Recent Senior Living Grants
Spring 2025 Senior Living Grants
REAL Services, Inc.: $224,265
Funds will help support the Safe at Home Program, a three-year initiative designed to increased safety and housing stability for income-limited older adults in St. Joseph County facing urgent, yet not ongoing needs that place them at risk of losing their independence or negatively impacting their health. Housing instability, lack of safety modifications, food insecurity, and managing of chronic conditions were highlighted as high needs among seniors in the community. Safe at Home will help seniors safely age in place by delivering coordinated services such as safety modifications and minor home repair, emergency food assistance, yard clean up, appliance repair or replacement, and referrals to community support. Services will be delivered by certified staff and guided by in-home and social determinants of health assessments, with partnerships supporting safety modifications, emergency utility assistance, and food insecurity. Outcomes will be measured through reductions in risk factors, improved housing and food stability, improvements in well-being and ability to live independently.
LOGAN: $13,500
Funds will help LOGAN enhance their senior clients’ quality of life and health outcomes through engaging community programming, including taking clients to senior events at the Portage Commons Senior Enrichment Center. Activities will include social, health, and wellness programs such as chair yoga, bingo, book club, and art classes. Additional community outings will include visiting the Zoo, restaurants, movies, shopping and more. Lastly, LOGAN plans to add new in-house senior-focused programming to provide additional activities and social events.
South Bend Heritage Foundation: $10,000
South Bend Heritage Foundation (SBHF) has aimed to enhance the lives of low-income, senior residents in South Bend by providing senior programming that successfully enhances resident life. These include supportive services and activities that offer opportunities for engagement, education, and continued socialization to preserve their dignity as the population grows older. Funding will help support the 2025-2026 Aging in Place Resident Life Program, which offers low-income seniors residing at SBHF properties opportunities to reduce isolation, improve their health awareness and access to resources, and keep their minds stimulated and active, thereby reducing cognitive decline. Up to 150 seniors will be served.
Fall 2024
Center for Hospice Care: $60,000
Funds will help support the Center for Hospice Care’s Kaleidoscope home-based palliative care program that provides those with serious advanced illness with the right care, at the right time, in the right place. Many seniors suffer from serious advanced illnesses that require specialized care. Palliative care focuses on improving the quality of life for these seniors by managing pain and other symptoms and providing emotional and psychosocial support. Kaleidoscope also assists families by providing guidance and emotional support to help them cope with the challenges of caring for a loved one. Funds will help support a nurse practitioner necessitated by the increased demand for home-based palliative care across the community.
Robinson Community Learning Center (RCLC): $60,000
Funds will help support the “Seniors on the Move” Initiative to strategically support more active, healthy, and connected lives for RCLC’s growing senior program, with a specific emphasis on living with diabetes and ensuring senior participants whose mobility is diminished can continue to be active community members. This is a project for seniors, designed by seniors, which includes educational activities, diabetes-friendly cuisine for senior events, biannual senior field trips, exercise/dance classes and a Senior Adult Program Coordinator. RCLC anticipates serving over 200 seniors through this programming.
REAL Services: $40,000
Funds will assist REAL Services’ downtown South Bend hub for active aging, offering recreation, engagement, and enrichment programs for senior citizens. The hub will combat social isolation and promote healthy aging through structured activities that enhance older adults’ physical, mental, and emotional well-being. Grant funds will help support essential costs for equipping the center, including furniture, software and IT equipment, and program supplies for the facility, which Portage Township is renovating. REAL Services will manage daily operations through dedicated staff and volunteers, while maintaining administrative oversight of all hub activities and programs and working with other community partners.
Spring 2024
LOGAN: $70,000
Funds will help provide support to three areas: the first is to renovate current group and supported living homes for seniors to provide a safe, loving, and dignified home for individuals of all abilities. The second area is for LOGAN’s new Life Enrichment and Employment Pathways programming that directly supports seniors getting out into the community. The third component is a van for group and supported living homes to use with a wheelchair accessible lift.
