Healthy Aging Martha’s Vineyard (HAMV) celebrated Independence Day a little early this year, becoming its own nonprofit as of July 1. The organization was fiscally sponsored through Martha’s Vineyard Community Services for the past six years, and continues to reside on the MVCS campus.
With initial meetings held at the West Tisbury library, HAMV was founded in 2013 as a grassroots task force to ensure the Island is age-friendly. Its mission is to ensure the infrastructure and services are in place to support the Vineyard’s growing older adult population.
With one out of every three residents 65 and over, HAMV’s planning, advocacy, and community building are more vital than ever. Collaborating with the Island’s agencies serving older adults, it identifies service gaps, researches evidence-based solutions, and develops and funds pilot programs.
HAMV’s new organizational structure will empower its continuing growth, create operational efficiencies, and ultimately allow it to significantly improve the lives of the Island’s older population.
“Everything we do, you can map back to helping older adults thrive here on Martha’s Vineyard,” board chair Bob Laskowski shares. “Becoming a 501(c)(3) was inevitable in our organization. It resulted from self-examination of how we could do our work and focus appropriately on their needs and desires.”
Cindy Trish, executive director, adds, “This new incarnation is allowing us to be more laser-focused on our community action plan.”
Just one of HAMV’s strengths is how they listen and learn. They have undertaken two large-scale surveys of older adults, soliciting data that has helped inform many of the organization’s efforts. Laskowski recalls the initial survey in 2015. “When looking at the drill-down of the demographics, it was not a homogenous population. It’s pretty diverse. You have people who are comfortable retirees and way too many older adults with little income. That was a revelation.”
Other facets of HAMV’s work include planning, organizing, acting, and advocating. “We look around and try to identify what is most important in our community and how we can be helpful,” says Laskowski.
HAMV sees itself as part of a larger ecosystem of Vineyard organizations working to create an age-friendly community. As a coalition leader, HAMV collaborates with other agencies to develop programs that fill service gaps, advocate for older adults, and ensure their perspective is considered in community decisions.
“We look around to see how we can be helpful, and that helpfulness is usually by building coalitions — facilitating good ideas and getting principals together who can make it happen. We’re a small organization, but our ability to leverage resources is large in making it easier for our wonderful colleagues and neighbors in the community to do things that they want,” Laskowski says.
Coalitions include transportation, falls prevention, digital equity, and advanced care planning. Members reach across the Island, including the Councils on Aging, M.V. Hospital, the VTA, Visiting Nurse Association of Martha’s Vineyard, YMCA, the Island’s libraries, NAACP, Martha’s Vineyard Center for Living, the Steamship Authority,Martha’s Vineyard Community Services, Martha’s Vineyard Hospice, and community leaders, all of whom have a “stake in the game.”
Looking to the future, Laskowski says, “There are a lot of older adults, and we’re getting older.” HAMV is dedicated to doing more, utilizing the principles of collaboration, asset sharing, and nimbleness to address growing demand in a cost-effective and scalable manner. The organization is expanding its funding sources through grants and personal donations to achieve long-term funding stability, while having the towns remain anchor partners.
One of the newer initiatives is a two-year pilot funded by Vineyard Visions focusing on community engagement and volunteerism. “It allows us to look at the resources older adults bring to the Island through their volunteer efforts and how we can better utilize this asset to help one another meet our needs today and into the future,” Trish says. “That’s one way we get out of the conundrum of having an older population without enough resources. It’s about how we care for ourselves.”
Regarding becoming an independent entity,Trish says, “This change allows us to raise the awareness of what we are and what we do in a more straightforward way, and to have a sustainable infrastructure.” Being a 501(c)(3) also allows HAMV to leverage outside resources, which they have already done by submitting proposals to new funding sources.
“It’s like first we were a toddler with our task force, and then we became middle schoolers, and now we’re a teenager,” Trish reflects. “Having our own organization will allow us to do things more straightforwardly in some cases. We’ve benefited incredibly from our partnership with Community Services, which provided us with some of the infrastructure we didn’t have. It also allows us to partner in addressing the needs of older adults on the Island. But it’s time for us to evolve so we can accelerate our growth — and impact — and develop a solid and sustainable foundation to build on.”
For more information on Healthy Aging Martha’s Vineyard, visit hamv.org.