. CHIOC’s request will primarily benefit low-income older adults, with a focus on Hispanic/Latinx immigrants with limited English proficiency in Orange County.
National Health Foundation (NHF) was awarded a capacity building grant for the renovation design of a commercial kitchen in the planned Congregate Meal Site for Older Adults in San Fernando Valley. The City of Los Angeles will provide funding and ongoing operating costs to renovate and open a 148-bed interim housing and recuperative care site in the city of Arleta. The site has room for congregate dining and a commercial kitchen, which need extensive renovation. The Archstone Foundation grant will leverage the city’s support and provide consulting services to complete the design of the commercial kitchen and meal site. The goal of this project is to support NHF to engage in and complete the process of becoming a congregate meal site for older adults in the Arleta neighborhood of San Fernando Valley at NHF’s Project HomeKey recuperative care site.
Innovations
Alzheimer's Orange County (AlzOC) will implement Mejorando la Vida de la Cuidadora (Enhancing the Life of the Caregiver), a new caregiver service to the Spanish-speaking communities in Orange County through partnerships with local Latinx-serving community organizations and through a partnership with UC Irvine Health. The program will enable AlzOC to provide outreach services to 175 limited English proficient (LEP) Latinx family caregivers, provide comprehensive dementia assessment, care coordination, care planning, and counseling services, and implement an evidence-informed dementia caregiver class.
Watts Labor Community Action Committee (WLCAC) will design and pilot Shaped to Fit, a diabetes education program that bridges the gap between the content of the already well-established Diabetes Self-Management Program (DSMP), originally developed by Kate Lorig, DrPH, Stanford University, and the reality that faces older adults in South Los Angeles. In addition to informally augmenting and piloting the DSMP, Shape to Fit will also include complimentary workshops to health care and aging service providers to help them develop a racial equity lens to apply to their practices. Shaped to Fit has two primary goals: 1) Improve health access, health, health care utilization, and literacy by educating Black and Latino older adult patients and health care and aging services providers; and 2) Improve nutrition, movement, and medication self-management for South LA older adults living below the poverty line.
The Need for Capacity Building and Innovations Support Continues
After two rounds of grantmaking for the Supporting Diverse Communities and Advancing Racial Equity for Older Adults through Capacity Building & Innovations RFP, we have seen that the need for capacity building and innovations grants continues to remain high.
In this round, we received 37 Letters of Inquiry in response to the RFP, including 23 for Capacity Building programs and 14 for Innovations program implementations. Of these, 10 organizations had prior Capacity Building and Innovations RFP submissions and nine organizations were asked to submit full proposals. We continue to receive many more requests for projects than we have available funds.
Capacity Building and Innovations RFP opportunities will continue to be offered twice yearly. As with the current round, one opportunity each year will be specifically dedicated to advancing racial equity, while the other will be a more general opportunity. The first round of Stimulating Innovations and Building Capacity to Support Diverse Communities and Advance Racial Equity offered in 2021 provided support to three important projects.
A new round of funding for capacity building and innovations will open in early 2022. Organizations not selected for funding may have the opportunity to participate in future capacity building support from Catchafire. Most people say they heard about these funding opportunities from our Archstone Announces email or from our website, so be sure you are signed up to receive future updates from the Foundation.
Special thanks to Mary Ellen Kullman, Tanisha Davis, Jolene Fassbinder, and Jasmine Lacsamana for their contributions to this blog post.
