The plan to establish a National Hispanic Council on Aging was first conceived in the late 1970s by a group of Hispanic researchers, educators, and services providers. This group clearly recognized a growing shortfall in meeting the unique needs of the growing Hispanic elder community. They began to discuss an organization to address the most critical issues affecting this community, and in 1980 NHCOA was incorporated in Denver with sociologist Daniel Gallegos as its Provisional President.

From the beginning, NHCOA was dedicated to its central mission of working to improve the quality of life for Hispanic older adults. Initially designed as a chapter organization, NHCOA was soon deluged with requests for trainings and information from service providers working with older adults across the country. The need for the organization was clear, and it spent the next ten years of its growth working to raise the funding and gain the workforce necessary for it to address its constituency’s most critical issues. President of the Board of Directors Marta Sotomayor led the organization through these difficult first years, in the beginning on a volunteer basis and later as Executive Director. By the end of its first decade, NHCOA had established itself as a unique resource for its community through the provision of trainings and research. It had eight chapters with a mandate to concentrate on local advocacy, and fielded many requests from service providers for information and capacity-building trainings. Soon the young organization was regularly publishing a research-based informative newsletter called Noticias.

During the 1990s, NHCOA faced and overcame a number of challenges, including the drying up of many traditional sources of funding; Social Security reform, which made a great number of Hispanic seniors dependent on local agencies and organizations for support; and the complexities of trying to provide affordable housing for seniors. NHCOA, after a long and difficult process, was able to purchase and develop two senior housing facilities, one in Washington, D.C. and one in Garden City, Kansas, with funding from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development. Other accomplishments were the founding of a think tank within NHCOA, establishing the organization as the foremost expert on issues surrounding Hispanic elders and their families, and the launching of a National Conference.

NHCOA entered the new millennium as an affiliate-based organization, having found that a closely-linked network of independent affiliates was more effective and responsive than the previous chapter structure. It also began the millennium as an established organization with new leadership.

Accomplishments to date as the organization approaches its fourth decade include the establishment of ground-breaking programs that promote coalitions targeting key players like older adults and their families, health care providers, media, local health departments and other public agencies, and academic institutions, among others; the establishment of a Business Advisory Council to provide strategic guidance in accessing the experience and support of the private sector; the building of new partnerships with agencies and corporations from both public and private sectors, which has allowed NHCOA to expand funding and hence extend its outreach; and the growth of its Annual Conference, which has become a benchmark event of high-quality information-sharing, where both professionals from the field of aging and older adults get together to analyze current challenges and to look for opportunities to create positive change. The NHCOA vision has expanded as well, going beyond simply improving the quality of life for Hispanic seniors to using the best of all the members of the Hispanic community to empower seniors and their families and to help ensure that they pass their golden years in contentment and security.