Generation Impact: How Next Gen Donors Are Revolutionizing Giving

By Michael Moody and Sharna Goldseker

An insider's guide to the coming philanthropic revolution

Meet the next generation of big donors—the Gen X and Millennial philanthropists who will be the most significant donors ever and will shape our world in profound ways. Hear them describe their ambitious plans to revolutionize giving so it achieves greater impact. And learn how to help them succeed in a world that needs smart, effective donors now more than ever.

As "next gen donors" step into their philanthropic roles, they have not only unprecedented financial resources, but also big ideas for how to wield their financial power. They want to disrupt the traditional world of charitable giving, and they want to do so now, not after they retire to a life of philanthropic leisure.

Generation Impact: How Next Gen Donors Are Revolutionizing Giving pulls back the curtain on these rising next gen donors and the "Impact Revolution" they seek, offering extensive firsthand accounts and expert analysis of their hands-on, boundary-pushing strategies, as well as their determination to honor the legacies they've inherited and the values they hold.

This Updated and Expanded edition includes new, practical resources designed to help those who work with next gen donors to engage with them in even more productive and effective ways – to help them become the sort of transformational donors we all need them to be in this pivotal time. Three Best Practice Guides offer targeted tips for key audiences – nonprofits and fundraisers, families, and advisors – and introduce new data and additional featured donors. A new Preface answers the most pressing questions asked by the thousands of readers already energized by Generation Impact, including what has changed in the world in recent years and how these influential emerging donors are responding.

Adapting to the revolution that next gen donors are bringing may not be easy, but this book can help.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Wiley
• Release date: Sep 30, 2020
• ISBN: 9781119746461

Book preview

PREFACE TO THE UPDATED AND EXPANDED EDITION

When Generation Impact was first published in October of 2017, we said we wanted to pull back the curtain to reveal the aspirations and inclinations of the next generation of major donors—a group with unprecedented resources and ardent ambitions that we predicted would become the most significant philanthropists ever. While many had written and talked about these donors, and most believed they needed to understand them better, few had talked with them. Our research was the first of its kind to listen to next gen donors and report in their own words why and how they want to give as well as where they plan to take philanthropy in the future.

As it turned out, many people were eager to learn what we had discovered from these rising Gen X and Millennial donors. We are humbled and delighted that we are nearing 15,000 copies of the book now in the hands of people who want to better understand and engage next gen donors—philanthropic families and professionals, fundraisers, nonprofit board members, a broad array of advisors serving high-net-worth individuals, and others. We have given nearly 100 talks to thousands of people. Countless others have read media interviews, listened to podcasts, and participated in webinars and workshops where we've discussed this group we call Generation Impact. In addition to the original hardcover and e-book version, there is now an audiobook (which led to the pleasant surprise that many of our colleagues and friends are secret audiobook enthusiasts).

But the numbers are not the most compelling evidence that the book has been as valuable as we had hoped. More powerful and heartening are the stories we hear from people who have used it to improve their good work. We've heard from older family foundation trustees who say they gave copies to everyone on their board and staff to read and discuss. We've talked to advisors and fundraisers who say it became their team's roadmap to changing their strategies for working with next gen donors and clients. We've been on panels with next gen donors who say, This is what I've been trying to tell my family for years now or "I'm glad people can now see what my generation really wants, not what they think we want. One next gen donor even joked, Get out of my head!"

The fact that our book has resonated with so many readers is, of course, delightful to hear as it would be for any author. But the primary reason we started this research several years ago was the realization that, as we wrote in Chapter 1 of Generation Impact, America's next generation of major donors, whether young Gen Xers or rising Millennials, will have an outsized impact on society and the planet.¹ Their decisions, and the ways they give, will directly affect every cause and every community—even our climate. In fact, even more evidence has emerged since we originally published the book to indicate they will be the most significant philanthropists ever.²

This is an urgent moment both because of the critical nature of the global and social problems we have to confront and because these historically important donors are at a crucial stage in their development. They are right now going through the process of forging their philanthropic identities—identities that will guide them as they deploy their considerable resources now and going forward.

If Generation Impact can be helpful in this pivotal time, especially with all that has happened in 2020, we will have achieved our aim.

