National Senior Center Month Program Guide
Welcome to National Senior Center Month
Senior Centers: Powering Connections
September 2024
National Senior Center Month, celebrated every year in September, is an opportunity to showcase your center and market the valuable programs, activities, and services you offer. It’s also the perfect time to promote a positive image of aging, highlight how your center improves the lives of local older adults, show your center’s importance in the community, and create interest in prospective new participants and collaborative partners.
The National Institute for Senior Centers 2024 theme for National Senior Center Month is Powering Connections.
The 10,000+ senior centers in communities and neighborhoods across the country provide access to information, opportunities, and support to improve the lives of people in their communities as they age. Senior centers have evolved since their beginning in the 1940s, through their inclusion in the Older Americans Act in 1973, and up to today.
Over the past few years, we have learned so much about the importance of social connection. The Surgeon General’s report identifies loneliness as an epidemic. Senior centers have always been places where people gather, socialize, connect. In this year’s theme we celebrate senior center’s long history of powering those connections. And it goes beyond social engagement.
Senior centers work with community partners to connect people to health, economic security, social engagement, purpose, creativity, mobility, nutrition—all in a social and fun environment!
Senior centers power connections!
To enhance the theme, you can organize various activities and events that align with the idea of creating and strengthening connections. Consider workshops, classes, and outings that allow older adults to explore different wellness activities, social engagement, creativity, and cultural experiences. Here are a few examples from the Administration for Community Living.
Remember to tailor the theme and activities to the specific interests and needs of the people at your center. By incorporating their input and creating a vibrant and engaging program, you can make Senior Center Month a memorable and enriching experience for everyone involved.
As you plan, consider the following areas for making connections!
Healthy Aging: In a 2022 NISC survey, respondents indicated that participation in movement and wellness programs was higher than it was before the pandemic. Highlight how your center connects people to aging well through information and opportunities to learn skills and strategies to prevent and manage chronic disease, prevent falls, participate in physical activity and movement classes, boost nutrition, and more. Learn how senior centers can improve health. Visit this page at health.gov for information and resources about physical activity for older adults. Visit NCOA’s Center for Healthy Aging for more information.
Economic Security: Highlight how your center connects people to greater economic security through information, referrals, and access to benefits and other resources. Learn more about the tools and resources available through NCOA’s Center for Economic Well-Being. Learn how you can use BenefitsCheckUp® to connect older adults and people with disabilities to federal, state, and local benefits.
Generations: Highlight how your center connects all ages through intergenerational programs and activities and by supporting the critical role of grandparents. Check out the intergenerational approach taken by ONEGeneration in Los Angeles. Consider offering Grand Connections, a free, downloadable workshop series especially for grandparents of children under five, whether they’re caring for grandchildren part-time or 24/7. For more resources about intergenerational programs, visit Generations United. Sept. 8 is Grandparents Day! Plan a special event to celebrate.
Diverse Populations: Highlight how your center welcomes all people, including older adults who identify as LGBTQ:
- Learn how you can better support LGBTQ+ older adults and check out the novel approach in one state.
- See how some senior centers connect with their unique communities like the VIDA Senior Center in Washington, D.C., and the Seasoned Survivors Senior Center in Fort Worth, Texas. And get inspiration from the ways senior centers respond to community need like the Stoughton Area Senior Center and provide life-saving access to vaccines like the Senior Friendship Centers.
- NCOA’s Center for Healthy Aging has a number of resources on reaching populations, such as people with disabilities, veterans, and Native elders.
Digital Connections: Highlight how your center helps older adults with digital exploration, including accessing broadband, gaining skills and confidence in using internet connected devices, and with opportunities to participate in virtual and hybrid programs.
Facts about Senior Centers: As you share information about your senior center, you can use our fact sheet to support the value and impact of senior centers across the country.
Connect to NISC and the Modernizing Senior Centers Resource Center
- The National Institute of Senior Centers (NISC) is the largest national membership organization dedicated to serving senior center professionals. Free to join, NISC supports senior centers with best practices and innovations in programming, as well as networking and training opportunities. If you are not a member yet, please join NISC today. And share the link with your colleagues!
- Senior centers nationwide are at a critical juncture and stand to benefit collectively from NCOA’s Modernizing Senior Centers Resource Center. Gain the tools and resources necessary to develop and implement programs and services that meet the ever-changing needs of older adults. Download our recent report, The State of Today's Senior Centers: Successes, Challenges, and Opportunities for insight into the state of senior centers and how we are helping.
