“There’s probably not a day that goes by where I don’t ask somebody from the LeadingAge family, ‘What would you do? What have you done?’ The network I’ve made is essential.”

I stopped in my tracks last week after reading these words from Aline Rusotto, executive director of Orchard Cove, a LeadingAge member in Canton, MA.

In two brief sentences, Aline summed up the most powerful benefit of LeadingAge membership.

That benefit is us.

LeadingAge members share a great deal. We are deeply committed to the people we serve and support. We are mission-driven individuals who care about providing the highest quality care and services. We respect the accomplishments of our peers, and we want to learn from them. We are generous about sharing our successes and our failures. And, like most people, we crave connections.

LeadingAge is committed to providing those connections. We want to ensure that no member of LeadingAge will ever feel alone as they face the challenges associated with living out our shared mission. That’s why we have spent the past 63 years helping members know one another, learn from one another, celebrate with one another in good times, and support one another in challenging times.

The pandemic reminded us just how important our connections are. It also spurred LeadingAge to renew our efforts to create rich engagement opportunities for all members. I hope you will consider taking advantage of three opportunities in particular:

Peer Groups: This month, LeadingAge launched eight new listservs to facilitate member-to-member communication on topics ranging from philanthropic and LGBTQ+ issues to human resources, technology, and workforce. I hope you will explore the options and sign up for peer groups that match your interests. Then, begin to ask questions or share ideas.

Member Networks: LeadingAge now hosts 14 networks that allow members to come together around similar interests. Most networks hold virtual monthly meetings led by LeadingAge, with topics of discussion informed by participants. Ten networks connect members working in specific service lines such as life plan communities or affordable housing. One network connects leaders of color. Other networks serve as forums to discuss quality and risk management, technology, and managed care. I hope you will browse our member networks and sign up today.

LeadingAge Conferences: There’s no substitute for in-person connections, and LeadingAge conferences are unmatched in their ability to provide networking opportunities, educational programming, and the simple pleasure of spending downtime with colleagues. I urge you to consider attending this year’s Leadership Summit (April 15–17) and Annual Meeting (October 27–30).

LeadingAge strives to be an inclusive gathering place where all members feel free to ask questions like the ones Aline Rusotto raises daily with her LeadingAge family. I invite you to participate in our community: make friends, seek and offer advice, share your experiences, and join others in standing up for what you believe.

I have no doubt these connections will help us all become the best that we can be.

And now let us welcome the new year, full of things that have never been.

I have always loved these words from German-language poet Rainer Maria Rilke. They aptly sum up the joy, excitement—and, indeed, the great sense of hope—that comes, sometimes inexplicably, with the annual act of flipping our calendars from December to January.

Clearly, the challenges we faced on December 31 didn’t disappear on January 1. But for some reason, the road ahead seems full of possibilities at the dawn of this new year. We are starting the magical season of new beginnings. With each New Year’s resolution, we commit ourselves to preserving that magical sense of newness and possibility for as long as we can.

That is my commitment for 2024. It is also LeadingAge’s commitment.

There are many reasons to look forward to this new year and all that it might hold. We began the year auspiciously by welcoming a new Board Chair whose personal journey guides him in promoting our sector and developing future leaders. We also enter the year with a profound sense of gratitude for each one of our members, who find joy in making the world a better place to grow older.

Granted, you face many challenges as you live out your mission to provide high-quality services and supports in an ever-changing world. But you have repeatedly demonstrated that you are willing and able to tackle those challenges head-on and to be there for one another in the process.

LeadingAge is there for you, too.

We are committed to working with you to better understand the issues you face and to support you in addressing those issues. This isn’t a new commitment, of course. But as we look ahead to 2024 and beyond, we see new possibilities for living out the mission that has guided LeadingAge for the past six decades. Our soon-to-be-released Strategic Plan will reflect these possibilities and guide our work over the next three years.

We look forward to expanding our communication lines and finding new ways to listen to you actively and respond to your evolving needs quickly.

We look forward to making LeadingAge an even stronger community of providers by offering you new opportunities to know, learn from, and support one another.

