The Grotta Legacy

Throughout its more than 100-year history, as a society, facility, foundation, and community advisory fund, the Grotta's name has been associated with a mission to improve the quality of life of older adults and their families primarily living in Essex, Union and Morris counties in New Jersey.

In 1916, for her 80th birthday present, Theresa Grotta’s friends formed the Theresa Grotta Aid Society for Convalescents. The society’s initial goal was to help needy families in Newark, as Theresa Grotta did personally, and then to help women recuperating from surgery as they transitioned from the hospital to home. In 1979, a building in West Orange, NJ, was purchased and the name was changed to The Theresa Grotta Center for Rehabilitative Services. As a 142-bed skilled nursing home and rehabilitation center, state-of-the art services were provided to the elderly on a non-sectarian basis.

Facing changes in the health care industry and the facility was sold in 1993. The proceeds of that sale were used to establish, first, a private foundation, the Grotta Foundation for Senior Care and later, in 2003, a philanthropic fund within the Jewish Community Foundation. As a foundation, grants were awarded to promote and support local elder caregiving, senior programs at synagogues, and a range of community programs serving the elderly.

The Grotta Fund for Older Adults, overseen by a dedicated advisory council of community members, supports both strategic and responsive grantmaking.

Examples of recent multi-year strategic funding: addressing critical issues such as high readmissions by older adults, encouraging the use of new models of care, and supporting local age-friendly community development and NJ's efforts as an Age-Friendly state.

Through responsive small grants, the Fund strives to enable non-profits to address current issues ranging from social isolation, technology training, special populations of older adults, poverty/special situations such as risk for homelessness, emergencies such as Hurricane Sandy and the COVID-19 pandemic. We encourage programs in which older adults are involved in service together with younger age groups, are more connected to their communities, and treated with respect and dignity.

“Tell me and I forget, teach me and I may remember, involve me and I learn” (Benjamin Franklin)