Applications Open for $8 Million in AARP Community Challenge Grants

Over the past decade, the AARP Community Challenge has invested $24.3 million in grants in 2,100 community projects jump-starting improvements like pickleball courts, shaded walking paths, accessible bus stops and other projects that make towns more age-friendly. 

This year, due to the program’s success, the pool of available grant money has doubled from $4 million to $8 million, says Mike Watson, director of AARP’s Livable Communities initiative, which oversees the grant program. Watson anticipates the program will now be able to help twice as many nonprofits and local governments take on short-term, small-scale projects. These kinds of projects can have an immediate impact on a community and create long-term change. The deadline for applications is March 4. 

“The Community Challenge is really designed to spark the imagination of the community,” Watson says. Accessible housing, local transportation and public spaces are the main funding focus, he says. The ideal project is something neighbors can see, feel or touch — a community garden, a safer intersection or, in the case of Souris, North Dakota, a mural that stretches across the side of a former bank.

Surrounded by corn, wheat and soybean farms, and located just nine miles south of the Canadian border, Souris once had a population of 400. Three banks, five churches and four general stores, along with hotels and restaurants, lined its streets at the dawn of the 20th century. Today, it’s a town of 37 with a post office, bar, gas station and fire department. The local school closed in the 1990s. 

When Megan Langley, executive director of the rural development nonprofit Strengthen ND, moved the organization to Souris, she applied for a Community Challenge grant to paint a mural on an old building to showcase the town’s history and raise spirits.  

A $10,500 grant from AARP enabled Strengthen ND to create a brightly colored mural featuring a blue jay, the town’s former school mascot. It was selected, says Langley, because the community expressed pride either for their time as students, when they worked at the school or watched the sports teams. 

The artist painted the mural over the course of a weekend in October. Langley says she often spots people standing still and looking at it. “Some of the best responses are when people don’t say anything at all,” she says.

“When you haven’t had anything good happen for a while, to get a little bit of a taste of what that could feel like and the pride that you can have back in your community, I think it’s so meaningful and helpful,” Langley says.

Responding to community needs

The Community Challenge program grew out of local, individual initiatives that AARP state offices help communities undertake. Even after becoming a national program in 2017, it has stayed true to those roots. 

Approximately 40 percent of grants are allocated to rural communities, providing many with the opportunity to show other grant-making institutions what they can deliver. After completing a project, about half of Community Challenge grant recipients report that they go on to receive funds from other organizations.