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

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. 

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 next AACE Health Equity Data Roundtable on Monday August 14th from 4:30pm – 7:30pm in Silver Spring (location will be announced shortly). A light dinner and networking will take place from 4:30pm – 5:30pm, and roundtable discussions will take place from 5:30pm – 7:30pm. Deadline to register is Sunday August 6, 2023. Confirmation emails will be send by Monday August 7, 2023. Register HERE.

Input from community leaders attending this Roundtable will guide AAHI’s capacity building efforts around data collection and will be integrated into an upcoming capacity building workshop series open to all Montgomery County AAPI-serving organizations. Attendees of the Roundtable will be invited to share their organizations’ capabilities around data collection and reporting, and how AACE can assist with enhancing skills and capacity in this area. Through the Roundtable, we hope to identify solutions and supports that will increase the availability of local AAPI data.

Sign up for the AACE email digest to stay informed on and participate in the data roundtables.

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. 

Sign up for the AACE email digest to stay informed on future workshop dates. 

We thank you for your understanding and patience about the last-minute cancellation of our 2nd AACE Technical Workshop. We are excited to share the new date for our online Workshop titled “Introduction to Data for Program Management,” which will be on Monday, December 4, 2023 at 5:30-7:30 pm via Zoom. If you have not already registered for the webinar, please sign up.

Register here.

Our first AACE technical assistance workshop took place on Monday July 24th over Zoom and covered the basics of measurement and data collection. This online workshop focused on measuring and tracking your success, common data challenges and software considerations. Learn about using driver diagrams to tie together your program goals, with their measures and data needs.

Presentation HERE.

Workshop Recording HERE.

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. 

To support organizations and ensure they are collecting the best data, we are pleased to offer free 1-on-1 strategy consultations on data collection, analysis challenges, and solutions to 10 nonprofit organizations serving the AAHI community in Montgomery County. These consultations are intended to facilitate your capacity and capability to strategically collect and use data.

Each organization will receive three consultation meetings with a data expert, and each meeting will be up to one hour (for a total of three hours). You may select who attends these consultation meetings, but for the initial intake meeting, we request that the person entering and analyzing the data and the lead management executive be present.

To see if your organization is a good candidate to participate in these consultations, please fill out this survey briefly describing how your organization collects data. You will be contacted shortly if your organization matches the criteria for this service.