Disconnect

The generational shift in the non-profit sector

I’m one of those persons who spends countless hours learning from the web. I think the internet is the university of the 21st century. That is, if you can filter the nonsense and the ridiculous without starting to believe everything that you read. More and more, I find myself keying in entire questions over simple keywords when I’m googling for new subjects. The reason is that I’m looking for ultra-specific information, and I’m not the only one. I’m sure most of you are as well. Having recently co-founded a travel agency specialized in overseas fundraising expeditions, I found myself searching more often than ever trying to find solutions that would help our clients with fundraising in this world of social media and online giving. Unfortunately, I wasn’t really finding what I was looking for. This meant one of two things, either what I’m looking for is irrelevant, or there are very few people writing about it. I doubt the first option applies so lets analyze the second one.

Before we go any further, I will let you in on what I believe is the topic everybody is questioning themselves quietly about…shh! Have you heard of the generational shift in the non-profit sector? I like to compare this inevitable crisis with how people in power assess climate change. Without going in depth on why, lets just say that they see this as a problem to be left for the following generations. It’s a blend of denial and unaccountability, or we can use the common expression to turn a blind eye. It’s the elephant in the room that everybody denies or wishes weren’t there. Life would be much easier without it.

Now to be fair, I would be lying if I said there wasn’t any info on this inevitable shift, there’s a lot. It’s a statistically undeniable fact [as is climate change] but the true question is how to tackle it. The obvious way is adaptation but this means change and change means, well it means changing what we’ve been doing for the past months, years or decades. And this scares most of non-profit execs [further info on this ahead]. Now let’s get back to that second option I mentioned earlier. A great deal of factors come into play as to why very few people are building solutions addressing this problem, and I highly recommend a great read that goes through most of why this is left unturned. To tackle something as big as a generational shift, the non-profit sector needs to be able to take risks. Without this, nothing can emerge.

So here I am one evening, thinking -”maybe I should write about it”. Why? The great majority of topics and opinions being discussed in non-profit blogs and websites are for lack of a better word, old school.

This is not a surprise seeing that as of 2012, 80% of non-profit CEOs and 94% of board members are over 40 with most of them being between 50 and 64.

This means that there’s a serious generational gap between non-profit management and it’s foreseeable soon to be Gen X and Gen Y donor base. Generally speaking, current topics are influenced by facts/statistics, which we all know can be interpreted in a multitude of ways, reflects the past instead of intent. Intent is where the solution lies. This issue plays a seriously negative role. Take for example this made up statistics;

Data shows that 60% of travellers use Highway 1 to go to New York from Montreal. Travellers also used H2 (30%) and H3 (7%) to get to their intended destination.

The obvious fact is that H1 has the most travellers using it to get to New York. Right? Some would also conclude that H1 is the most popular way to get to New York. False! This is where most people get it wrong by confusing facts with intent. It’s not because 60% of people use H1 that it is the best or most popular way to get to one’s destination. Can it simply be because it’s the only direct route? Or that it’s the most scenic route? But what if we asked questions like “why did you use H1?” and “if you were to travel to New York, which route would you prefer to take?” to those travellers, could we get insight into those statistics?

Let me just say that when you dig deeper, you get a totally different landscape to what we know or are being told to think of the state of the non-profit space. More on this in a later post.

Having been involved in the charitable sector for almost a decade now, I feel that those subjects intrigue me most. I feel that a lot of non-profit organizations would love to better understand where the sector is going and also find technological ways to reach the next giving generation but just don’t know how and in return ends up not being able to ask the right questions.

Making philanthropy more accessible to current and future generations is my mission. I believe that deep down, people long to be part of the solution so I decided to work on a radically new approach to social engagement that could eliminate the friction that too often drives us to look away instead of taking action. And it might just be the solution everybody is waiting for.