Around 2005, Rose Community Foundation observed a surge of baby boomers opting for retirement in Denver, then the boomer capital of the nation. It was great for the retirees but left a huge void in the community.
“What I was seeing was a high level of individuals retiring at age 62 or 65, and I wondered what they were going to do next,” says RCF President and CEO Sheila Bugdanowitz. “It seemed like such an awful loss.
“I thought, these people are going to be doing something — but what, how and where?”
The issue was reciprocal, for this demographic did not want to retire from the community. In fact, the overwhelming majority put volunteerism at the top of the list.
RCF explored ways of mobilizing baby boomers (born from 1946-1964) in meaningful engagement with people who could benefit from this expertise and wisdom.
“We wanted to find a way to harness the talent and experience of boomers for the greater good of our community,” Bugdanowitz says.
“We just couldn’t get our arms around the ‘how.’”
The Atlantic Philanthropies Community Experience Partnership provided a solution in 2006, when it issued a call for proposals to community foundations around the country to form programs addressing a specific need.
Sixty-four responded, and 30 — including RCF — were selected for planning grants. Each foundation applied for matching grants. Out of the 30, the list was whittled down to 10.
One of the 10 declined. RCF and eight others accepted Atlantic’s challenge.
RCF initiated focus groups and surveyed almost 1,000 boomers to gauge the best way of achieving their mutual goal. The results were released in June, 2007.
A large percentage indicated a strong desire to volunteer in the community, and “almost everyone had a story about the frustration of navigating the healthcare system,” says Bugdanowitz.
Clearly, health and health care were the top priorities for this generation. Many boomers were anxious about their own health care, as well as the availability of care for declining spouses and aging parents.
Even prior to the recession and Obamacare, health care in America was a tangled mess. If boomers had the blessings of good health and a healthy income, they could purchase their own coverage. A sizable percentage relied on health policies offered through work that accepted pre-existing conditions.
Seismic unemployment in the wake of the recession robbed many boomers not only of jobs but their health insurance. For example, a 62-year-old who lost his or her job would not be eligible for Medicare until age 65. Now what?
After working for decades and setting aside money for the future, boomers were trapped in a tenuous net. The middle class finally caught up with the uninsured.
RCF, in accordance with Atlantic’s directive to pick one area of focus, chose health care.
It was a perfect marriage of volunteerism, demographics and need.
Additional funders — Colorado Trust, Caring for Colorado, Colorado Health Foundation, the Jay and Rose Phillips Family Foundation of Colorado, Service Colorado — stepped forward.
Boomers Leading Change in Health, under the guidance of the Colorado Nonprofit Development Center, launched in July, 2010.
Barbara Raynor, who was vice president of marketing for Allied Jewish Federation of Colorado, received a blast email from RCF on her 50th birthday. This opportune, synchronistic flash transformed her future.
“The email said that if you’re interested or know anyone who is interested in a managing director position for our new healthcare initiative, please contact us,” she says.
Raynor initially focused on the healthcare dimension. Prior to the Federation, she worked in advertising and produced commercials for a variety of clients — including several hospitals and health-related agencies — in San Antonio, Texas.
RCF, which had narrowed down the field to two candidates with excellent but very different skill sets, needed one person who embodied all of the qualifications.
Raynor fit the bill and was hired as managing director in 2010.
BLCiH is a fusion of two interrelated goals: increasing access to healthcare for the medically underserved; and engaging adults 50 and older to tackle this issue in the Denver community.
Raynor quickly recognized the importance of boomers’ role in the program when she attended her first informational meeting.
“I realized that while heath care was BLCiH’s primary emphasis, it also was invested in helping adults 50 and older change the world in meaningful ways,” she says. “After all, we had already done it — several times over.”
Among BLCiH’s goals are to reduce hospital admission rates, reconnect to primary care, decrease barriers to healthcare access, and encourage participation in health screenings and educational outreach.
Every successful outcome raises individual health standards and lowers costs incurred by the affected individuals and the country as a whole. “Hundreds of thousands of people in the Denver have absolutely no access to health care,” Raynor stresses.
The majority of BLCiH volunteers — approximately 100 individuals and 24 AmeriCorps Encore members — are not healthcare experts.
(AmeriCorps Encore members receive a living allowance and a stipend.)
“They work in other professions, come from all walks of life,”Raynor says
Even if people have medical insurance, some often require additional resources. You can’t go to the doctor’s office unless you have transportation. Childcare is a necessity. Language barriers present difficulties. A nutritional diet usually doesn’t fit a below-poverty line budget.
“It goes way beyond health care,” Raynor says.
