Stage One: Laying the Groundwork for Partnerships

Before approaching a potential partner or initiating a first conversation, follow the steps below to build a case for partnership—highlighting both the need and the unique value of your organization.

• Get a Pulse on Situation.
  • Gather data.
    • Pull data from your community’s Point-in-Time Count data and area plan on aging to identify trends.
      • Tip: Many Area Agencies on Aging have their area plan on aging listed on their website.
    • Collect your program’s trend data from help lines and service requests to demonstrate growing need.
    • Assess community needs and assets.
      • Are there any partnerships that already exist? Current partnerships can help form new ones.
    • Talk to frontline staff.
      • What are they seeing? What are a couple of compelling stories that highlight the issue/need?
      • What’s the current interface with the aging/homeless services system?
    • Ask your existing partners and advisory councils/boards for data and insights.

• More Ideas.
  • Gather a few newspaper articles or quotes from elected officials that support acting on the issue.
  • Attend a community meeting or forum with homelessness and/or aging on the agenda. For example, check the website of your local Commission on Aging or Continuum of Care (CoC) for meeting details and schedules.

• Explore Collaboration Possibilities.
  • Using the data you’ve collected, start to determine exactly why and how you should start to collaborate.
    • Learn about your potential partner's mission, capabilities, funding and networks.
      • Tip: Consult their service area plan!
    • Review their board or advisory council list for individuals who may be able to introduce you to key stakeholders.
    • List resources and expertise you bring to the table and think about how they can assist your partner in accomplishing their goals.
      • This will help identify logical connection points.  
    • Create a typical client story, then map out how you may be able to assist and identify gaps between the individual’s needs and your capabilities.

• Develop Your Ask!
  • Find a tangible, but flexible goal to propose that your organizations achieve together. The goal should connect with both of your missions
  • Use concrete data about older adults’ homelessness when reaching out to potential partners rather than relying solely on anecdotal observations. Local data is best!

Putting it into action: Recognizing trends!


San Diego County
In San Diego, the CoC lead, the Regional Task Force on Homelessness, started seeing a rapid rise in older adults experiencing homelessness on their Point-in-Time count. Following up on this, they reached out to older adult service providers in their area to see if they were noticing a similar trend from the aging side. The CoC established a committee to review the data and needs they were observing in the homeless system of care. The committee recognized the need to partner and connect with San Diego County Aging & Independence Services (the federally-designated Area Agency on Aging (AAA) for the county) with the CoC lead. Through intentional, combined data gathering and analysis—built on both organizations’ roles as trusted community leaders—the AAA and CoC developed an intentional partnership and ultimately led efforts of the CoC committee and community engagement. Together they developed trainings, and a AAA representative now sits on the CoC’s committee on Aging, Homelessness and Health.

Two training webinars—Aging 101 and 201—produced through this partnership are available here. While all resources on the page are valuable, you’ll find these specific webinars in the “Training” section near the bottom.

Miami-Dade County
Before the rapid rise in housing costs—which have strained the budgets of many older adults—the president of the Alliance for Aging (Miami-Dade County’s AAA) read a newspaper article one morning highlighting the growing number of older adults experiencing homelessness. However, the Alliance had not seen a similar increase in requests for service by this population. Soon after, the executive director of the Miami-Dade County Homeless Trust—the region’s CoC lead—was presenting at a conference attended by the Alliance’s president. Taking the opportunity, he introduced himself and asked to learn more about the trend from the Homeless Trust’s perspective. This led to a series of discussions and site visits to help the Alliance’s director and staff gain more insight into homelessness response systems. After learning more about each other’s strengths and restrictions, they established bidirectional referral pathways to expedite access to housing, long-term services and supports and Medicaid services.