A History of Creative Aging in Nyack's Beginnings
How Creative Aging in Nyack Came to Be
by Ann Morgan
Creative Aging in Nyack is an organization for people who want to be able to age in the homes of their own choosing. The idea of an aging-in-place village began in 1999 in Beacon Hill in Boston. The Beacon Hill village was founded so that neighborhood residents could maintain their independence, as well as give and receive support from each other and from local services so that they could remain in their homes for as long as possible. The Village concept made so much sense that soon other groups were forming. The Village to Village Network became a way to help these groups exchange helpful information about how to get started.
All of these organizations share some common characteristics:
Starting Out
In May 2017 four of us from a group called the Rockland County Village Community who were interested in the concept of aging-in-place gave a presentation at the Nyack Library on orchestrating your life as you age, helping one another, and considering various housing options.
People at that meeting were also interested in the idea of aging in place, and some had already been exploring the Village to Village Network, or knew someone who was living in an aging-in-place community. One person, Don Monaco, on his own, contacted the library to say that he wanted to start a group. I told Don that I would help him (even though I had just met him), and so Don and I became the co-founders of our new organization.
We started our aging-in-place group on July 13, 2017 with twelve people at the meeting. Among them were Debbie Bell, Rosemarie Bone, Sandy Davis-Pohl, Mary Loughran, Vin Morgan, Pearl Natter, and Dorothy Whitton. Our second meeting on July 28, 2017 added Judy Gorman, Susan Travis, Susan Beckwith, Jan Cohen, Jim Calvin, Bebb Stone, Mayra Bloom, Bob Gundersen, Sheila Foster, Leontine Temsky, and Phyllis Eisenberg.
We decided to meet every other Friday afternoon, and week by week the group grew. From the beginning we wanted people to feel that the group belonged to them. We needed to establish a sense of who we wanted to be.
We talked as a group about what we wanted, and thought about our identity. We came up with some key things that we wanted to accomplish in this new organization that we were developing:
As I noted at the time, “Although most of us have retired from work, we are far from retired from life. We are focused on living well and actively learning, on engaging, volunteering, solving problems and enjoying our days. Yes, we have concerns about how we can remain in this community and in our homes for the rest of our lives, and we want to know we have the supports we will need as we age together, but we want our lives to be full.”
We decided early on that we would be an all-volunteer grass-roots organization. Other aging-in-place organizations make different choices. Many have a paid director, higher dues for members, and a more top-down structure.
Interest groups formed
As a group we wanted to let the process of becoming proceed before we solidified into a particular shape. We needed to grow in developing an understanding of who we wanted to be as a group. Very early on we developed some interests group such as the Better Aging Group led by Dorothy Whitton; OWLs – the Older Writers Laboratory – ably led Jim Ramsay for people who are interested in writing about – and thus preserving – their personal stories; a group to read Being Mortal by Atul Gawande; a group to explore local chapters of the Village to Village Network; and a group to explore local resources that could be helpful to our members. The Better Aging Group soon began the Walking Group that would meet once a week for brisk walks along the many trails in our area.
A solid grassroots organization of people coming together
We developed into a strong, grassroots organization. We began to connect with each other and get to know each other. We had a strong sense that we are “in this together,” that we are going to know each other over the long haul, that, if we are lucky, we will be aging together and supporting each other. For that reason, I urge any of you who are reading this but who do not come to the meetings, to consider coming so that you, also, get to know the fine people in this group. If you wait for a crisis before you become involved, you will feel that we are strangers to you, and we won’t have the level of comfort with you that we would like.
We Voted on a Name
We asked members to recommend names for the group, and at the meeting on September 8, 2017 members voted to call ourselves Creative Aging in Nyack.
We also voted to limit membership to people in 10960, but a few people from other villages had been with us from the beginning, and we grandfathered them in.
Location
From the beginning, we met at the Nyack Library which is right in the middle of town and is within walking distance for most of our members. We developed a very mutually beneficial relationship with the library.
Advisory Team
We formed an Advisory Team that would meet once a month. We chose people with different skills and experiences. There were seven of us all together. One of our first decisions was to have this be an apolitical group. We wanted everyone to feel safe and not have the stress of politics enter into the group. Eventually the Advisory Team would become our Board of Directors.
The people on the Advisory Team each brought skills and experiences that we would need as we moved forward. I trust them to give me good, straightforward advice, to work with me collaboratively, to be willing to provide their experience and expertise to the work of the group whenever needed, and to tell me honestly when I am about to make a poor decision or when I have made an error and need to correct it.
