Next Gen Donors report and the Next Gen Donors: The Future of Jewish Giving report: Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation, Joyce and Irving Goldman Family Foundation, Eugene and Agnes E. Meyer Foundation, Morningstar Foundation, and an anonymous donor.
The research phase and dissemination of the first report was enabled by a network of partner organizations across the country: Association of Small Foundations (now Exponent Philanthropy), Association of Baltimore Area Grantmakers, Bolder Giving (now part of the National Center for Responsive Philanthropy), Council on Foundations, Council of Michigan Foundations, Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy, Forum of Regional Association of Grantmakers, Grand Street, GrantCraft, Indiana Grantmakers Alliance (now Indiana Philanthropy Alliance), Jewish Communal Fund, Jewish Funders Network, Jumpstart, Liberty Hill Foundation, The Minneapolis Foundation, National Center for Family Philanthropy, and Resource Generation.
Our deep gratitude to those close colleagues – past and present – in our organizations who supported this work over several years. To Danielle Oristian York, Barbara Taylor, Sara Finkelstein, Adina Schwartz, Erin Trottier, and Jos Thalheimer at 21/64; and to Tara Baker, Alicia Chiasson, Andrew Claucherty, Julie Couturier, Sherri Hall, Bev Harkema, Katie Kirouac, Allison Lugo Knapp, Pattijean McCahill, Heidi McPheeters, Mark Saint Amour, and Robert Shalett at the Johnson Center, we were privileged to have had you with us on this journey and thank you for your invaluable contributions along the way.
Thanks also to many other colleagues in this field whose experience, advice, and referrals played a role in the development of the book: Michael Balaoing, Rachel Bendit, Fredda Herz Brown, Chris Cardona, Leslie Crutchfield, Emily Davis, Adrienne DiCasparro, Coventry Edwards‐Pitt, Derrick Feldmann, Jason Franklin, Ellie Frey, Mary Galeti, Joline Godfrey, Annie Hernandez, Andy Ho, Jay Hughes, Shawn Landres, Laura Lauder, Terri Mosqueda, Satya Patel, Ellen Perry, Ai‐Jen Poo, Amy Rabbino, Nitika Raj, Ana Gloria Rivas‐Vazquez, Roselma Samala, Katherine Scott, Paul Shoemaker, Doug Bitonti Stewart, David Stillman, Jennifer Stout, Urvashi Vaid, Jan Williams, Richard Woo, and Kim Wright.
This book was also made possible by a crack team of editors, designers, and other consultants. Our deepest gratitude to Heidi Toboni, who was a passionate and indispensable partner throughout the entire process – our best reader and savviest advisor. Huge thank you also to Lisa Zuniga, Laurie Fink, Karen Berry, Collette Shin, Peter Ruchti, Mark Fortier, and Mary Franklyn. Thanks also to Brian Neill, our editor at Wiley, for such enthusiasm about the project – and for putting up with all our quirky details.
Last but most significantly, special thanks from each of us individually.
From Sharna:
Since our initial discussion in Philadelphia's Reading Terminal in 2011, Michael, it's been a pleasure to collaborate. I look forward to our next project. Thanks Mom and Dad for instilling in me the spirit of giving and inviting me to the multigenerational philanthropy table. Simon, thank you for being the best husband and partner a next gen could want. And Owen and Sasha, you are my inspiration. I love you all.
From Michael:
Thanks to Sharna, for embracing this partnership in the best spirit I could have hoped for – with genuine goodwill, trust, and (alas) patience. Unending thanks to my family, who taught me from the time I could open my eyes that giving with an open heart and eyes is what good humans do, regardless of how much you have to give. And much love and thanks to my wife, Karen Zivi, for the encouragement, solace, and distraction whenever each was needed.
CHAPTER 1
Introduction: The Most Significant Philanthropists Ever
Justin Rockefeller grew up in West Virginia outside the purview of the family legacy of capitalism and philanthropy. Invited to a meeting at a café near Rockefeller Center in New York City as a college freshman, he actually had to ask where Rockefeller Center was. But during college, Justin began to appreciate the doors his last name could open and the opportunities he had to effect change for good. He has since worked to help one of his family's foundations divest its charitable endowment holdings of fossil fuels – a remarkable move for America's most famous oil family. Now in his 30s, Justin devotes a significant percentage of his time beyond his tech career to helping other families align their investments with their values.
Katherine Lorenz's grandfather, the late George Mitchell, became a noted Texas billionaire by pioneering the use of hydraulic fracturing to release natural gas from shale. But Katherine started her own career far away from the family business, creating and running an agricultural and nutrition nonprofit in rural Mexico. She eventually returned to take the reins of her family's foundation, guiding the family through a planning process to ramp up their support for environmental sustainability causes in Texas.
John R. Seydel grew up in Atlanta learning about giving from his parents and grandparents, in particular from his “Grandpa Ted” Turner, the media titan and founder of CNN who donated a billion dollars to create the U.N. Foundation. Together, they travel to tour the family's vast tracts of preserved open space in the American West and go on “learning journeys” to witness the impact of their international giving. Now a college graduate, John R. is determined to carve out his own identity as a donor and social entrepreneur. He knows he has big shoes to fill, and he wants to walk his own path in them.
Most readers have likely never heard of Justin, Katherine, or John R. So why should it matter to us what they do or what they want for the future?
We should care because men and women like these three will shape our world in profound ways.
America's next generation of major donors, whether young Gen Xers or rising Millennials, will have an outsized impact on society and the planet we share, as people like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller did in years past and as people like Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett are doing now – likely even more impact. Men and women we call “next gen donors” – inheritors like Justin, Katherine, and John R. as well as those from their generation who are earning their own wealth – will decide which diseases get the most research funding, which environmental organizations launch the biggest awareness campaigns, which new ideas for education reform are incubated around the country. And those decisions will impact, directly and daily, our health, our communities, our economies, our culture, and even our climate.
In fact, if current trends in wealth and giving continue, these rising major donors will be the most significant philanthropists ever. They not only have unprecedented financial resources but also big plans for how to wield their financial power. Simply put, they want to change giving in ways that will fundamentally transform philanthropy. And they want to do so now rather than wait until they accumulate all the wealth they can and then retire to a life of philanthropic leisure.
We need to get to know these next gen donors – find out what they're about and figure out how to engage them – so we can know what to expect from their emerging philanthropic revolution. More important, we need to make sure their historic potential is channeled in ways that make our world better, not worse. In this book, you'll meet these young men and women and learn about their ambitious plans to irrevocably alter the nonprofit organizations and social causes we care about. You'll hear them struggle to “find themselves” as philanthropists; you'll hear them make their case for a bigger role as rising leaders who simultaneously want to revolutionize the future while respecting the past.
Big Donors, Big Impact
Like most readers of this book, you probably have an idea of what a “philanthropist” looks like. You might assume philanthropists are wealthy older people who attend fancy galas. They give money and serve on boards, rarely rolling up their sleeves and pitching in to help when and where it's needed most. And while it's nice that they give away money, it mostly goes to causes that matter to wealthy older people like them. Their giving doesn't really make a difference to the problems you see every day in your community or the issues you are passionate about. Unless you visit a museum on your fifth‐grader's field trip or find yourself in a fancy wing of a big hospital, how philanthropists give doesn't really affect your daily life that much.
But this portrait of a philanthropist is way off,