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Funding Health and Wellness Programs for Older Adults
with other park and recreation agencies to seek out joint funding. And, we provide tips on how to communicate with potential funders and partners about the benefits of health and wellness classes for older adults. You can tailor these tools to meet your organization’s needs. We also share relevant resources from other organizations working in this area.
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Community-based organizations need steady and reliable funding from a diverse group of partners to ensure health and wellness classes for older adults are sustainable. Unfortunately, park and recreation agencies and community-based organizations have limited budgets and funding.2 Staffing, resources and competing priorities can determine if they are able to offer classes. This situation has been exacerbated for many agencies during the pandemic because they’re facing additional budgetary challenges. Reduced budgets and new pressures brought on by the pandemic can prevent agencies from offering health and wellness classes for older adults. Many agencies have the interest and potential to expand class offerings to more older adults in their community, but they need the resources.
The biggest source of funding to park and recreation agencies are appropriations like local, state and federal taxes. Advocating for public investments in evidence-based programs at all levels of government during the annual budgeting process is an important way to ensure park and recreation agencies have sustainable funding. This toolkit deals with two other types of funding that park and recreation agencies can explore, which can be a complement to public investments. Potential options include grant funding and receiving reimbursements for classes from health insurers. Both sources of funding offer benefits and challenges.
An aqua fitness class participant in Lakewood, Colorado, enjoys a luau theme day during Aqua Fitness Fun Week.