By Jack Cumming
Senior living communities generally give as much attention to marketing as they do to how best to support their residents. The emerging village movement offers a way to boost both marketing and the resident experience. It starts with a story, which you can access by clicking here.
Villages Are Popular
Imagine benefiting from a rapidly growing movement to improve your occupancy and your reputation for resident empowerment. By providing an overlap between those of your residents who might join a village and those in your surrounding community who may be future residents, it becomes natural for people to move from village activities to residential living as they age and their needs change.
For now, many life plan community (CCRC) operators see villages as an emerging competitor that encourages people to age in place without moving to a care community. That may be true for a younger subset of those eligible for residence, but it’s reminiscent of a time in the 1950s when the movie industry saw television as an emerging threat. More currently, conventional cable and television content providers see streaming as a threat.
Turning Threat into Opportunity
The truth is that television was a threat to the preexisting movie industry, streaming is a threat to conventional television, and villages are a threat to communal residences’ appeal to younger eligibles. It’s not uncommon for established interests to feel threatened by innovation when the wiser course is to see innovation as opportunity.
A threat is best when embraced and dealt with, rather than when the change is denied, leading toward obsolescence. Some people still go to the movies, but many now enjoy watching a movie in their home theater setting. That analogy applies to senior living as well. The village movement need not be a threat to senior living.
How might embracing the village as opportunity work in practice? First is to realize that emerging villages present more opportunities than they do threats. Then, a CCRC strategy might be to adopt a local grassroots village and to nurture it into a plus for the CCRC. Villages have many needs — automating administration, providing meeting places, events, and activities — which can readily fall within the purview of an open CCRC community.
Making Transitions Seamless
A better way to think of villages is as an adjunct to a waiting list. You may already have an empowered membership waiting list. For instance, you may offer future residents membership benefits. Those on the waiting list who want affiliation benefits pay a fee and receive many of the benefits generally associated with a closely affiliated continuing care at home program.
Having a sponsored village brings you into association with those grassroots members who are hoping to age permanently in their long-term home. In short, you can support the prevailing wish among younger oldsters to age where they live, while also offering an option for when that dream is no longer feasible. If handled with delicacy and without paternalism or control, it can be a win-win both for the community and the senior housing enterprise.
Relinquish Control to Co-Governance
This last is a key observation. Obviously, many members in a grassroots organization, like most villages, choose that alternative not only for the benefits but also to avoid the loss of agency that can come with institutionalization. This has proved a stumbling block for the CCRC industry as a whole, and it is even more pronounced among those oldsters who choose a village experience.
While the need for old-age services will logically correlate closely with the needs of the boomer generation, the delivery of those services may shift from central control toward a more participatory model. What that might look like has been a particular interest of mine, and I will continue to write about that in other articles. In the meantime, forward-looking senior living industry leaders will be watching closely the growing village movement and thinking of how they can embrace that trend.
Very interesting idea. A CCRC forming a foemal relationship with a “local Village”. I can see the positives of such a relationship.
Village members could utilize the facilities of the CCRC like pool, gym, programs and Village member would see how the CCRC is actually managed. Is tge food really the Gourmet food as advertised, does Management dictate to CCRC residents what abd how things are done or actually listenbto the CCRC residents, especially those in Independent Living.
Friendships would continue and newbies formed.
This is worth a try.
Thank you, Barbara. Not only can forming a village benefit management and sales, but it can also benefit residents. Residents can form a village themselves, with both residents and nonresidents included, with or without management’s support and approval.
The benefit for residents is that they can volunteer among themselves, or with outside volunteers, to provide services to members that CCRC management might otherwise charge for. Of, if there are no volunteers, they can vet local services to meet needs for each.
As few as two or three people — again residents or nonresidents — can come together to form the village. Check out https://www.avillageforlife.com and https://www.vtvnetwork.org for valuable information.
We wish you all the best.