Asian American Center of Excellence (AACE)

As a part of Asian American Health Initiative’s evolving efforts in capacity building, AAHI has formed the Asian American Center of Excellence (AACE). The goal of the AACE is to support Asian American-serving community organizations in developing and increasing their capacity to successfully provide health, wellness, and social support programs and services. The AACE is a premiere resource to Asian American community organizations to improve technical skills related to organizational sustainability, such as data collection and analysis, evaluation, program planning, and partnership building among others.

The services and offerings of AACE will be guided by the World Health Organization’s definition of capacity building:

“Capacity building is the development of knowledge, skills, commitment, structures, systems and leadership to enable effective health promotion…[with] actions to improve health at three levels: the advancement of knowledge and skills among practitioners; the expansion of support and infrastructure for health promotion in organizations, and; the development of cohesiveness and partnerships for health in communities.”

In line with this, AACE’s services include:

Micro-grants for AAPI-serving organizations to build organizational capacity
Bi-weekly curated email digest for AAPI leaders
Networking opportunities for leaders of AAPI-serving organizations
Data roundtables for AAPI leaders
Technical assistance workshops
One-on-One strategy consultations

Micro-Grants
Email Digest
Networking Opportunities
Data Roundtables
Workshops
Strategy Consultations

Micro-Grants

Annually, AACE has micro-grant opportunities for AAPI-serving community-based organizations, faith institutions, and non-profits. The goal of the micro-grants is to provide organizations with funding to support their operations and organizational needs. Through this funding, AACE seeks to build capacity and strengthen organizational sustainability of local organizations that play a critical role in addressing the health, wellness, and social support needs of AAPIs in Montgomery County.

AACE funds micro-grants in three categories:

Purchase of Equipment
Professional Development
Consultants

Applications for the micro-grant are currently closed. Please check back for our next funding announcement. To prepare for the next application, we invite you to visit our AACE Micro-Grants webpage.

Email Digest

The Montgomery County region is filled with opportunities for funding, partnership, and growth. With the goal of supporting AAPI-serving organizations in building their capacity, AACE offers a curated bi-weekly email digest that captures and shares the latest opportunities with AAPI leaders so that they can expand their organization’s footprint. Subscribers to the email digest will also be able to share their own program announcements, requests for partnerships, and any other updates through the digest. The email digest will also be the main platform where AACE activities will be shared.

Join the listserv by signing up HERE. The first email digest will become available in July 2023.

Networking Opportunities

AACE hosts regular networking events for AAPI leaders. Networking events are meant to be a time to bring together leaders within the AAPI community to connect, share best practices, learn from one another, and identify opportunities for collaboration and partnership.

Networking events will be held later this year. Sign up for the AACE email digest to stay informed on dates for networking opportunities.

Data Roundtables

To address limited availability of data around AAPI health needs, AACE encourages AAPI-serving organizations to collect their own data, both around needs and program use. Through our work with community organizations, we recognize that data collection can be challenging and oftentimes it can slow down service provision. To provide better solutions, AACE holds data roundtables with AAPI community leaders to better understand the challenges around data collection and analysis.

Join our Health Equity Data Roundtable on Wednesday June 14th from 12pm – 3pm at VisArts (155 Gibbs Street, Rockville, MD 20850). Deadline to register is Friday June 9, 2023 (or until all spots have filled). Register HERE.

Workshops

To strengthen technical skills related to non-profit management, business operations, data collections, and public health best practices, AACE offers workshops and bootcamps to leaders and staff of AAPI-serving organizations. The aim of these workshops is to equip organizations with practical skills they can apply to their organization’s practice.

Workshops will be help later this year. Sign up for the AACE email digest to stay informed on workshop dates.

Strategy Consultations

AACE regularly offers organizations with the opportunity to meet one-on-one with experts in non-profit management, business operations, data collections, and public health to provide strategy consultations to AAPI-serving organizations. Through strategy consultations, AACE aims to support organizations by developing personalized plans on how to integrate best practices into existing operations.

Consultations will become available later this year. Sign up for the AACE email digest to stay informed on when this service becomes available.