In Part 1, we introduced the giving revolution that Generation Impact wants to lead, and demonstrated how that revolution was about changing the ways big donors give. In Part 2, we explore three of these ways in more depth—three ways next gen donors want to go “all in” in their giving: giving their time, giving their talents, and giving with peers.
Ask next gen donors—like we have—to describe bad philanthropy and their answer will likely include something along the lines of “just writing checks.” The next gen wants impact, first and foremost, and merely giving money is not the best way to achieve real impact.
For these rising donors, good philanthropy is hands‐on, engaged philanthropy. It involves donors giving their time as well as their treasure. Good philanthropy also means donors cultivating close relationships with the organizations they fund, seeing firsthand the impact of their gifts of time and money, and being able to ascertain what organizations really need. Put simply, next gen donors believe that getting close to organizations helps them be both better and bigger donors. Engagement is their path to bigger impact.
Get Out There and Do It
People in their 20s and 30s in the United States today grew up at a time when they were constantly encouraged, if not mandated, to volunteer and engage in community service.1 As adults now, they associate giving with giving of time. As one younger major donor who has been involved in family grantmaking for a long time put it, “That's just how I function. From a young age, I really wanted to do hands‐on things and go on site visits and see the program in action and be at that level. I didn't want to just write a check. I wanted to take full advantage of the opportunity to do something good. In this generation, [with] community service that's done in schools, I feel like there's been a culture that we've grown up with of doing things in a very hands‐on kind of way.”
John R. Seydel, the grandson of media mogul Ted Turner and an emerging Millennial donor who is featured in Chapter 8, ties this to the idea that in his “Trophy Generation,” everyone got a trophy just for being active in something, awarded for not being “complacent.” He says, “We want to be fulfilled and inspired in every little thing we do because that is what we were taught. We have grown up with a mentality that ‘I have to find the organization that fulfills me and that is where I am going to give my time.’”
It is not surprising, then, that a refrain we heard over and over from next gen donors was that they want to “do something.”2 They want to get their hands dirty, to “experience something real” or “get out our tool belt and just go out there and do it.” They don't want to just go to fancy events for donors, write big checks, and watch what happens. As one explained, “I was going to all these cocktail parties with my family and just lamenting. I kept saying, ‘I want to get more involved with something that actually does something.’” Fittingly, one of the largest and most active organizations promoting volunteer engagement among young people these days is called DoSomething.org.
Our survey results reinforce this do‐something orientation, as well as its origins in early volunteer experiences. While giving online was the most common type of philanthropic act—with 77.7 percent saying they have given this way in the past 12 months—this doesn't mean they don't want more direct involvement. Volunteering was the third most common activity (70.2 percent), not far behind giving through a website or donating in‐kind materials like a car or computer. Other informal, person‐to‐person helping activities ranked high as well. And nearly 8 out of 10 next gen donors (78 percent) reported having volunteer experiences before the age of 15, and 35.5 percent before the age of 10. As one donor said bluntly, “I don't want to go push a button and give $100,000 to an organization without ever having to interact further. That is not appealing to me.” Others even said they consider giving money alone to be insufficient at best, and at times even ineffective or outright harmful.
These donors weren't always specific about what they wanted to do as a volunteer. They just wanted to be connected, in person, to the nitty‐gritty work of the organizations they support—to get in the game, not cheer from the sidelines.
Of course, the idea of hands‐on donor engagement with organizations is not new, and previous generations of donors have done things like serve as fundraising campaign volunteers or board members. But for younger major donors, this hands‐on approach is a primary way they define themselves, and they often point to it as a clear distinguishing feature of their generation. “It seems to me that in older generations, [they have] a very hands‐off approach to funding. ‘We write checks, or we give money, but we are separate from the work that is happening.’ But I want to be very much in relationship to the work that is happening. I don't want to be standing on the sidelines. I want to be part of that work for social change.”
Another donor set up the contrast that while her parents gave out of “obligation to give back,” her generation's approach is “very much about engagement.” And donors like her are proud of this do‐something orientation. They see it as an indispensable part of their generational personality.
Even these members of the generation who have the chance to give substantial treasure still consider giving their time to be more valuable. That's pretty startling when you think about it. If this is their mindset, it points to significant shifts in the nonprofit/major donor relationship in the years to come.
Part of this yearning for on‐the‐ground action stems from a desire for learning. In our survey, we asked donors about various influences on their development as a donor. Seventy‐two percent said “personal experiences as a donor, volunteer, board member, etc.” were “very important” to their learning—clearly the most important influence among a list of options.
