Age-Friendly Community Initiatives in Their Maturity: Insights on Accomplishments and Sustainability

Age-friendly community (AFC) initiatives are deliberate, cross-sectoral efforts that aim to make localities more supportive of residents’ health, well-being, and engagement as they age. As part of a multi-year developmental evaluation project, this report presents findings from qualitative interviews with 26 key informants conducted in spring of 2023. The participants represent eight age-friendly community initiatives in New Jersey that received private philanthropic grants for their operations starting in 2016. This report addresses two aspects of these AFC initiatives as they mature beyond the initial grant-making program, including their focal accomplishments as well as differences across their operational statuses.

Regarding the accomplishments of the initiatives seven years following their start-up, findings describe the breadth of ways in which they benefited their communities. Themes include: (1) enhanced programs and services (e.g., the creation of new positions on aging, the procurement of resources from outside of the community to benefit older residents locally), (2) improvements to the built environment (e.g., age-inclusive additions to public parks and outdoor spaces, land-use ordinances to enhance housing options for residents as they age), (3) changing the social fabric on aging within the community (e.g., stronger local champions and norms of collaboration for aging), and (4) expanding age-friendly influence across neighboring communities, at higher systems levels, and through a community of practice among regional AFC leaders.

The report then describes the ways in which the AFC initiatives were maintaining and planning for their continued operations beyond the original grantmaking programs that spurred them. Although the eight initiatives launched at roughly the same time and received comparable philanthropic support over the years, findings indicate the wide variability in the initiatives’ operational statuses at the time of the interviews. We describe this variability according to three categories: stable, evolving, and discontinued.

The report concludes with insights for the continued development of AFC initiatives in New Jersey and beyond. This knowledge development is of increasing importance in the context of a growing number of grantmaking programs to support AFC development and impact.