The National Council on Aging thanks the Administration for Community Living (ACL) for their support of the Modernizing Senior Centers Resource Center. Initially funded in September 2021, this three-year Resource Center is helping senior centers address their challenges and amplify their successes as they strive to meet the ever-changing needs of older adults. The overarching goal of the Resource Center is to ensure senior centers have the capacity, tools, and resources necessary to develop and implement programs and services that meet the current and future needs of diverse older adults. This Guide is supported by ACL funding of the Modernizing Senior Centers Resource Center.
Share Your Stories
Senior centers impact the lives of millions of older adults in big and small ways every day. At NCOA, we know the heart of senior centers are the individual participants and their unique stories. These stories are poignant, impactful, and should be told. Whether your center has improved socialization, supported better physical and mental health, increased community involvement, helped create economic security, or offered an evidence-based program that's changed the life of an older adult for the better—your senior center has made an impact, and we want to hear about it.
Please share stories about your participants and how your center has positively affected their lives.
You can also share the template available at ncoa.org/article/senior-center-success-stories with your participants so that they can tell their stories. Then send them to us at membership@ncoa.org.
National Senior Center Month checklist
- Strategize. How will you bring recognition to your senior center in your community?
- Customize the 2024 poster to bring recognition of National Senior Center Month to your center.
- Educate your elected officials about the value of your center to the community.
- Mix it up. Consider planning a different event each week. Or choose one week out of the month to hold several activitie
- Enlist senior center participants. The people who go to your center know best what appeals to their peers. Enlist them to help you create and implement activities.
- Use the Publicity Guide to capture awareness and promote community involvement and support for your celebration. The guide offers a step-by-step media plan with timelines and tactics.
- Share our videos. A study revealed that senior centers need support in promoting a positive image and generating excitement. Supported by the Administration for Community Living, NCOA has created a series of videos about the many things to discover at senior centers. Show the videos in your center, link to them on your website, and embed them in your materials!
Customize the 2024 poster
Tailor the National Senior Center Month poster to your center! Add your own photos and contact information. Here’s how:
- Visit our National Senior Center Month page and save the poster to your computer.
- Open the poster
- Select the bottom right box and upload your logo.
- Select the box on the bottom left and fill in: a) Senior Center name b) Contact information c) Website
If you customize your poster, please save it as a PDF and share it with us at membership@ncoa.org.
Educate Elected Officials
Educate your elected officials about how public dollars support services and benefits for older adults, caregivers, family members, and the community at large. Senior center staff and participants are well-positioned to explain how limited public investment, along with growing demand, is having a domino effect on programs and services that help older adults remain healthy and independent in their own homes and communities. It’s important that Congress understand how older adults and caregivers are being affected by funding and policy decisions. Some ideas:
Tell Your Stories
If your center needs more federal, state, or local investments, or there are proposed policy decisions that could affect older adults’ services or benefits, organize older adults to write stories about what those federal decisions could mean to them and deliver the stories to an elected official, staffer, or candidate for public office. This can help you enlist elected officials for support and arm them with real stories for national budget debates. Use our 10 Tips to Harness the Power of Stories for ways to craft message and work with NCOA to get them delivered.
Learn How to Advocate
Our Advocacy Basics resource page brings together information on many topics such as best practices for getting an elected official to your events and attending town halls. As you might know, Congress is currently addressing the reauthorization of the Older Americans Act. This gives us all an opportunity to ensure that older adults in the community are supported through programs and services including support for senior centers. You can learn more about plans from Congress and the White House and NCOA priorities about the Older Americans Act on our website. You can find more information about policy issues that impact older adults on our Public Policy page. The NCOA Action Center is a great way to lend your voice to proposed federal legislation.
Champion a National Senior Center Month Proclamation
Ask your mayor or other official to issue a proclamation in honor of National Senior Center Month and build an event around it. A sample proclamation is in the Publicity Guide.
Broadcast Your Message
Invite a local TV or radio station to hold a remote broadcast to highlight your center’s work. Enlist participants, community partners, and other key people for interviews about your center’s resources and aging issues. Get your stories told in local newspapers. Engage in social media. Share our videos. Or create your own video to share on social media. See the Publicity Guide for more ideas and a sample media plan.
Connecting With Best Practices
Every day, senior centers across the country offer an exciting array of programs for older adults. The annual NISC Programs of Excellence Awards honor and promote these outstanding efforts.Join us throughout the year as winners are highlighted during webinars. Stay tuned for the call for nominations for 2024 Programs of Excellence in January 2025! Share information about your own program of excellence with important stakeholders in your community during National Senior Center Month.
