Please join us in congratulating the three organizations awarded grants by Archstone Foundation in the last quarter:
- Pools of Hope
- The Los Angeles LGBT Center
- Community Tech Network
These grants represent important work on our strategic plan, specifically by addressing justice, equity, diversity, and inclusion and organizational capacity in aging through our program, “Supporting Diverse Communities and Advancing Racial and Health Equity for Older Adults through Capacity Building.” The awards will help the organizations develop new sources of earned income, undertake planning activities, and make technological improvements.
Our capacity building program offers grants up to $50,000 for direct operational support that will help nonprofits work more efficiently and effectively. This most recent funding opportunity was targeted to organizations serving diverse elders and advancing racial equity, as defined by the D5 Coalition, so that they might help reduce health disparities and advance racial equity.
This was the third round of funding for “Supporting Diverse Communities and Advancing Racial and Health Equity for Older Adults through Capacity Building,” and we invited four full proposals after receiving 53 letters of inquiry. With these three awards, we have now funded 20 capacity building projects — 17 of them focused on serving historically marginalized older adults and reducing health disparities.
Meet the Grantees
Pools of Hope
A $50,000 grant will allow Pools of Hope — which operates a warm-water swimming complex in Long Beach for older people, veterans and people with disabilities — to expand its physical therapy and occupational therapy services by developing strategic relationships leading to more earned income by becoming a PT and OT contract service provider. Pools of Hope will seek to address equity in historically underserved and under-resourced areas by increasing access to specialty care services such as PT and OT, which often have long waiting lists. It will also expand the number of health insurance companies it contracts with and seek to reach as many as 500 PT patients and 150 OT patients, 80 percent of them older adults.
The Los Angeles LGBT Center
A $50,000 grant will help the Los Angeles LGBT Center — which offers an array of health, social service, housing, cultural, educational, leadership and advocacy programs and services — conduct a needs assessment to better understand the health and social needs of LGBTQ older adults of color and identify the gaps in services and barriers to access. The Center will engage 1,000 BIPOC LGBTQ older adults in a survey, results from which will inform future programming and delivery methods to serve older adult BIPOC communities, strengthen The Center’s Dismantling Racism Initiative, and inform the organization’s strategic plan.
Community Tech Network
A $50,000 grant will enhance the DigitalLIFT Capacity Building programs at Community Tech Network (CTN), a national nonprofit based in San Francisco that promotes equitable access to broadband internet, digitally inclusive and diverse content, and technology training. The funds will allow CTN to upgrade its current Salesforce platform, further develop curriculum for digital inclusion programs, and translate its training materials to specifically reach non-English-speaking older Californians. CTN has experience translating training content into Tagalog, Korean, Spanish, Chinese, Vietnamese, and Russian. Last August, it was one of three organizations selected to provide digital literacy training as part of the California Department of Aging’s Connections, Health, Aging and Technology (CHAT) program. This grant will enable CTN to better position itself to secure county grants related to the California Department of Aging’s Access to Technology (ATT) initiative, which seeks to provide older adults with digital literacy training at scale – regardless of what languages they use.
Upcoming Capacity Building Request for Proposals
The next RFP will be issued in July 2023, with funding awards announced in November and grants beginning in January 2024. Applicants will be able to request funds for general capacity building and for “Supporting Diverse Communities and Advancing Racial and Health Equity for Older Adults through Capacity Building.” And applicants will be encouraged to align their requests with our Three T – Teams, Training, and Technology – funding strategies.
Learn more about our capacity building program here.
Tanisha Davis, Ryan DoyLoo, Jolene Fassbinder, and Jasmine Lacsamana contributed to this post.
