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Stories
For both people and organizations, it's wonderful to receive praise. A well-earned commendation can make a particularly challenging project even more worthwhile. And an acknowledgement of a community group's good deeds can be a great motivator.
Take Aging Together, a Partnership of more than 100 organizations and individuals based in the Rappahannock-Rapidan region of northern Virginia. The Partnership focuses attention on the issues of aging adults in five counties covering more than 2,000 square miles. Over the last several years, the Partnership has made significant strides in getting the word out about its region-changing work. Aging Together has successfully worked for and with aging adults in urban and rural communities on initiatives ranging from transportation to adult day services and elder law.
But beyond good feelings, receiving accolades also can bring tangible benefits to a group like the Partnership. Indeed, notice of a job well done can help spotlight a group's efforts, which in turn can help boost fundraising dollars or drum up key support for a particularly important initiative.
Over the past several years, Aging Together has brought more than $1.6 million into its community in the form of grants and other funding, and also has generated more than $400,000 in matching funding from local donors. Meanwhile, its efforts have generated a chorus of supporters stretching from Culpeper to the state capitol in Richmond, where the legislature budgeted funds to advance the "Partnership way of doing business" farther. Aging Together has been recognized by groups including the Virginia General Assembly, Virginia's Commonwealth Council on Aging, and the U.S. Administration on Aging. AARP Virginia last year named Aging Together as its "Community Partner of the Year."
"All that attention certainly has given us some legitimacy," says the Aging Together Partnership Chair, Sallie Morgan. "It's helped us when we're writing grant applications and when we're talking to local governments or the Legislature. It also helps when we're talking to people about partnering with us."
Gaining resources
The recognition of Aging Together's successes has been critical for the Partnership. That's because it needs to tap every possible resource to meet the needs of a fast-growing aging population. The Partnership estimates that the 60-and-older population will triple by 2030, and that significant resources will be needed to help care for the growing segments of that population that require regular care -- whether the 20% with four or more chronic illnesses or the more than 25% who need assistance with even the most basic daily activities.
And in addition to the growing population of older adults, the Aging Together Partnership faces other challenges, including covering a very large and rural region. The size of the Rappahannock-Rapidan area presents several problems: For starters, the rural area often means that residents live far away from local and regional services. And over its five counties and 2,000 square miles, Aging Together serves a patchwork of communities, each with different needs. "In Fauquier County, there are a lot of people retiring, so you've got a younger older population," says Morgan. "But in another county to the south, there's a much higher proportion of older people and lower-income older people. We have to keep real connections to each county because they're so different."
Those challenges have led Aging Together to spearhead a number of initiatives -- both local and regional -- that share one common goal: Serving the aging population in its five counties.
One key issue was transportation. "We have no real public transportation here," says Morgan. "And there were a lot of times people couldn't get to the services they needed." The Partnership tackled the issue by assigning small teams to study each county. What those teams found is that different solutions worked for different counties. One team assembled a cadre of volunteers to organize a ride-share program; another hired a coordinator to link riders with drivers. A third county acquired a ramp-equipped vehicle and trained volunteers.
To pay for the programs, Aging Together leveraged state and federal grants and worked with groups such as the Virginia Department for the Aging and the Virginia Department of Public Transportation. That resulted in a full-time transportation planning position for the region, administered by the regional commission, as well as a mobility specialist.
Aging Together also has partnered with existing initiatives to deliver services to its population of aging adults. The Partnership worked with SeniorNavigator, a nonprofit organization that maintains a database of health and aging resources available to Virginians. Aging Together wanted to include more local information for its five-county area, and worked with SeniorNavigator to input information such as local pharmacies that do home deliveries, and civic organizations that sponsor vision or hearing support services. That work with Senior Navigator resulted in Aging Together receiving the organization's Community Spirit Award in 2006.
A unique model
The key to Aging Together's success is its unique partnership model based on that of the Community Partnerships for Older Adults national initiative. Creating the Aging Together Partnership required more than getting a few stakeholders in a room and laying out an action plan. From the beginning, Aging Together was built with a very broad structure that included scores of partners. No one organization drove the Partnership's agenda or initiatives – the Partnership was a catalyst for all involved. They were able to accomplish more and to leverage resources farther when working together instead of alone.
That structure allowed Aging Together to create and pursue a strategic plan from the ground up, based on local community information. It also allowed Aging Together to create different organizational tiers that functioned on the local and regional levels. "You're regularly bringing people together and talking about what's going on in each place," says Morgan. "That helps us to share ideas."
Early on, Aging Together coordinated a large-scale needs assessment to help define the challenges faced by the region's aging population. The information gathered wasn't surprising: It detailed the population's health status and living arrangements, as well as documenting income levels and tallying how many residents saw doctors on a regular basis or were limited by chronic pain. "What we found was that there wasn't a lot of variation between our data and national data," says Morgan. "But that data was a baseline for us to come back to say, ‘Have we made a difference?'"
More importantly, the data gathered during that initial needs assessment -- as well as through the Partnership's day-to-day operations -- has been the key to identifying how best to serve the aging population in its region. "It's really helped us find who really needed help," says Morgan. "And that gives us a better chance of finding real solutions."
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