We developed a mission statement and a list of purposes
As a leader, I tried to listen to where the group was, what shape the group was beginning to take, and where they wanted to go. I asked people what drew them to the group, and what they wanted to get from it. I wrote a draft of a mission statement, shared that with our advisory team for help and comments, then sent it to our resident writer, Jim Ramsay, who helped with the final form. When we presented it to the group in January 2018 they felt that it reflected who they were, and they voted to accept it. It helped us unify our sense of ourselves. Our mission statement is:
Creative Aging in Nyack is a grassroots organization open to people 60 and older living in the 10960 zip code who want to lead vital, meaningful lives in our homes and community as we age. We share information and provide opportunities for social connections, volunteer services and support for our mutual benefit, so we may continue to learn, interact and contribute as we grow older.
List of purposes
We also knew we needed to maintain certain logistics:
Creation of our Care Team
In January of 2018, one of our members fell and broke her kneecap. She was going to need help getting to doctor appointments and getting groceries. Suddenly taking care of each other as a central purpose of CAN became quite real.
We learned that in addition to volunteer drivers and volunteer shoppers, we needed to have some people with good organizational skills to be Care Coordinators. These people would be given clear guidelines and training. Essentially, when someone needed help, we would need a Care Coordinator to be in touch with the member, to organize the volunteers, and communicate clearly so things go smoothly. We needed to create a volunteer system that was clear, affirming and successful for both members and volunteers.
Debbie Bell offered a CAN volunteer system draft. From this evolved a Care-Coordinator system to coordinate volunteers. Susan Travis would oversee the system. We developed a list of skills needed and a job description to be a Coordinator. Mary Loughran volunteered to be the “point” person, the one who answers the member’s initial call for assistance, and then assigns it to a Care-Coordinator. An email was sent out to see who would be interested in these volunteer positions, and Dorothy Whitton, Mary Alice Barna, Marie Thorpe, Rosemarie Bone, and Gabri’El Stollman responded.
Legal Documents
So much needed to be done to create a legal nonprofit organization, but it was mandatory that we proceed. The organization would not even be able to have a checking account until this was done.
The first step was to apply to the New York State Division of Corporations to reserve a legal name. The next step was applying to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to get an official Employer Identification Number for our organization. That is the same as a tax number with the IRS.
Once we had completed those steps, we were able to apply to the federal government for our 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit status.
We wrote our bylaws. Two of the people on the Advisory Team (which now became our Board of Directors), Bob Gundersen and Susanna Willingham, had experience starting non-profit organizations, and were tremendously helpful. Bob had extensive experience writing bylaws for non-profits, and worked closely with me as we started developing ours. The laws about bylaws do change over time, so if you are interested in starting a non-profit, do look into the resources on the Web – there are some very good ones.
In the spring of 2018 we hired a designer to develop a logo for us. We were very pleased with the result!
We officially became incorporated as a charitable nonprofit in June, 2018.
The Board of Directors for 2018-2019 were:
Ann Morgan – Chair and CEO – 2018-2019
Sami Aronson – Secretary – 2018-2019
Bob Gundersen – Treasurer – 2018-2019
Susanna Willingham – Associate Chair – 2018-2020
Susan Travis – Director of Volunteers and Services – 2018-2020
Don Monaco – Director (and co-founder of the group along with Ann) – 2018-2020
Debbie Bell – Director who works on the day-to-day finances, among other things – 2018-2019
Note that we decided that some would have one year terms, and some would have two year terms so that people would be up for election in different years. All terms could be renewed.
Creation of our Program Team
In April of 2018, Susanna Willingham and Diana Kriz began our Program Team. Others joined when, and with as chair, they continued to present a program every other Friday afternoon, with great appreciation to the Nyack Library for providing us with space in the Community Room.
Further Initiatives
Susan Travis headed our Volunteers, all of whom were CAN members.
During 2019 we developed our website, creativeaginginnyack.org, that went live in June of that year.
We had made great progress in two years, and had laid a strong foundation. As I write this, CAN is nine years old, still true to its roots, still thriving.
by Ann Morgan
Creative Aging in Nyack is an organization for people who want to be able to age in the homes of their own choosing. The idea of an aging-in-place village began in 1999 in Beacon Hill in Boston. The Beacon Hill village was founded so that neighborhood residents could maintain their independence, as well as give and receive support from each other and from local services so that they could remain in their homes for as long as possible. The Village concept made so much sense that soon other groups were forming. The Village to Village Network became a way to help these groups exchange helpful information about how to get started.
All of these organizations share some common characteristics:
- Reflect the needs of their members and communities and share many common characteristics
- Provide a strong, inclusive community that offers members new opportunities to age successfully
- Nonprofit, grassroots initiatives
- Membership-based, member-driven and self-governing
- Designed to be inclusive and to reflect their communities
- Community partners helping to address the changes of aging
Starting Out
In May 2017 four of us from a group called the Rockland County Village Community who were interested in the concept of aging-in-place gave a presentation at the Nyack Library on orchestrating your life as you age, helping one another, and considering various housing options.