Next gen donors say experiences and close relationships make them better donors by giving them more insight into the areas they want to fund and by letting them cultivate the skills and expertise they will use for years to come as major donors. “It's very easy to do this work with your head in the sand. It's a very insular role, the family foundation trustee. You don't have to ‘do’ anything. There's no accountability. You can go to a board meeting once or twice a year and never get outside that bubble. [But getting better] means going out and learning directly. We call our grantees ‘grantee partners’ for a reason. They are how we learn about what is going on in the fields that we're trying to support.”
Victoria Rogers is a next gen donor who believes deeply in volunteering as a path to being a better donor. She is grateful to her parents for providing her opportunities very early in life to contribute her time as well as her wealth and giving her the chance to learn through those experiences. As a child, she attended the well‐known Lab School in Chicago with a diverse group, including then‐Senator Barack Obama's daughters who were a few years younger than Victoria. She learned about philanthropy and investing from her father, who had founded a mutual fund company and became one of the most successful and philanthropic African Americans in the United States. Now working at Kickstarter, Victoria exemplifies how the Millennial Generation thinks about the groups they work with. They want to “see behind the curtain” and “feel close to the work.”
Victoria's story illustrates how this hands‐on, do‐something approach of next gen donors is often tied to their early and ongoing explorations of self. They aren't just excited about this approach because it feels more real and rewarding, though that matters. They are excited about it because it helps them figure out how they, as individuals, are best suited to doing the good they want to do in the world.
Looking for a Real Relationship
Victoria also illustrates how and why next gen donors crave authentic relationships with people doing real work for the greater good. We heard this wish for close connections from many next gen donors. One said he won't give money unless the organization can “connect me with someone I can talk to on the inside.” Another talked about wanting to have “ongoing engagement and investment of who I am and my time and my resources” so that he can “become part of the community” of the groups he supports.
Next gen donors seek to connect not just with the leadership of organizations but also with the people on the front lines doing the work and even (when possible) the beneficiaries of the work. This makes giving so much more fulfilling for them and impactful for the organizations. “I am more of a mile‐wide, hundred‐miles‐deep guy, where you just get to know everybody very well, you have a very close relationship, you really believe in the organization, and your money just makes a big impact on that organization,” says one donor.
The relationship next gen donors seek is not only a “hundred miles deep” but also long‐term. One described it as an enduring investment, explaining, “We're investing in a relationship. We're investing in a partnership with people who have shared goals.” For many, having deep relationships means imposing limits. A donor who described turning down numerous requests to serve on boards said he did so because “I'm super committed to this one organization [and] I don't take board duty very lightly.”
Like all relationships, for these partnerships to work they need to be open, honest, and transparent. Next gen donors highly value being shown the inner workings of the organization, the full picture of the groups they are funding, “warts and all,” just as Victoria did after Creative Time's director left to take another position and the remaining staff rallied.
Authentic relationships build trust, next gen donors insist, and the most effective giving partnerships require that sort of trust. Conversely, these donors say they are very aware when they are not entrusted with the full story. “If you're in philanthropy in any way, whether you're on the fundraising side or the giving side, you can sniff out bullshit. People are imperfect; they make mistakes. They are not going to get it right every time. If it looks that way then it would be manufactured. You can see straight through that when someone is not being genuine.”
While next gen donors' desire to have such close relationships can be of great benefit to the nonprofits on the other side of the partnership, this closeness also makes it harder to keep the relationship strong. This was abundantly clear in one donor's story about a partnership that went awry:
It wasn't on purpose, like “We're cutting her out.” They just had such poor management of their communications that once I wasn't regularly interacting with them, I just wasn't a priority anymore. It was like, “I'm a person, right? If I'm not a priority to you, after all of these years and time and money and sweat and tears that I have contributed, how am I supposed to invest in you? It is a relationship; you have to be willing to invest in me as I'm investing in you.” We talk a lot about Millennial donors and impact, but I actually think it's not just impact, it's relationships. I know dating is, like, the worst metaphor, but you have to have a relationship with these [donors] for 20 or 30 years, so you have to think about that and actually care about them as people. Know when their birthday is.
With Great Power Comes Great Responsibility
A big barrier to achieving these sorts of close, honest, productive relationships is, of course, the fact that the donors inherently hold greater power because they ultimately make the decisions about who and what gets funded. Even when the donor is a hands‐on partner working side by side with staff and other volunteers, it is hard to ignore this reality.
