At the Foundation, we know that advancing our mission to improve the health of older Americans is accomplished not by us, but by our grantees. The Foundation will make the most progress when the organizations and individuals we support have all the tools needed to do their best work. As an engaged funder, we have done our best to support grantees in every way possible and would like to continue to improve the value of our efforts.

One of the tools we have provided to our Centers of Geriatric Nursing Excellence (CGNEs) over the last year has been the services of Ned Schaub, a strategic capacity consultant working in the non-profit sector. Ned has helped the leaders of the CGNEs think about their long-term options to generate revenue to support the initiative. This support is particularly timely as the leaders know that after one more renewal of their work, the Foundation will shift its strategic direction away from academic capacity building, and they will need to find ways to replace our dollars.

In this interview, Rachael Watman asks Ned about his impressions of the CGNEs, the state of capacity building, and the sustainability planning process.

http://youtu.be/KGCfKWLvIU8

Given that there will be similar changes for grantees in every discipline and area of the Foundation's work, we want to get everyone's opinion about what kinds of non-grant support might be helpful, be it capacity building, sustainability planning or something completely different.

We have created an on-line survey and would like to invite grantees, either institutions (like Centers) or individual scholar awardees, to give us their views.

Please click here, take our brief, 15-minute survey, and let us know what tools and resources might be most useful to you.