We look forward to involving you in new initiatives designed to guide LeadingAge into the future.

As we explore these and other new possibilities, we will also build on the successes of 2023 by:

• Doubling down on our efforts to develop and share new solutions and innovative strategies to address our ongoing workforce crisis.
• Expanding our robust educational offerings, including those aimed at leadership development.
• Continuing the proactive state and federal advocacy on which you depend.
• Amplifying our collective voice through timely and informative communications with members, policymakers, and the public.

As the new year dawns, there are many unknowns ahead of us. But I am sure of one thing: LeadingAge members exemplify excellence as they work with ingenuity, display determination, and take a can-do approach to our vital work.

I am proud to accompany you into this new year. I look forward to working with you to bring the “things that have never been” to life in our organizations, our field, and our world.

In late October 2023, New York Times columnist David Brooks published a book he hoped would offer readers practical lessons on how to make others feel valued and understood.

Brooks had personal reasons for writing How to Know a Person: The Art of Seeing Others Deeply and Being Deeply Seen. After a lifetime of being “a bit detached,” he wanted to identify the social skills he would need to become an “illuminator”—a person who “shines the brightness of their care on people and makes them feel bigger, respected, lit up.”

Roberto Muñiz, the incoming president of the LeadingAge Board of Directors, knows a lot about illuminators. Roberto got where he is today through the intervention of illuminators who, in turn, inspired him to become an illuminator for others. During his address to LeadingAge members at this year’s Annual Meeting, Roberto urged us to do the same.

Born and raised in the mountains of Puerto Rico with his 14 siblings, a teenage Roberto moved to New Jersey with his mother after his parents separated. Home was a “two-bedroom apartment in a rundown and drug-infested part of the town,” he recalled. “We were welfare kids. It was a struggle.”

After his high school guidance counselor told him he was not “college material,” Roberto resigned himself to following his three older siblings to a post-graduation job in a local factory. But those plans changed dramatically after he encountered three illuminators while accompanying his ailing mother to a local hospital for medical appointments.

Balvina, a hospital pharmacist, suggested that Roberto volunteer at the hospital. Theresa, the hospital’s volunteer coordinator, helped Roberto land a job as the pharmacy’s weekend stockboy. An 80-year-old pharmacist named Ben became an inspiration and a mentor.

These three illuminators didn’t just take a passing interest in Roberto. Instead, they went out of their way—and rolled up their sleeves—to help him live up to the potential they saw in him. Theresa and Ben encouraged Roberto to apply to Rutgers University. They helped him fill out his college application and financial aid forms. Ben paid the Rutgers application fee.

Roberto was soon on a path that would eventually lead to Parker Health Group, where he has been president and CEO for the past 25 years. Ironically, the young man who was not “college material” now teaches graduate-level courses at his alma mater.

“I thank God that Balvina, Theresa, and Ben opened doors for me, giving me opportunities,” he told the Annual Meeting audience. “They saw potential in me. They believed in me when I did not believe in myself.”

We each have personal stories about how we got to where we are today. Like Roberto, we have depended on and benefitted from individuals who opened doors for us at critical stages in our lives. Roberto’s message to all of us is very simple:

“We must be those individuals for others,” he said. “Now it’s our turn to pay it forward—to invest in others.”

As you make your New Year’s resolutions in a few short weeks, I hope you will include some of the actions Roberto suggested during his Annual Meeting address—actions that can help us show gratitude for our own success by investing in the success of others.

“Encourage someone to become a volunteer,” Roberto suggested. “Drive someone to an open house at a local university. Help someone with a college application. Ignite the interest of young minds at local schools and universities. Encourage a young person to join our field—and help them succeed. Look for people in your organization who have leadership potential. Empower them to tackle the issues that challenge your organization.”

In short, become an illuminator.

What an incredible mission to adopt as we begin 2024. Let’s do it together for our own good and the good of our field.

 

I have been thinking a lot lately about what matters. What mattered in the past? What matters now? What will matter in the future?