Many next gen donors yearning for close engagement in their giving recognize this and are looking for ways to work through the power dynamics. For some, like Mary Galeti, the key is acknowledging that power dynamic and understanding the role she plays in it. “I try to manage expectations and be modest about what role I actually play as a funder. This means being an equal with our grantees, acknowledging that our grantees are the ones who are actually producing the work and I am just funding it.” For others, working closely and honestly with “people on the ground” and touching their experiences goes a long way:
How do you break down the barriers that exist among people and create the possibility for real collaboration, real partnership, mutual exchange, and mutual creation of value? I hope [this happens when] others are forced out of their comfort zone, when their own sense of comfort and being is disrupted by the experience of a radical encounter with people who are different from them, people who suffer and people who are poor and disempowered and disenfranchised. I think empathy is the most powerful force in our world, and you don't develop empathy by writing checks. If anything, it has the opposite effect, because you write a check and you think, “Oh, I'm a powerful person.”
For others, the key is listening—really hearing what the grantees have to say: “It is important to be in long‐term, sustainable relationships with the people and organizations you give to. The communities that are experiencing injustice or systemic issues are the ones who best know how to solve those issues. And as people with resources, our call is to deeply listen to those people, not try to dictate their actions.”
Perhaps the most common suggestion for dealing with the power dynamics, though, is the time‐honored relationship advice to be honest and open, and to speak frankly.
No matter what you say, [nonprofits] are always going to treat you like you hold the power because in the end, you kind of do. I try to be really honest and express that we're not looking for perfection. We understand that things aren't always going to go your way, and that doesn't mean we aren't going to fund you anymore. I always try to keep really open lines of communication, to show that we are genuinely invested and support what they're doing. It's building a relationship that's more friendly than, “I'm holding a check over your head.”
Another donor echoed this worry about being seen as taking advantage of her power. Avoiding this image requires regularly “checking in, just to make sure that what you're doing and how you're engaged with that nonprofit is not suffocating. I think it's trying to have a more honest connection with the people you're supporting. I don't want to be a ‘helicopter funder.’”
Hannah Quimby thinks a lot about these relationship challenges, in part because she's been on both sides of the relationship. A woman who grew up “living simply” with modest means, Hannah has now found herself in charge of a well‐known foundation—and part of a well‐known family—that is one of the biggest funders in her home state of Maine. But she also has experience as a volunteer and staffer for a nonprofit. She knows on‐the‐ground experience is the best way to learn how to be more effective. Now, as a funder, she takes the same approach. She wants to get out of the office to see the work firsthand. In this way, she embodies the hands‐on approach that is a hallmark of this next generation of donors.
Hannah aims to get close to the organizations her family funds. She doesn't want to just read their applications, make a decision about funding, and then send checks and wait for reports at the end of the grant cycles. Instead, she wants to meet the volunteers, listen to the staff leaders, have candid conversations about strategy and problem‐solving, and see the impact they're making as they make it. She's even willing to open herself to their critiques. Unlike the tendencies of her mother's generation, this, for Hannah, feels like a more authentic and effective philanthropic relationship. It feels like the best way to work through the power dynamics.
Engaged Donors Are Bigger, Better Donors
The upside of next gen donors wanting to be so directly engaged is that they are convinced that this actually, as Hannah noted, makes them both bigger and better donors.
Another interviewee who was part of a group of cousins beginning to get more involved in their family foundation's decision‐making said they were pushing for all the family trustees to volunteer for the groups that received the biggest checks, to be sure “that it's going to the right place, to the right people, where it can make a big difference.” Others said they used volunteering as a way to decide whether to give big: “My strategy has been to volunteer with them first a little bit, because I want to get to know the people behind the name of the organization. I may give a smaller gift and actually see how they treat that gift, and then slowly deepen the relationship.”
This can end up being good news for those nonprofits that engage donors well. While it means nonprofits need to open up more and spend more of their limited time with donors, it can pay off. One donor insisted that to be a “responsible” donor he needed to be “very actively involved in those organizations I give to. I want to see financials, know the staff, and know the board. There is no substitute for direct involvement.” So what's the pay off? As Jenna Segal, an active board member and donor, says in her profile in Chapter 6, this hands‐on approach means that while “I'm probably going to be more of a pain in the ass, I'm also going to give them more money.”
