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The West St. Paul-based nonprofit DARTS, which supports older adults as they age, is celebrating their 50th anniversary in August.
Party: DARTS is hosting a 50th anniversary Birthday Bash on August 1 in Hastings.
Conversations With the President
Founded in 1974, DARTS has been headquartered in West St. Paul since 1992. We talked with DARTS President Ann Bailey about the history and longevity of DARTS.
What is DARTS, and why are its contributions so important to the aging community?
DARTS’ mission is to create connections that enrich aging. DARTS provides services and support to help people age in the home of their choice for as long as possible, and we also support someone caring for an older person. People over age 65 are 20% of the population and yet they are so often overlooked when it comes to services. DARTS keeps the spotlight on making aging a celebration and providing resources to help us age well.
Where is DARTS now compared to when it was founded? How has it changed? How has it stayed the same?
DARTS was founded based upon the desire to keep older adults active in the community. Our first service was providing rides so that retirees could attend community education classes. Creating connections remains our mission today.
Rides were the initial service, and we continue to offer transportation today. We do point-to-point rides for individuals or groups on an outing and, in 2015, launched the Loop model with the West St. Paul Loop circulator bus, which operates every Wednesday.
Over the years, DARTS continues to collaborate with partners to hear community needs and fill gaps. Home services of cleaning and yard work were added early. We provide connections to resources at senior apartments, starting with Colleen Loney Manor and now expanded to 17 buildings. Most recently we added more programs to promote intergenerational connections, springboarding from our successful Learning Buddies program. Tech Buddies provides tech mentorship and connections as younger volunteers help older people master their technology. Since the 1990s, DARTS has supported caregivers, and as the workforce shift has placed more burden on friend and family caregivers, DARTS has added the group respite Breathing Space, which meets weekly in Eagan and Augustana Lutheran in West St. Paul.
We continue with the innovative mindset to see what we can do to help the emerging needs of today’s seniors. Some programs are dropped as their relevancy changes. We used to take people grocery shopping, now we help people place their grocery orders online. Programs like Café y Conversaciones have been added because our communities are more diverse, and this helps us connect with our Spanish-speaking community members. We have specific outreach to encourage LGBTQ+ older adults to use us for support.
We have expanded our service geography, to help fill gaps, particularly with transportation and home repairs.
What do you envision for the next 50 years of DARTS? What goals do you have for the organization moving forward?
How people age and at what age they feel they want assistance will continue to change, and DARTS will be in the community, hearing those trends. Macroeconomic forces will drive some of those changes. For the next 30 years or so, those over age 65 will be at least 20% of the population, meaning that there are fewer working-age people per older person needing support. Healthcare costs continue to increase, and poverty within the over-65 age group is increasing. All of this points to home being the preferred site of service, and DARTS will play an important role in ensuring people can safely live in their homes longer. What services are required to do so will change, and the need for personal connections will remain.
As we look into the future, we are committed to reaching all, including traditionally underserved communities. We will do this by adding capabilities to our own team and finding culturally specific partners. And quite practically, we need to look at the funding models for community-based services. We offer clients the opportunity to pay a fee, and we serve anyone regardless of their ability to pay. To fill that gap, we rely on government funding and community contributions. As inflation raises the cost of living, it increases our cost to provide services and decreases those able to contribute to the cost of the service. The un-funded gap is growing. DARTS needs to be a strong voice helping people to see the need to support our older community members.
There might be a role for DARTS to play in helping younger people think about how they fund their retirement years, while they are young enough to save enough. Today we see people who were caught unprepared for the demise of retirement pension plans and did not think to create a retirement savings plan. If social security dramatically reduces its payments or stops altogether, there will be people unprepared. Depending on how this plays out, more seniors could end up living with family or rooming together to save costs.
The difficulty with aging services is that people do not readily ask for assistance and I don’t think that will change in the future. The Boomers were brought up to “tough it out,” and the additional problem for an older person of any generation is that if you admit that you made a mistake, the consequence might be that someone says you can no longer do that activity. A fender bender equals someone taking your car keys away.
What’s the best way for West St. Paul residents to support DARTS, its mission, and its vision?
First of all, talk to someone older than you, learn their story, discover their strengths, see them.
Refer people to DARTS. If we can’t help, we can find someone who can.
Consider contributing time or money. DARTS has volunteer opportunities listed as well as a link for donations.
Celebrate aging with us at our Birthday Bash August 1, 5-9 p.m. at The Wexford in Hastings, an easy ride down Highway 52.
Follow us on Facebook and Instagram: @dartsconnects
Thanks to Ann Bailey for sharing with us and to Jessie Martinez for bringing it to our attention.
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