Spotlight Your Senior Center
Each month, NCOA highlights the great things happening around the country in our Senior Center Spotlights. Learn more about what your peers are doing – their successes and challenges. Contact us if you would like us to consider your center!
Discover NCOA Initiatives
Falls Prevention Awareness Week
September 23 – 27, 2024
Falls Prevention Awareness Week raises awareness about how to prevent falls among older adults. During the week, national, state, and local partners educate the community about the impact of falls, share falls prevention strategies, and advocate for the expansion of evidence-based falls prevention programs.
Top 6 activities for senior centers
- Develop a falls prevention awareness week campaign: Take advantage of the NCOA Falls Prevention Awareness Week Toolkit at to maximize your impact in raising falls prevention awareness in your community this September. These resources include social media graphics, sample social media posts, handouts and flyers for older adults and caregivers, and more.
- Falls Prevention is a Team Effort: Discover new or strengthen existing connections with those in your community who are involved in falls prevention, including first responders/emergency medical technicians, pharmacists, physical therapists, occupational therapists, podiatrists, nurses, faith-based organizations, hardware stores, and others. Check out and share the interactive infographic that shows the important role of senior centers and other community partners in reducing falls among older persons.
- Share NCOA’s Falls Free CheckUp tool: This is a no-cost online screening tool with 12 questions older adults can answer to understand their risk of falls. At the end of the screen, the tool will display a score and actions to take to prevent falls. Older adults can email the results to themselves to share with their health care provider.
- Host an evidence-based falls prevention program: Engage older adults in a falls prevention class, such as A Matter of Balance or Tai Chi for Arthritis, which have been proven to reduce falls. If your senior center does not offer an evidence-based falls prevention program, partner with your area agency on aging. Learn about evidence-based falls prevention programs.
- Plan an in-person or remote falls prevention health fair: Share educational handouts, connect older adults with community resources and services, and/or demonstrate falls prevention programs or classes via a webinar. Invite local partners to join the health fair and provide risk screens and other resources.
- Provide falls risk screenings: Collaborate with community health specialists to host virtual falls risk screenings that include vision exams, balance and gait testing, home safety recommendations, and/or medication reviews. Explore who is part of your falls prevention team and invite them to volunteer their time. Or work with a local university to coordinate student volunteers, such as professional physical therapy, optometry, or pharmacy students.
Boost Your Budget
Public and private benefits are a lifeline to helping low-income people with Medicare age well. But research has shown that there are still many barriers to enrollment in these programs, including knowledge of benefits and how to apply. As a result, millions of older adults are likely eligible for, but not enrolled in, benefits that can save money on health care, prescriptions, food, and more.
Boost Your Budget® is a national campaign every April that unites aging and disability service providers under a common charge to:
- Educate low-income Medicare beneficiaries and their caregivers about the benefits available to improve their health and economic security, and
- Connect individuals to online (like BenefitsCheckUp.org) and community resources for benefits screening and application assistance.
NCOA welcomes senior centers to use our outreach materials to assist low-income seniors and adults with disabilities to enroll in benefits. Learn more about how your center can get involved. There is no limit on what your organization may do to draw attention to your services. For example, you may wish to:
- Share information about benefits as part of a food drive, health fair, or tax assistance event
- Sponsor a “telethon” at your local radio or TV station
- Run ads in local newspapers or on social media
- Invite media, legislators, and the public to tour your center and learn about the importance of benefits for your community
Ways to Support Mental Health at Your Senior Center
During National Senior Center Month, consider enrolling in the Behavioral Health and Aging Certificate program. Through a partnership with Boston University’s Center for Aging and Disability Education Research (CADER), all NISC Affiliate members are eligible for special pricing on this five-course online program. Promote a program your center offers that aims to improve the mental health of older adults. This program could be one focusing on social engagement, peer support, wellness check-ins, physical activity, or a partnership you have with local mental health providers or a formal program like the Do More Feel Better program offered at Hillsborough County, Florida, senior centers.
September Holidays and Observances
Find more information around to build programs and activities around and power community connections during Senior Center month.
HEALTH & FITNESS
National Cholesterol Awareness Month
Falls Prevention Awareness Week: Sept. 18-22
National Women’s Health & Fitness Day: Sept. 28
ENRICHMENT
International Women’s Friendship Month
International Literacy Day: Sept. 8
American Red Cross Home Fire Campaign: Sound the Alarm Save a Life
National Employ Older Workers Week: Sept. 26-30
National Voter Registration Day: Sept. 30