Many of the donors we spoke with pointed to this approach as a paradigm shift—from donors telling nonprofits what they have to do to get money, to nonprofits telling donors what they need money for. This next gen donor said responsible and responsive giving is “about listening to what people really need who are in communities that are more removed from power and disenfranchised, not just saying that we think we know what they need.”
As we saw in Chapter 2, next gen donors want to see the impact of their giving. This desire motivates them to give more and shows them how to give for more impact. What better way to see impact than to be a hands‐on volunteer, meet regularly with the staff, or connect with beneficiaries in some way? As one donor insists, “Experiencing it with your own hands and eyes is a must.” Another explains, “What I always tell other young people who are getting involved in philanthropy [is], ‘You have to go see the groups you are working with.’ Because you can read the most compelling proposals in the world, and you can go to their websites and you can look at pictures, but if you don't actually meet the people and talk to them and hear their stories, there is a disconnect.”
For some, the biggest benefit of volunteering for the groups you fund is to be sure you are getting an authentic, complete picture—again, seeing the work, as one put it, “warts and all.” “I think there is a really powerful connection from actually rolling your sleeves up and getting in on the ground and using that to inform how you allocate your ‘treasure.’ Because if you are just sitting back and writing checks, I think it's very, very difficult and challenging to really understand how a nonprofit works. I think [in] the standard site visit there is some risk of them sort of prettying up the pony when the donor comes.”
What Does This Mean?
So what does it mean when the major funders of the causes we care about expect to have close, sustained relationships with the organizations they support? For one, it means they will be much more high maintenance and high touch donors than previous generations, who were more comfortable giving money from a distance.
With the Do Something Generation, nonprofits will have to retool how they engage donors and rethink what counts as donor engagement. Engagement will be less about lavish galas once a year, direct mail drives, and token seats on symbolic boards. It will be more about hands‐on volunteering and regular meetings focused on the most difficult organizational challenges. It will be about cultivating the candid, authentic relationships these next gen donors crave—what one donor called a “two‐way dialogue and partnership.”
Gen Xers and Millennials are calibrated to detect cynicism, though, so nonprofits that manufacture empty opportunities for engagement or try to pander to the egos of next gen donors won't be well received.3 An active donor we feature in Chapter 7, Jenna Weinberg, laments this problem:
I feel like I've gone to too many places where I've wanted to volunteer and some organization has made up a volunteer opportunity for me as an “engagement tool” rather than something that's actually helpful to the organization. We can see right through that. And I feel like if more organizations are able to create real, meaningful volunteer opportunities—ones that are actually in line with the organization's mission—it will allow people to become more hands‐on and feel like they're part of the organization's work beyond writing a check.
The good news for all of us, though, is that when next gen donors do feel connected and engaged in a genuine way, they can become the biggest and best supporters an organization has ever had—and could remain so for decades. The relationships they have are likely to be long‐term and perhaps even exclusive, with donors committing most or all of their unprecedented resources, time and treasure both, to a small handful of groups they believe in. And having loyal, dedicated major donors like these means considerably more resources potentially will flow steadily to the good solutions, good causes, and good nonprofits.
There is positive news here as well for those who might still be worried that the next gen in philanthropic families, when they take the reins, will stop funding the local organizations and causes their families have long supported. As we described in Chapter 3, while the next gen is highly aware of international causes and global non‐governmental organizations (NGOs), and less rooted in a single community than previous generations, they still want to give to local organizations and their hometown communities. We can understand this impulse more now that we know just how passionate they are about getting close to the work. Simply put, it is harder to be deeply engaged on the ground with organizations on the other side of the globe.
Another benefit might be a growing willingness among donors to support the core organizational budget and capacity of nonprofit organizations—funding operations, not just programs—a possibility we discussed in Chapter 2. Too often this debate pits nonprofit advocates (in favor of overhead funding) against donors (in favor of targeted funding). But donors who are closely involved in the inner workings of the organizations they support might bridge this divide. Like in Victoria's story about being a better board member when she knew intimately the inner workings of an organization, more engaged donors can understand better the need for core operational support and see the organization's point of view.
For these relationships to work, though, the donors will have to remember the warnings we heard here about hubris or suffocation. They will need to keep the inherent power divide in mind, to check in with their partners on the other side of the funding table, and, above all, to listen to what people and organizations really need. If they do, we can all enjoy the potentially enormous benefits of having highly engaged, well‐informed, active big donors.
