I was honored last week in Cleveland to be elected chair of the board of directors of Grantmakers in Aging, one of the major funder affinity organizations to which the Hartford Foundation belongs. I follow great member-leaders like Mary Ellen Kullman of the Archstone Foundation and Robin B. Mayrl of the Helen Bader Foundation. I also have the privilege of upholding a long-standing commitment to GIA from The John A. Hartford Foundation—one of GIA's founding members and first funders.
It may be ironic, but despite being a membership organization of funders, GIA is a lean (but not mean) non-profit. It began as an informal group of foundation program staff who felt a need to learn with and from their peers and became a formally incorporated non-profit in 1998.
Last year, we were very fortunate to hire as CEO John Feather, PhD, a former member while head of the AARP/Andrus Foundation and lately Executive Director and CEO of The American Society of Consulting Pharmacists. John not only rose to the difficult challenge of succeeding GIA's founding executive director, Carol A. Farquhar, but also of moving GIA's offices from Dayton, Ohio to the Washington, D.C., metro area. Although supported by a strong group of consultants and member volunteers (like our own Nora Obrien-Suric, one of the conference program chairs for 2012), John and Darla Minnich (our annual conference director) are the only full-time employees at GIA.
Why have we supported GIA for all these years?
We certainly believe in the vision to which GIA aspires: To be the nation's leading convener, educator, and advocate on behalf of funders in aging. Already GIA offers a great new website, continuing education in grantmaking and aging, connection to peers, a mentorship program for our staff, and a new webinar series—Conversations with GIA, which is sponsored by JAHF as part of our current core support to GIA.
But for me, GIA is most valuable for what it hopes to do with funders who do not identify themselves as focused on aging issues. I feel that aging doesn't get enough attention in philanthropy regardless of sector (e.g., health, arts, employment, or housing). The current best estimate of philanthropic spending on aging—admittedly, a very crude figure—is about 2 percent of the total. While it is foolish to try to weigh the well-being or suffering of one part of the population against another, we feel that this disproportionately low level of spending is wrong.
To date GIA has addressed this issue through its EngAGEment initiative, funded by The Atlantic Philanthropies. In EngAGEment, groups of funders in local areas put up money and got matching support from GIA to explore how aging issues and older adults intersect with local philanthropic priorities. In funding to aging, the effort has already returned three times Atlantic's investment. And by virtue of the increased awareness and lessons learned, I expect that this "return" will only continue to accumulate.
More recently, at the October annual GIA conference, a new project, funded by the Pfizer Foundation, was announced: Community AGEnda: Improving America for All Ages. This project has awarded $150,000 to five communities across the country to address the needs of older adults and harness their continuing contributions. GIA staff will support and evaluate their efforts to share lessons with all the other communities facing the challenges and opportunities of the aging of our society.
So what does 9 by '19 mean? It represents GIA's aspiration (and mine and Hartford's) that by 2019, some 9 percent of philanthropic spending be directed to address the needs and opportunities of older Americans. It is not necessary that GIA's membership increase or even that more foundations identify as funders of aging, but just that philanthropy recognize the aging of our society and weaves older people into the warp and weft of its work.
GIA is a critical mechanism for this outreach to convince other funders about the relevance and value of including older adults among foundation funding priorities. I look forward to doing my share to reach this challenging goal.