Huguette Clark Foundation

This is a war, not a single battle, and many of us will be there to help you win.

-Senior executive, national bank, Missouri

Our Perspective

The Huguette Clark Foundation supports innovative strategies to fight the financial abuse of elders. Highly focused grants address immediate needs overlooked by traditional programs, and support effective models for fighting elder abuse that can be replicated nationwide or brought to scale quickly. We welcome the opportunity to work together with other organizations to protect elders.

 

Results

The Foundation is changing our society’s response to elder abuse. Though relatively small, our grants have had a large-scale impact. We have helped to create:

  • National guidelines for accessing evidence from financial institutions in elder abuse investigations, already adopted by New York State, Florida, and select communities across the country;
  • Model civil statutes on elder financial abuse, already being adopted by some states;
  • Webinars, web-based training programs, toolkits, and materials on undue influence, international scams, and identity theft; and
  • The National Elder Justice Advocates Academy and the National Network of State Elder Justice Coalitions to coordinate efforts across geographies and disciplines.

 

Focus

The Foundation currently works in several broad areas. We seek to:

  • Improve services for victims;
  • Have a positive effect through better training, licensing, regulations, and standards for all who are responsible for elders:
  • Encourage collaboration among specialists across disciplines; and
  • Enlist new partners in the fight against elder exploitation.

 

Criteria

The Foundation’s Board weighs several factors when deciding on programs to fund, such as:

  • Does it address undue influence, manipulation and financial abuse by institutions, professionals, and caregivers?
  • Will tangible, measureable results be produced in the first year?
  • Is the proposed program a high priority for the grantee?
  • Is it action-oriented rather than research-focused?
  • Can the program be replicated to increase impact?

 

Please note that the Huguette Clark Foundation does not accept unsolicited grant applications at this time.

2013 – To San Diego State University to develop online training modules so Adult Protective Service (APS) workers will be better able to recognize and report financial exploitation and undue influence.
2014 – To the Philadelphia Corporation on Aging working with the National Adult Protective Services Association (NAPSA) to develop protocols for banks to report suspected financial abuse to authorities. The program received the 2016 Aging Achievement Award in the Elder Abuse Prevention category from the National Association of Area Agencies on Aging.
2015 – To fund a roundtable of national experts at the National Center for Victims of Crime (NCVC), which developed a white paper with practical recommendations for high-priority unmet needs in the area of financial exploitation.
2016 – To NCVC, advised by the American Bar Association, to research and develop model civil statute provisions that States can adapt and enact in their fight against financial abuse of elders. NCVC released the provisions in 2017.
2017 – To the California Elder Justice Coalition to establish an Elder Justice Advocates Academy that will support national efforts to engage financial institutions in elder abuse prevention and also educate agencies on the role of the Victims of Crime Act (VOCA) in serving victims of financial crime.
2018 – To the California Elder Justice Coalition to expand its National Elder Justice Advocates Academy and launch the National Network of State Elder Justice Coalitions to foster collaboration, dynamic networking, and the exchange of promising practices and public policy nationally.
2019 – To the National Adult Protective Services Association to measure and extend the use of the Bank Protocol Form (funded by the 2014 grant), and to develop a parallel form for the securities industry with the trade group, SIFMA.
2019 – To FCA of Long Island, NY, to expand and sustain a multi-disciplinary elder abuse task force in conjunction with law enforcement.

 

2020 – To FCA of Long Island, NY, to continue support for Nassau County’s first elder abuse multi-disciplinary team, which coordinates case management and counseling, Adult Protective Services, the District Attorney’s office, legal and medical representatives, and law enforcement to help the victims of elder exploitation.