BLCiH navigators research and challenge the system, knock on doors, give people rides, share their experience and learn from others. The workshops and training sessions are invaluable, but nothing replaces the desire to help another human being.
Raynor shares several stories about volunteers who travel the extra mile to ensure their clients have the knowledge and resources to stay healthy and manage chronic illnesses.
One woman who was experiencing fainting spells discovered she had a hole in her heart. After a year-and-a-half, she’s scheduled to undergo surgery in large part to the efforts of her advocate.
Another volunteer wrote a grant to help a man obtain a hearing aid that wasn’t covered under insurance. Eighteen months later, he can hear much better.
“What’s great about our volunteers is that they have a sense of urgency,” Raynor says. “They get it. This is not an easy task. It’s not for the fainthearted.”
The clients already feel “excluded by the system. For a volunteer to intervene on their behalf is life-changing.”
Baby boomers engulfed the world on the heels of post-WW II euphoria. Their sheer numbers were enormous, and unprecedented. “There weren’t enough hospitals to deal with all the births, or schools and classrooms,” Raynor says.
“By the time boomers were ready for college, there weren’t enough dorms. It’s had a cascading effect through the decades.”
Gradually, boomers acquired a negative rap — they’re leading the US to financial ruin; Social Security will bankrupt the system. Characterized as supremely selfish, they came of age in the “me” generation.
“A woman approached me at an event and said that baby boomers are narcissistic — obsessed with their physical appearance and plastic surgery. I told her, ‘I beg to differ.’
“Maybe the reason some of us color our hair and try to look young is to combat society’s treatment of old people. We refuse to be dismissed or rendered invisible.”
Nobody wants to get old, she acknowledges. Aging is associated with diminished capacities, especially regarding hearing, vision, memory and other indices of health. “But there are things I can do better now than when I was 25 or 45.
“Seniors — and they don’t like to be called seniors — feel more comfortable in their own skin. They are competent, content. And they want to keep going as long as possible.”
Boomers who encouraged students to reject authority back in the day are now the preeminent authorities in dealing with bureaucratic red tape.
“They don’t take no for an answer,” Raynor enthuses. “Boomers know there is more than one way to skin this cat.
“They are tenacious, wise and willing to push the envelope.”
Boomers may live well into their 80’s, 90’s and beyond. Centenarians are the new normal.
“Most of us will likely develop three chronic diseases as we age that would have killed us in the past, but not anymore,” says Raynor.
“It’s imperative that we stay healthy as long as possible.
A lot of baby boomers are stereotyped as frivolous spenders. Raynor strongly disagrees.
“Even if we had been ultra-responsible like our parents during the Depression, we’re going to outlive our savings.”
The leading edge of boomers (born in 1946) celebrated their 65th birthday in 2011.
This year, the trailing edge of boomers (born in 1964) turns 50. Their future is wide open, but too often their abilities are discounted.
BLCiH’s motto is, “It’s time to change the world again.”
After nearly three years in action, no one doubts its veracity, or promise.
Fallout from Obamacare (the Affordable Care Act) has landed on insurance conference tables, Congress, and organizations like BLCiH. “We thought that with Obamacare, the healthcare problem was solved,” Raynor says.
In truth, it’s the tip of the iceberg.
“There are so many intricate aspects that play into it,” she says. “But we’re slowly working through them.”
Raynor, the wife of JCC Executive Director Stuart Raynor, has met several Jews at meetings and events. What really pleases her is that Denverites representing all faiths and ethnicities have joined BLCiH.
It’s not about who you are but what you bring to the table — a commitment to lend an ear and navigational assistance to people suffering from healthcare challenges; and resolute optimism.
“Remember that phrase Bobby Kennedy repeated when he was running for president in 1968?” Raynor asks. “I think he was quoting from George Bernard Shaw: ‘Some people see things as they are and say why? I dream of things that never were and say, why not?’
“Boomers are constantly asking why not, and are willing to do what it takes to make it happen. It’s personal.Our boomers take their roles seriously.”
At BLCiH, heart and mind unite in the ancient struggle to improve the world.
Accessible and affordable health care not only saves on costs. It rescues human beings from a quicksand of helplessness.
Adults benefit in ways too numerous to express. BLCiH has reignited the activism they abandoned along the way, as well as their dignity.
They are no longer invisible.
“Every movement of social change that has taken place since 1946 started with the philosophical and was punctuated by the practical,” Raynor says.
“Maybe this is the next social change boomers will tackle — the way we look at the aging, the aged, and ourselves.”
Information: blcih.org or 303-4boomer.
Copyright © 2014 by the Intermountain Jewish News