People at that meeting were also interested in the idea of aging in place, and some had already been exploring the Village to Village Network, or knew someone who was living in an aging-in-place community. One person, Don Monaco, on his own, contacted the library to say that he wanted to start a group. I told Don that I would help him (even though I had just met him), and so Don and I became the co-founders of our new organization.
We started our aging-in-place group on July 13, 2017 with twelve people at the meeting. Among them were Debbie Bell, Rosemarie Bone, Sandy Davis-Pohl, Mary Loughran, Vin Morgan, Pearl Natter, and Dorothy Whitton. Our second meeting on July 28, 2017 added Judy Gorman, Susan Travis, Susan Beckwith, Jan Cohen, Jim Calvin, Bebb Stone, Mayra Bloom, Bob Gundersen, Sheila Foster, Leontine Temsky, and Phyllis Eisenberg.
We decided to meet every other Friday afternoon, and week by week the group grew. From the beginning we wanted people to feel that the group belonged to them. We needed to establish a sense of who we wanted to be.
We talked as a group about what we wanted, and thought about our identity. We came up with some key things that we wanted to accomplish in this new organization that we were developing:
- Remain in our homes as we age.
- Remain vital and have important connections in the lives of others.
- Figure out ways to help each other in a neighborly way – volunteering to drive each other to essential appointments, or help with grocery shopping, etc.
- Engage with each other and find people who had similar interests.
- Express our deeply felt connection to the Nyack area and community.
- Learn more about resources in our county that would be helpful to us as we aged.
- Remain curious learners and explorers. None of us was ready to sit back passively.
- Rethink what it meant to be growing older. For many of us, this was turning out to be a positive time in our lives.
As I noted at the time, “Although most of us have retired from work, we are far from retired from life. We are focused on living well and actively learning, on engaging, volunteering, solving problems and enjoying our days. Yes, we have concerns about how we can remain in this community and in our homes for the rest of our lives, and we want to know we have the supports we will need as we age together, but we want our lives to be full.”
We decided early on that we would be an all-volunteer grass-roots organization. Other aging-in-place organizations make different choices. Many have a paid director, higher dues for members, and a more top-down structure.
Interest groups formed
As a group we wanted to let the process of becoming proceed before we solidified into a particular shape. We needed to grow in developing an understanding of who we wanted to be as a group. Very early on we developed some interests group such as the Better Aging Group led by Dorothy Whitton; OWLs – the Older Writers Laboratory – ably led Jim Ramsay for people who are interested in writing about – and thus preserving – their personal stories; a group to read Being Mortal by Atul Gawande; a group to explore local chapters of the Village to Village Network; and a group to explore local resources that could be helpful to our members. The Better Aging Group soon began the Walking Group that would meet once a week for brisk walks along the many trails in our area.
A solid grassroots organization of people coming together
We developed into a strong, grassroots organization. We began to connect with each other and get to know each other. We had a strong sense that we are “in this together,” that we are going to know each other over the long haul, that, if we are lucky, we will be aging together and supporting each other. For that reason, I urge any of you who are reading this but who do not come to the meetings, to consider coming so that you, also, get to know the fine people in this group. If you wait for a crisis before you become involved, you will feel that we are strangers to you, and we won’t have the level of comfort with you that we would like.
We Voted on a Name
We asked members to recommend names for the group, and at the meeting on September 8, 2017 members voted to call ourselves Creative Aging in Nyack.
We also voted to limit membership to people in 10960, but a few people from other villages had been with us from the beginning, and we grandfathered them in.
Location
From the beginning, we met at the Nyack Library which is right in the middle of town and is within walking distance for most of our members. We developed a very mutually beneficial relationship with the library.
Advisory Team
We formed an Advisory Team that would meet once a month. We chose people with different skills and experiences. There were seven of us all together. One of our first decisions was to have this be an apolitical group. We wanted everyone to feel safe and not have the stress of politics enter into the group. Eventually the Advisory Team would become our Board of Directors.
The people on the Advisory Team each brought skills and experiences that we would need as we moved forward. I trust them to give me good, straightforward advice, to work with me collaboratively, to be willing to provide their experience and expertise to the work of the group whenever needed, and to tell me honestly when I am about to make a poor decision or when I have made an error and need to correct it.