In fact, we hope this updated edition can be even more useful as it includes several additional resources designed explicitly to provide practical guidance to complement and expand on the in-depth analysis of the original book. We hope readers like you will find insights you can apply to your own situation, whatever that may be.

This updated edition of Generation Impact includes the full text of the original book, a discussion guide, and three Best Practice Guides offering specific suggestions for three key audiences: nonprofits and fundraisers, families, and advisors. Each guide is organized around seven to ten best practices, based on the original data and findings in the book, but with sharper attention to practical steps and tips. Each guide brings in some new data and includes new featured donors. In all, these new resources add about 25 percent more material to the book, and we hope they will provide you with some targeted takeaways regardless of where you sit at the philanthropic table.

While expanded, this isn't a revised edition of the book because we didn't feel the original content needed major edits. In fact, we are even more confident now that the picture of next gen donors presented in the book—how they want to learn and innovate, how they hope to engage in new ways with organizations as well as with their own families, how they see themselves as both different and similar from previous generations—remains accurate, despite the fact that these donors are in a significant stage of becoming. In fact, since Generation Impact was published, there have been a lot of indications—from our peers, from informal feedback, from other sources—that confirm our findings and interpretations.

That said, we do feel it's beneficial to offer here some additional insights on four of the most common questions we've received from readers. If you are new to this book, then it might be best to return to the sections below after you finish the original text.

What Does Generation Impact Mean by Impact?

The first question we often get from people as they learn about Generation Impact is one we address quite a bit in these chapters. This question is: You say these next gen donors are obsessed with making an impact, but how do they think about impact really? How do they define it? Do they want to measure it, and if so, how? Do they agree on what impact means? These questions around impact are so important it is worth discussing in more depth here.

The short answer is that this cohort of next gen major donors does not have a single definition of impact. The only thing the donors all seem to agree on is that they want to see the impact of their contributions. For some, impact is reflected in the faces of kids in a classroom or in a photo of the entrepreneur in Bangladesh who received a grant. For others, impact is the spreadsheet showing a decrease in people experiencing poverty in their hometown.

To some people, the answer it depends on the donor, but they know it when they see it is surely frustrating. We feel, however, this variable definition of impact actually helps avoid what could otherwise be a terribly unfair expectation by next gen donors that every organization demonstrate some single or rigid indicator of impact. The obsession with seeing impact already puts some potential partners and causes at a disadvantage. It is easier to see the faces of kids in a classroom than to see how many of those kids were prevented from experiencing homelessness. It is easier to see an increase in the accessibility of local parks than to see a change in global climate conditions over a decade. It is easier to see the impact on a small start-up than on a massive, sprawling organization. Therefore, having the option of defining impact in ways that fit a particular cause, a specific nonprofit's mission, or how an individual donor defines impact can still satisfy this obsession while allowing organizations the flexibility to adjust the meaning of impact to their own mission and goals.

Does this mean that defining impact must be done on an individual basis, donor by donor? It is never a bad idea for major donors and the groups they support to define together what impact they want to achieve—this is one of our chief recommendations. But next gen donors are also open to adopting the definition and measurement of impact that works for the organization and the context, so long as that meaning of impact is made clear and they can see some indicators of progress toward that goal. For some organizations, this may mean developing new measures for results they are trying to achieve—for example, counting the number of women in leadership roles in the community. For others, this may simply mean being more transparent about the impacts of their work that they are aware of but have not made visible. If the clearest indicator is internal—for example, new program staff hired, expansion of existing work in new communities—that is still an impact donors can see.

For large organizations or those working toward long-term or systemic change, it is essential to identify short-term milestones or easily noted indicators of that longer-term, larger-scale transformation. Our research suggests that next gen donors will, in fact, stick around to keep working toward a long-term impact if they see signs of progress. These generations are often unfairly derided for seeking only instant gratification, but we found they are willing to be patient, to be enduring partners, if they see that the organization is on the road to success. The key is to be engaged and transparent with next gen donors. They may want fundamental systems change, but they will be energized and motivated by seeing a single victory as a step toward that change.

Another way to think about this is that while Gen X and Millennial donors want their generation to be defined by the impact their giving was able to achieve, they don't need that to be a single kind of impact. Generation Impact really means Generation Impacts.

What Are the Differences Between Inheritors and Earners?

