Council on Foundations

Welcome to our special guest blog post series - "Millennial Perspectives: Voices of a Giving Generation." We hope you will join us each week until the Millennial Donor Summit on June 22, 2011, as we explore Millennial engagement with a variety of leading experts and practitioners.

This week, we've invited Andrew Ho, Manager of Global Philanthropy for the Council on Foundations to share his insights on how Millennial engagement is being redefined here in the US and around the world.

Philanthropy, much as with other things today, has stepped on the accelerator in terms of becoming a global phenomenon. The amount of charitable donations going overseas and to US-based international programs has doubled since 2003, according to the Foundation Center. The rise of philanthropy among the world’s wealthiest in the most recent Forbes survey of the top philanthropists now includes individuals from India (Azim Premji), Mexico (Carlos Slim), China (Li Ka-shing), Germany (Dietmar Hopp and Klaus Tschira), and Switzerland (Steven Schmidheiny). This is yet another example of the global nature of philanthropy now.

It is no coincidence that the rise of global philanthropy mirrors the growth of the millennial generation. Millennials are more connected, cognizant, and committed to tackling society’s ongoing challenges of a global scope than any generation before them. Technology and social media certainly facilitates the increase in connectedness and knowledge – and millennials have grown up in an age where the Internet has always existed. Now there are the tools to not only know what’s going on but know who else is passionate about global issues of the environment, poverty, global health, and education at a speed and on a scale that wasn’t previously achievable. The knowledge and connections spanning the globe – through study abroad trips in college, volunteering for a short-term stint in a developing country, or backpacking the world in a gap year, have led to higher levels of knowledge about the world, but more importantly a higher commitment to solve challenges in today’s world.  Philanthropy increasingly reflects this changing worldview as well, with more and more young people volunteering and making charitable donations.

Global philanthropy is no longer only writing a check or making a grant and sitting back to wait for the results–it is becoming much more involved than that.  Global philanthropy is drawing from the best of the sectors, and collaborating to find solutions.  Social stock markets, social impact bonds, and other hybrid solutions drawing from each of the three sectors demonstrate the merging, melding, and blurring of the business, government and nonprofit sectors. It isn’t so much about which sector or industry is responsible for solutions anymore, it is recognizing that any one cannot achieve success alone, and that it requires networks of committed citizens across the sectors to work together to develop solutions.  Bridging the gaps and increasing philanthropy's impact by breaking down traditional barriers of class, race, sector, and wealth are a work in progress, as are the development of new forms of philanthropy. Each country and culture affects philanthropy, and we all have much to learn from one another as we form our respective ethos of philanthropy.  

The Council on Foundations is committed to developing the next generation of philanthropic leaders and preparing them to take on positions of increasing leadership in the philanthropic sector. Whether through the Career Pathways program, the Next Generation Task Force, or through publications like Trading Power, the Council recognizes and values the development of new leadership in the philanthropic sector. Working with the Council are groups including 21/64, Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, Resource Generation, and others are working together with under-40 philanthropic leaders around the world to make a difference. We are also working alongside groups in Brazil, Mexico, and China as they develop the next generation of philanthropic leaders in their respective country. Global philanthropy has tremendous potential for social change in the coming years, as philanthropy raises new leaders to increase collaboration across philanthropy, across borders, and across sectors.  

The philanthropic sector, at a young 100 years old, stands to grow tremendously in the second 100 years through new ways of communication, collaboration, and cooperation. By building trust, sharing knowledge, developing relationships, and strengthening the collective vision toward shared goals for a better society tomorrow, together this generation can extend philanthropy’s impact in pursuit of a better future, for all of us.

Last week I had the pleasure of participating in and presenting at the Council on Foundation’s Family Philanthropy Conference. Our time together in New York came to an end with an intimate and heartfelt conversation with Tim Shriver, board chair and CEO of Special Olympics. Just days after the passing of his father, iconic public servant Robert "Sargent" Shriver, Tim shared with us his take on what philanthropy means to him in the context of his family. His words were wrought with passion, especially as he was asked about his own children and what he hoped to pass on to them. Shriver said he believes, “we have failed at inspiring the big ideas of the next generation” and that we need to do more to create a “context of idealism” for our young people.

His words struck me, and as a “senior” member of the generation he’s referring to, I think he might have been too hard on himself and his generation. Growing up, Tim was surrounded by big ideas and idealism. After all, his father helped found and direct the Peace Corps 50 years ago, and his mother created the Special Olympics in the backyard of their home. These are the big ideas that inspired Tim and his brothers and sisters to follow in their parents footsteps. But not everyone’s parents are Sargent and Eunice Kennedy Shriver, and despite our parents or in some cases grandparents who were inspired to march on Washington or join organizations like the Peace Corps, many of the big challenges they were fighting for (or against) remain to this day -- not to mention the new ones that have been added to the mix. With that in mind, I say to Tim, don’t be so hard on yourself. The rising generation is inspired to fight the good fight – we just have a different way of going about it.

Perhaps we forget that it’s the Millennial generation who in large part moved social technologies into the mainstream – and are now moving them to mobilize around social issues through platforms like Facebook and Twitter. We were the first segment of users who discovered the utility of the technology and exploited it in ways that our parents would have never dreamed. Perhaps this quality of creative thinking when it comes to technology, comes from not being taught or forced into institutional thinking or traditional business cultures, but instead by living lives in a very open and transparent ways -- always searching for answers and willing to take risks. Something that parents like Tim allowed us to do.

One of the most retweeted messages from last week’s conference were Tim’s words, “you don’t have to do great things – but do small things with great love.” So, Tim and anyone else who might be reading this and feeling as though you failed at inspiring the rising generation – don’t be so hard on yourselves – we’re inspired. We’re going to continue to innovate and we’re going to continue to live open lives that defy traditional institutions and explore creative ways to come together in support of the causes that move us. And, even if they are a bunch of small disparate things that don’t add up to big national movements – we’ll do them with love, and then we’ll tweet about it.