While two groups in town are both committed to providing services to Wareham seniors, cooperation and coordination between them isn’t as easy as it seems.

The recently revamped Council on Aging Board of Directors met last week to discuss, among other things, a potential partnership with the nonprofit Friends of the Wareham Elderly.

The Council, a town department, wants to provide services for seniors but doesn’t receive any money from the town and can’t raise money on its own. The Friends is a non-profit group that continually runs fundraisers to help the town’s neediest seniors. While appearing to have similar goals, the two groups can’t agree on how best to share resources, and it’s much more complicated than just writing a friend a check.

The Council on Aging lost all of its town funding after the Proposition 2 1/2 override vote failed last June. The Council only has one staff member, an office manager who is paid via a $43,000 grant.

After months of uncertainty, an all-new board of directors joined the Council on Aging in the hopes it could rejuvenate the town department with limited to no funding. Unfortunately for them, the Council isn’t legally allowed to raise funds.

Peter Dunlop, who was elected chairman of the board at the meeting, said that he recently met with the treasurer of the Friends, Larry Gaines. He said Gaines told him he had no interest in partnering or sharing funds with the Council on Aging.

Other members agreed that it seemed Gaines had a narrow vision how to use the Friends funds. While Dunlop has spoken to Gaines, the Council has not yet had any formal communication with the president of the Friends group, Paula Hatch.

Reached by phone last Thursday, Hatch said she would be open to helping the Council on Aging anyway possible, but not necessarily with any funding.

The Friends group, which currently has about $2,500 in funds, gives money out to seniors in need of medicine, heating and other necessities. Hatch said she would be happy to help promote Council on Aging programs or help in other ways, but not to, “get tangled up with cash.”

Hatch sees the groups as having two different missions and that the Friends are only supposed to focus on seniors in desperate need.

She said that not only was she legally not allowed to run fundraisers for the Council on Aging, but that even if she could it would be taking away from the Friends mission.

“If I wanted to run a raffle for them, I’d be taking away from the people with desperate needs,” she said.

At last week’s meeting, the Council on Aging board members discussed a few grant programs they considered applying for, until they discovered they were only available to non-profits.

There are grant programs available to municipal Councils on Aging through the Massachusetts Association of Councils on Aging, such as one to establish a walking club, or health improvement program.

The board members, however, discussed the possibility of having a non-profit group apply for other grants then donating the grant item to the Council. Hatch said she could potentially be open to such a plan, though the details and legality of such an operation would have to be thoroughly worked out.

In 2011, the Friends gifted a refrigerator and freezer to the Council on Aging after receiving a $2,000 grant for the items through the United Way of Greater New Bedford’s mini-grant program.

The Council on Aging board members plan on meeting with the leadership of the Friends some time in the near future to discuss cooperation efforts. Hatch said she would certainly be open to having a meeting.