Resource Library

Social isolation is an epidemic in the United States, affecting two-thirds of older adults and three-quarters of young people (as reported during COVID). Social isolation is linked to depression, poor sleep, and impaired immunity. It increases the risks of dementia by 50 percent, stroke by 32 percent, and coronary heart disease by 29 percent, and significantly increases the risk of premature death from all causes.

This guide is intended to give GIA members and other funders an understanding of impact investing — specifically within the philanthropic context — by defining key terms and sharing examples of how it is already being used. 

To mark the fifth anniversary of the Serious Illness & End-of-Life Funders Community in 2021, GIA released this collection of stories and reflections shared by members of the group.

Impact investments can be used to complement traditional grantmaking and bring promising initiatives to scale. Join Grantmakers In Aging and Grantmakers In Health to learn about strategies to structure and deliver capital to drive and sustain solutions, as well as examples of how funders are leveraging impact investing to advance their missions. 

Communication Best Practices: Reframing Aging Initiative Guide to Telling a More Complete Story of Aging offers valuable recommendations and research-based rationales when crafting presentations, press releases, academic papers, letters to the editor, websites, publications, consumer materials, speeches, and other communications.

Age-Friendly Health Systems aim to follow an essential set of evidence-based practices; cause no harm; and align with what matters to older adults and their caregivers. This issue brief provides background on the need and an update on a new movement that seeks to transform how our healthcare system approaches the care of older adults.

Part of Grantmakers In Aging’s Moving Ahead Together initiative, supported by Gilead Sciences, this document offers a detailed framework of recommendations for strengthening the integration of HIV and aging care and services through increased understanding, more customized programs, closer cross-sector connection, and stronger policymaking. Three main sections. Focus Area #1: Complexities and Challenges, explores the broader social context, including stigma. Focus Area #2: Integrating and Improving Care and Services, emphasizes the need for whole-person care and examines medical care, mental and behavioral health care, and social and psychosocial support. Focus Area #3: The Way Forward, looks at policy and how to update it to reflect the graying of HIV.

This report summarizes key issues relevant to understanding complex care and offers resources and case studies for funders interested in entering the field or deepening their existing work. It also profiles funding opportunities, explores existing models, and shares philanthropic lessons learned.

This report examines the mobility challenges that confront older people in rural communities across America and profiles some of the programs that exist to support them.

GIA recorded a series of interviews with older people living with HIV/AIDS reflecting on their lived experience.

This report from Grantmakers In Aging, seeks to capture a range of promising approaches to aging in community being used globally.  
 

Our 2019 funding guide, Aging Positively: Bringing HIV/AIDS into the Aging Services Mainstream: An Introduction for Funders, highlights the diverse experiences of older people living with HIV/AIDS and offers actionable ideas for philanthropies of all kinds to improve care and quality of life. 

​Honoring the Denver Principles and MIPA (Meaningful Involvement of People with HIV/AIDS), GIA also recorded a series of interviews with older people living with HIV/AIDS and produced the following videos reflecting on their lived experience.

This funding guide offers grantmaking recommendations to help funders become engaged in rural mobility and suggests a dynamic research and policy agenda to empower older people in rural places to lead fuller lives. 

The Future of Rural Transportation and Mobility for Older Adults is a companion white paper to GIA’s Mobility & Aging in Rural America: The Role for Innovation. The paper examines rural mobility through a lens of technology and across a longer timeframe.

Evidence-based programs (EBPs) are essential for promoting healthy aging and wellness in older adults. These programs address challenges such as chronic conditions, falls, physical inactivity, and behavioral health issues, which can impact health, well-being, and independence. 

This guide examines the crisis caused by opioids in rural communities, particularly the impact on the lives of many older individuals, potential solutions, and initiatives that governments, communities and funders are implementing.

Explore the economic, social, and personal benefits of making a community more age-friendly.

Elders of color and LGBT elders face significant disparities in health and health care access, economic security, housing, employment, community support, and more.

For older people whose social networks are dwindling, arts and culture give opportunities to keep socially, civically, and mentally active in their communities. The arts provide a symbolic and emotionally expressive communication system for elders with cognitive limitations, allowing them to engage with their care partners and the larger community.