Can Institutions Survive? Should They Survive?

In their professional lives, Millennials are wary of institutions, even when they run them. They crave genuine relations, and can instinctively sense when they aren’t there. How will this influence the current and future development of institutions?

The rise of fantasy sports teams is a fitting analogy for the challenge that Millennials have working within traditional, hierarchical institutional structures. As much fluidity as there is in today’s professional sports leagues, the Yankees at least play for their team during a game, and the Red Sox play for theirs. However, young people have been the driving force behind fantasy sports leagues where individual performances are tracked and trump those of their teams.

Lance Bennett writes, “Many scholars have discovered a shift in value patterns in postindustrial democracies in which people (particularly younger citizens) are more inclined to become interested in personally meaningful, lifestyle-related political issues, rather than party or ideological programs.”

Millennials value peer relationships over institutional loyalty. This has profound implications for activist organizations accustomed to support from their donors over long periods of time. Young people are unlikely to be lifelong donors to their local United Way or Sierra Club. They will engage enthusiastically in specific campaigns about which they feel passionate, but their institutional support is likely to vanish once that campaign ends.

Institutions are necessary to offer expertise, focus efforts, provide institutional memory for communities, and lead issues. But they will need to look, feel, and actually be quite different to successfully engage Millennials. That said, simply changing how they operate does not provide carte blanche for institutions to outlive their usefulness.

Millennials can be instrumental in questioning and assessing when and why institutions are needed to address causes, and when a protest campaign or a blog will do. The larger issue of how institutions will be structured and organized in the Connected Age is an ongoing process.