The Purpose Prize
Since Encore.org’s founding, we have been a hub of social innovation. We have successfully created new programs, refined and demonstrated their effectiveness, and often spun them off to a new home with the institutional capacity and commitment to take them to scale.
Experience Corps and the Purpose Prize, two programs we launched and developed, clearly demonstrate this trajectory. Both are now signature programs of AARP — one sign that what was once innovative, even unique, is becoming mainstream. Encore.org and AARP share a common goal of re-envisioning aging in America, and have enjoyed a long history of collaboration. Encore.org is deeply grateful to AARP for its commitment to take these two programs to scale, with a much broader reach.
The Purpose Prize
IDEA: Recognizing Social Innovation in the Second Half of Life
The Purpose Prize was launched in 2005 to tell a new story about social innovation in the second half of life. Traditionally, the field was viewed as primarily — if not exclusively — the province of the young. The Purpose Prize helped to to rectify this imbalance, demonstrating that older people comprise an undiscovered, and still largely untapped, continent of problem-solvers addressing an array of pressing societal challenges.
INNOVATION: A Game-Changing Prize
When we launched the program in 2005, we wondered how many social entrepreneurs over 60 would come forward with ideas.The verdict is now in. Over 10 years from 2005-2015, Encore.org received nearly 10,000 Purpose Prize nominations, recognized more than 500 people, including nearly 100 winners and hundreds of fellows, and invested $5 million in social innovators over 60. Started and and operated with major funding from the John Templeton Foundation and the Atlantic Philanthropies, in 2016 the Purpose Prize became part of AARP, which is providing the funding and institutional support increase its reach and impact.
RESULT: Awareness and Understanding of Social Entrepreneurship in Later Life
The Prize showcases how older social innovators are changing the world — working in fields ranging from disaster relief and easing childhood trauma to financial empowerment, workers’ rights and community gardens that feed the hungry. Over ten years, it garnered millions of media impressions elevating a narrative of older people as change agents. A 2013 study conducted by the Sloan Center on Aging & Work and the Center for Social Innovation, both at Boston College, gathered data from 200 Purpose Prize applicants or nominees to begin to better understand social entrepreneurship in later life. The study concluded that: “In our aging society, the talents of older adults are an increasingly valuable resource. The Purpose Prize focuses attention on the many ways in which older adults, through encore careers, have engaged in social entrepreneurship, helping to improve the economy, public health, the environment, education, and other arenas where innovation, commitment, and passion are needed.”
Learn more:
AARP Purpose Prize
Visit the 10th Anniversary Purpose Prize site to learn more about the Purpose Prize — its history, accomplishments and honorees.
Watch these videos to learn about the social innovations
of six Purpose Prize winners
Founder and Executive Artistic Director, IMPACT Repertory Theatre
2015 Purpose Prize Winner
Founder and Executive Director, Dancing with the Spirit
2015 Winner: The Purpose Prize for Intergenerational Impact sponsored by The Eisner Foundation
Volunteer Program Coordinator, Maine Attorneys Saving Homes
2012 Purpose Prize Winner
Conetoe Family Life Center
2014 Purpose Prize Winner
Founder and CEO, Latinas Contra Cancer
2013 Purpose Prize Winner
Program Manager, Employment Immersion, Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired
2014 Purpose Prize Winner