We only need to look at the history of LeadingAge for an answer to my first question. Our association was created 60 years ago as a collective exploration into how providers of aging services could preserve the health and dignity of older adults and, in the process, enhance their quality of life.

Two things mattered most to our founders: their nonprofit roots and their shared commitment to finding a better way to provide services and supports to an expanding older population.

These priorities still matter today—maybe even more than they did six decades ago. That’s because we’re witnessing the shrinking of the nonprofit sector due to policy and market forces we cannot control. If left unchecked, these external forces will make it much harder for us to provide values-driven services and supports, collaborate with others to fill unmet needs, and build deep roots in our communities.

The external forces that threaten us matter a great deal. Fortunately, the skills and dedication of LeadingAge members matter even more.

You are excellent at what you do. You have strong leadership and deep expertise. You understand the external forces that impact our field. At the same time, you work hard to strengthen your organizations by improving your strategic decision-making, leadership, and boards of directors.

Like the founders of LeadingAge, you are committed to finding a better way. That matters.

You also have a skilled and dedicated team at LeadingAge fighting for your interests with persistence and vigor. That matters, too, because there’s a lot to fight for right now.

Our advocacy agenda matters. Whether we are opposing minimum staffing mandates for nursing homes or proposing a better way to provide hospice services, you can count on us to represent your interests to the best of our ability. In addition, we take every opportunity to educate policymakers so they know how much nonprofit providers across the continuum matter to the future of this nation.

We tell policymakers that you are driven by core values, guided by mission, and committed to an overriding purpose. We tout your incredible potential to help our nation address coming demographic shifts, secure the future of millions of older adults, promote healthy aging, narrow the gap between the haves and have-nots, and find better and more sustainable ways to finance aging services.

In addition, we work hard to ensure your success on all these fronts. We are doubling down on tackling our substantial workforce challenges. We’re collaborating with you to devise new models and approaches to timeworn problems. We’re helping you strengthen your organizational health, leadership, and capacity to serve.

All of this work matters.

As 2024 approaches, the nonprofit aging services sector finds itself in a pivotal moment of massive change. I know we can meet this moment together. I am confident knowing we are partners in understanding and acting on what matters.

And I am excited to walk with you on this journey.

LeadingAge represents over 5,000 organizations, many based on a range of faiths and denominations. We’ve just had the privilege of gathering together at our Annual Meeting in Chicago, and I was, as always, inspired by the dedication and commitment to service of our membership.

Over recent years, antisemitism has been on the rise in the United States—and since the horrific violence of Hamas against Israelis on October 7, incidents of hate have spiked significantly. While in Chicago, I learned of specific and disturbing examples of the antisemitism some of our members in the LeadingAge family are experiencing. While conflict escalates in the Middle East and too many remain as hostages, we pray for peace and the safety of all. 

A powerful faith tradition flows through LeadingAge’s members. It is in that faith tradition that I condemn the antisemitism rampant in our country. We will do all we can to ensure that Jewish life can flourish in peace for our members, for staff of member organizations, and the older adults and families they serve.

As providers of aging services, you think a great deal about the financial currency—reimbursements, contributions, earned income—that helps your organizations fulfill their missions and stay afloat. We at LeadingAge think a great deal about that, too.

A new report from Independent Sector urges us to expand our thinking.

“Public trust is the currency of the nonprofit sector,” begins Trust in Civil Society. Without that trust, the work of nonprofit organizations becomes harder—and maybe even impossible.

Fortunately, nonprofits are among the most trusted institutions in the nation, according to this year’s Independent Sector report, the fourth in an annual series. More than half (52%) of the 3,000 adults surveyed by researchers at Edelman Data & Intelligence said they have a high level of trust in small businesses (55%) and nonprofit organizations (52%). They had far less trust in the federal government (24%), corporations (26%), and the news media (24%).

Before we congratulate ourselves on our trustworthiness, however, we must reckon with a disturbing trend revealed by this year’s data.

After years of slight declines, trust in nonprofits fell four points in 2023. Researchers described this statistically significant decline as “the largest year-over-year change in trust in any institution tested.”