Saint Joseph Health System: $30,000
Senior Citizens in St. Joseph County continue to be affected by poverty, inequity, poor health, and challenges accessing community resources. Improved access to health care, better utilization of community resources, and individualized care coordination helps to achieve optimal health outcomes for the growing population of vulnerable senior citizens in our community. Funds will help support SJHS Community Health Workers (CHW) integrated into the health and human service network in our community. CHWs collaborate with providers and guide seniors into appropriate services, increasing equitable access to resources and advancing care coordination.
South Bend Heritage Foundation: $10,000
South Bend Heritage Foundation has aimed to enhance the lives of low-income, senior residents in South Bend by providing senior programming that successfully enhances resident life, while meeting all components of aging in place principles. These include supportive services and activities that offer opportunities for engagement, education, and continued socialization to preserve their dignity as the population grows older. Funding will help support SBH’s Aging in Place Resident Life Program, which offers low-income seniors residing at SBH properties opportunities to reduce isolation, improve their health awareness and access to resources, and keep their minds stimulated and active, thereby reducing cognitive decline.
Fall 2023
enFocus Inc.: $200,000
enFocus is receiving funds to support the execution of the Greener Homes Retrofit pilot program, a new City of South Bend program administered by enFocus to subsidize weatherization and electrification for low to moderate income homes. The program will benefit the seniors living in the homes with upgraded equipment and utility bill savings, but beyond that will create a framework for how the community can begin to address lowering residential housing carbon emissions toward the City’s goal of achieving carbon neutrality by 2050. The program includes guidance through energy audits, assistance with contracting processes, and provision of vital financial resources and expert guidance to access federal grants and rebates from the Inflation Reduction and High-Efficiency Electric Homes Rebate Acts. A strong partnership with Habitat for Humanity Aging in Place program will enable enFocus to identify income-qualified senior residents and ensure proper weatherization before proceeding with electrification upgrades. Once the pilot is complete, there are additional funds from the EPA for further implementation in the community.
Spring 2023
Habitat for Humanity: $300,000 (payable $100,000 per year for 3 years)
Funds will be used to support the Aging in Place Roof Repair Program. The program completes roof repairs and replacements for low-income seniors in St. Joseph County. Through existing work, they have identified roofs as the most critical home repairs needed by local seniors. Low-income seniors do not have the resources to pay for the repairs and they do not know who they can trust to do the work properly. Last year Habitat completed 13 roof repairs and had to turn people away due to exhausting funding. They intend to complete 66 roof repairs and replacement projects in the next three years.
Greencroft Communities Foundation (For Hamilton Grove): $40,000
Funds will be used to create a garden space that residents from all areas of the facility can safely access at the Hamilton Grove senior living community location in New Carlisle. Hamilton Grove is creating this space as part of their 100-year birthday celebration. It will be wheelchair accessible with walkways for those with limited mobility. Plans also include benches, picnic areas, and planting of trees and bushes. The space will be closest to the skilled nursing wing, but also open to all residents across the continuum of care offered. Hamilton Grove currently serves 208 residents, with 180 receiving Medicaid or rental assistance. By providing an inviting and safe area, it will encourage residents, visitors, and team members to access the outdoors.
LOGAN: $21,000
These funds will provide $10,000 for LOGAN to update some of the furnishings in three of the group homes and $11,000 Protective Services which provides guardianship, advocacy, crisis support, help navigating government assistance and community education for vulnerable citizens who need to be protected from abuse, neglect, or exploitation. Currently, their protective services caseworkers are serving 50 senior clients.
South Bend Heritage Foundation: $10,000
Funds will help support the Aging in Place Resident Life Program. For more than 20 years, South Bend Heritage has aimed to enhance the lives of low-income, senior residents in South Bend by providing resident life and senior initiative programming that successfully meets all the components of aging in place principles, including supportive services and activities that offer opportunities for engagement, education, and continued socialization to preserve dignity as the population grows older. Through the work of the Aging in Place Resident Life Program, low-income seniors at SBH properties are provided with opportunities to decrease isolation, enhance health awareness and resources, and keep their minds stimulated and active, reducing cognitive decline.