Changing public policy can help reach mission goals

As the 78 million members of the Baby Boom generation phase into retirement, dealing with generational change must become part of the planning process for many nonprofit organizations. One nonprofit, Ecumen, the largest nonprofit senior housing and services company in the upper Midwest, which operates approximately 80 senior communities in Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin and North Dakota, saw the need for public policy changes in order to fulfill its mission.

Ecumen’s mission is to build communities that support and enrich the lives of older adults and others. For years, it achieved this mission through its senior care centers. Recently, the organization realized government reimbursement systems for nursing home care are outdated and inadequate to the current challenge, let alone the future as one Boomers turns 61 every seven seconds in America. The financial viability of providers like Ecumen is at risk, and without money it can’t achieve its mission.

The Fieldstone Alliance, nonprofit consultants, has published a case study of how Ecumen is dealing with this challenge through public policy initiatives in addition to reinventing how it will deliver services to a new generation of elderly. Click here to read the case study. It provides lots of food for thought about nonprofit advocacy and public policy development.  

For more about how nonprofits are facing the upcoming surge of Baby Boomer retirements, see this story in the Philadelphia Inquirer, “Retiring boomers worrying nonprofits.”  Meanwhile, Civic Ventures, a think tank and program incubator helping society achieve the greatest return on experience, has announced winners of the first-ever BreakThrough Award, designed to shine a spotlight on the nonprofit and public sector organizations that are providing meaningful public interest jobs for people over 50.