The 2023 data suggest that nonprofit status alone does not ensure public trust or guarantee our success in fulfilling our missions, and that building trust is not a “one-and-done” endeavor. We nonprofits must earn the public’s trust every day—and every year. Otherwise, that trust could decline even further.

The declining trust in nonprofits comes down to this: as more Americans fall on hard times, the public expects more from us. Americans want us to provide aid and support to those in need, fill gaps left by others, and prove that we’re making an impact.

How do we accomplish this? The 2022 Independent Sector survey suggested that nonprofit organizations could win public trust by:

• Earning third-party validation from a celebrity or public figure.
• Having a clear mission.
• Engaging with underserved communities.
• Demonstrating how the support they receive leads to results.
• Showing clearly how they benefit the community.*

In other words, the public looks to us for integrity, purpose, ability, and dependability. These are enormously important attributes to uphold—and I have no doubt you do just that. However, the time may be right to take another look at if our organizations are living out the nonprofit difference in light of expanding needs and rising expectations. We need to ask ourselves:

What more could our organizations do to increase the public’s trust in our sector?

How can we strengthen our integrity, purpose, ability, and dependability?

How can we foster pride in those attributes among our team members, board members, and the people we serve?

And finally, how can we communicate those attributes to policymakers, the media, and the broader public?

Let’s work together to revisit our missions, fortify our nonprofit attributes, and proudly tell the public who we are, what we do, and how we benefit our communities. This is our best strategy as we push against the headwind of eroding trust.

* LeadingAge offers many resources to help your organization follow Independent Sector’s suggestions for winning public trust. Check out our Opening Doors to Aging Services initiative.

 

 

Every provider of aging services finds itself facing financial, workforce, and strategic challenges in our post-COVID world. These challenges may differ in scale from one organization to another, but no organization is immune. 

We are all in this together. And that gives us a lot to talk about and a lot to learn from one another. 

That’s precisely what I have been doing over the past few months. 

I’ve talked with and learned from many of you during the LeadingAge Leadership Summit this spring in Washington, DC, at conferences hosted by our state partners, and at smaller meetings with boards of directors and leadership teams at member organizations.  I’ve enjoyed every opportunity to hear directly from members about how you view our current operating environment and how you view the future.

Whether in New York, Minnesota, Oregon, or DC, I hear similar messages.

You’re all feeling buffeted by the same headwinds, including Medicaid shortfalls, staffing challenges, the high cost of capital, our flawed system of paying for long-term services and supports, inflation, and the public’s lack of trust in institutions, our government and, by association, the work that we do.

Thankfully, you acknowledge several tailwinds, including the undisputed and growing need for your services. You’re also guardedly optimistic that, in the wake of the COVID-19 emergency, policymakers and the public are finally beginning to understand and appreciate the value of our sector and the need to institute reforms that will strengthen us and prepare us for the critical work ahead.

Granted, it has not been easy to find ourselves in the spotlight over these past three years. But this attention has provided LeadingAge with an opportunity to aggressively promote our comprehensive policy goals, which call for measures to address the workforce crisis, focus on issues of quality across the continuum, reform the financing of aging services, fund more affordable housing, preserve the affordable housing we have, and deepen our national understanding of what it means to be an aging society. 

All our advocacy work focuses on ensuring your organizations can scale and survive. We’re also fighting to retain support for existing programs and services that work. And we want to create a solid future for our sector and the people we serve.

Many LeadingAge members are also focused on that future. They recognize that our sector is never going back to the way things were before the pandemic. These members are setting the stage for a different and better future by: 

• Rethinking outdated organizational strategies and questioning long-held assumptions. 
• Focusing on what their organizations do best. 
• Creating strategic partnerships to help them fill gaps in the care continuum. 

These strategic partnerships are critical to our continued survivability. As the nonprofit sector shrinks, and the need for our services grows, we must band together in new ways. We have no other choice. Our collective strength depends on it.

LeadingAge and our state partners are here to support you, and to help you support one another, as we build a solid foundation for robust, sustainable, high-quality aging services that will be available to every older American who needs them. 

Make no mistake. There is a bright future ahead, but we can only get there together.