Our work has reached over 500,000 people impacted by neurodegenerative diseases.
Explore the impact we've made as we listen and learn before we act—through events, storytelling, research partnerships, demonstration projects, three rounds of grants and more.
2021 Impact Report
We're just getting started.
Adira Foundation picked up speed in its second full year of programs. We grew in scale (from $100,000 in Round 1 competitive grants to $360,000 in Round 2) in donor diversity (adding new public foundation backers like BMSF) and in rigor, such as enhanced independent review of applications.
Yes we draw guidance from our Board of Directors, but we draw even more direction from our Sounding Board—our growing conversation with patients, families, and caregivers.

$455,995
Invested

500,000
Impacted Individuals

17+
Funded Investments
Listen
We gather and amplify the voices of the people most impacted by neurodegenerative diseases to hear what they need most through convenings, surveys, story collection and focus groups.
Strategic Priorities
Adira’s board of directors developed a strategic plan to guide us through 2023.
Story collection
Our story collection is part of the listening process. We partnered with StoryCorps to produce 13 audio conversations with people impacted by neurodegenerative diseases.
Past Listening Events
Through listening events, we’ve gathered people impacted by neurodegenerative diseases, caregivers and professionals around different topics like equity, needs and network mapping.
Learn
We learn from a wide set of experts directly and indirectly impacting neurodegenerative disease care. Sometimes we learn by sponsoring research and reports. We also learn from partner and grantee projects and reports.

Impact Report
See the highlights and impact of our listening, learning and acting work in 2021.

Quality of Life Report
We analyzed more than 50 common tools for measuring quality of life, made recommendations and are seeking input on how to best measure for people with neurodegenerative diseases.

Multilateral White Paper
Adira explains the basis for its multilateral model based on other large-scale successes.

GWU Report and Summary
George Washington University examined and analyzed best practices for Adira taken from integrated health successes like the Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria.
Act
We act on the things people impacted say they need most—with events, research and demonstration projects, but primarily through our competitive grants program, Pervasive Needs Grants.
Competitive Grants
Adira is on its third round of competitive grants, Pervasive Needs Grants. The grants fund projects around the shared issues we heard from people in all five disease communities: simplifying clinical research, preparing for future threats to livelihood, thriving again in common pursuits, caregiver mental health, care navigation and coordination, community resource sharing and COVID-19.
Grant Recipients
Adira has named 17 recipients through its completed rounds of competitive grants. The first round was an emergency response to COVID-19 that awarded 12 nonprofits across the country a total of $100,000 in March 2020. The second round awarded five nonprofits $360,000.
Demonstration projects
In addition to competitive grants we fund projects with other organizations to demonstrate the kind of inventive projects that address cross-cutting needs among our five focus neurodegenerative diseases.