We developed a mission statement and a list of purposes
As a leader, I tried to listen to where the group was, what shape the group was beginning to take, and where they wanted to go. I asked people what drew them to the group, and what they wanted to get from it. I wrote a draft of a mission statement, shared that with our advisory team for help and comments, then sent it to our resident writer, Jim Ramsay, who helped with the final form. When we presented it to the group in January 2018 they felt that it reflected who they were, and they voted to accept it. It helped us unify our sense of ourselves. Our mission statement is:
Creative Aging in Nyack is a grassroots organization open to people 60 and older living in the 10960 zip code who want to lead vital, meaningful lives in our homes and community as we age. We share information and provide opportunities for social connections, volunteer services and support for our mutual benefit, so we may continue to learn, interact and contribute as we grow older.
List of purposes
- to provide information and educational sessions for citizens age sixty and older, apprising them of benefits available to them through federal, New York State, Rockland County, and local programs;
- to promote the charitable and neighborly support of senior citizens to enable them to live independently for as long as possible;
- to provide volunteer opportunities for senior citizens to become involved in and contribute to their community;
- to provide opportunities for senior citizens to gather to discuss issues related to healthy aging, promoting physical activity, remaining active as they age, and other topics relevant and appropriate for senior citizens.
- to provide opportunities for new thinking about what “old age” is.
We also knew we needed to maintain certain logistics:
- Keep attendance
- Develop and maintain the membership email list. Send information out by blind copy.
- After each meeting send out notes about the meeting so that those who can’t or don’t attend can feel that they are part of what we are doing. These notes are meant to be warm and engaging, and people really seem to like them.
Creation of our Care Team
In January of 2018, one of our members fell and broke her kneecap. She was going to need help getting to doctor appointments and getting groceries. Suddenly taking care of each other as a central purpose of CAN became quite real.
We learned that in addition to volunteer drivers and volunteer shoppers, we needed to have some people with good organizational skills to be Care Coordinators. These people would be given clear guidelines and training. Essentially, when someone needed help, we would need a Care Coordinator to be in touch with the member, to organize the volunteers, and communicate clearly so things go smoothly. We needed to create a volunteer system that was clear, affirming and successful for both members and volunteers.
Debbie Bell offered a CAN volunteer system draft. From this evolved a Care-Coordinator system to coordinate volunteers. Susan Travis would oversee the system. We developed a list of skills needed and a job description to be a Coordinator. Mary Loughran volunteered to be the “point” person, the one who answers the member’s initial call for assistance, and then assigns it to a Care-Coordinator. An email was sent out to see who would be interested in these volunteer positions, and Dorothy Whitton, Mary Alice Barna, Marie Thorpe, Rosemarie Bone, and Gabri’El Stollman responded.
Legal Documents
So much needed to be done to create a legal nonprofit organization, but it was mandatory that we proceed. The organization would not even be able to have a checking account until this was done.
The first step was to apply to the New York State Division of Corporations to reserve a legal name. The next step was applying to the U.S. Internal Revenue Service to get an official Employer Identification Number for our organization. That is the same as a tax number with the IRS.
Once we had completed those steps, we were able to apply to the federal government for our 501(c)(3) charitable nonprofit status.
We wrote our bylaws. Two of the people on the Advisory Team (which now became our Board of Directors), Bob Gundersen and Susanna Willingham, had experience starting non-profit organizations, and were tremendously helpful. Bob had extensive experience writing bylaws for non-profits, and worked closely with me as we started developing ours. The laws about bylaws do change over time, so if you are interested in starting a non-profit, do look into the resources on the Web – there are some very good ones.
In the spring of 2018 we hired a designer to develop a logo for us. We were very pleased with the result!
We officially became incorporated as a charitable nonprofit in June, 2018.
The Board of Directors for 2018-2019 were:
Ann Morgan – Chair and CEO – 2018-2019
Sami Aronson – Secretary – 2018-2019
Bob Gundersen – Treasurer – 2018-2019
Susanna Willingham – Associate Chair – 2018-2020
Susan Travis – Director of Volunteers and Services – 2018-2020
Don Monaco – Director (and co-founder of the group along with Ann) – 2018-2020
Debbie Bell – Director who works on the day-to-day finances, among other things – 2018-2019
Note that we decided that some would have one year terms, and some would have two year terms so that people would be up for election in different years. All terms could be renewed.
Creation of our Program Team
In April of 2018, Susanna Willingham and Diana Kriz began our Program Team. Others joined when, and with as chair, they continued to present a program every other Friday afternoon, with great appreciation to the Nyack Library for providing us with space in the Community Room.
Further Initiatives
Susan Travis headed our Volunteers, all of whom were CAN members.
During 2019 we developed our website, creativeaginginnyack.org, that went live in June of that year.
We had made great progress in two years, and had laid a strong foundation. As I write this, CAN is nine years old, still true to its roots, still thriving.