A second popular question people asked as we presented the book around the country—and sometimes outside the United States—had to do with inheritors versus earners. The research behind Generation Impact included both types of next gen donors—those who could give significant amounts because of inheritance (either personal inheritance and/or a role in a family giving vehicle) and those who could give big because of their own wealth creation. Many people wondered how that plays out, specifically: Does the source of a next gen donor's wealth affect how they approach giving and what kind of donor they want to be?

The answer, again, is yes and no, . . . but in interesting ways.

Most of the qualities of next gen donors that we detail in the book are found in both groups without any real discernable difference. Both are more focused on changing the strategies of giving more than the causes they support. For example, we found that inheritors and successful Silicon Valley entrepreneurs alike were funding age-old causes—such as improving education and curing cancer—but using new methods. Both groups are eager to innovate, to try any new tool in the tool belt that might finally move the needle on tough problems. Both want to build close, candid, hands-on, long-term relationships with the groups they support. Both like to learn from and give together with peers. And both are obsessed with impact.

The main difference is in how quickly and fervently the two groups can pursue these passions and explore the new innovations. Earners can start their philanthropic revolution today. They can be disturbance generators, just like many of them have been to create their wealth in the first place. They can boldly step into philanthropy and try new things right away. Of course, this boldness often leads observers to see earners as lacking humility, as suffering from the bull in a china shop syndrome. They sometimes push change so fast it causes problems.

Inheritors, on the other hand, especially those who are giving alongside other generations in their family, typically have to wait to enact their aspirations. These inheritors often do not yet enjoy leadership roles in their families but are still eager to introduce the older generations to new ideas for philanthropic innovation. They just have to do so more gradually. As we describe in the book, these next gen donors within giving families are struggling with the challenge of wanting to innovate for the future while still respecting the past. They want fundamental change, but they also want to be good stewards of family legacy. They are eager to be part of multigenerational teams, not wanting to outright replace older generations, but this often requires a meditation in patience and compromise as they advance slowly toward their goals.

Regardless of their distinct paces, both earners and inheritors are undergoing a process of figuring out their philanthropic identities and coming to terms with what it means to have philanthropic resources and the power to allocate them. This is why we urge families and advisors to encourage this identity formation process, to talk with next gen donors—both the inheritors and earners—about the values guiding their decision-making, and to help them prepare to launch.³

Do These Donors Realize How Difficult They Can Be for Nonprofits? Are They Really Worth the Effort?

We fully acknowledge that next gen donors will be more high maintenance than previous generations of major donors. The changes that these Gen Xers and Millennials seek will have undeniably huge consequences for nonprofits that want to—and must—retool their donor engagement approaches.

Next gen donors want to be hands-on and deeply, meaningfully engaged; this takes staff time and attention. They want to bring in new ideas, and they expect organizations to consider those ideas; this takes patience from nonprofits, and often a willingness to experiment. They want to see evidence of impact; this requires greater transparency, and some evidence is difficult and expensive to demonstrate. The extra time and resources these rising donors require will be easier for some groups to provide than others— for example, smaller nonprofits with limited staff will struggle to do this extra work, especially for a cohort of donors that may not yet be the organization's biggest financial supporters. But all nonprofits will carry a new burden of meeting next gen donors' desires while still stewarding their older donors and pursuing their mission in other ways.

Do these next gen donors realize they require so much extra attention? Sure, some are oblivious to this—or don't worry much about it. This is a real concern that we repeatedly urge these donors to mitigate. And we recommend advisors and older family members help deliver this message of awareness as well.

But we also interviewed a great many next gen donors who were keenly sensitive to both the implications of their preferred ways of engaging and the power dynamics that compel nonprofits to accommodate (and sometimes over-accommodate) these preferences. Many of them continue to struggle with this. Since Generation Impact was first released, many prominent critics—in bestselling books, at Davos, in the New Yorker, on Netflix, and elsewhere—have raised challenging questions about elite philanthropy. We've encountered many next gen donors reading and wrestling with these critiques, discussing the implications for their own behavior with nonprofit partners.

Moreover, the path many of these more self-aware donors took to come to this realization gives hope that others will eventually do the same. This is because in most cases it was the more experienced and savvy next gen donors we talked to who raised the issues of power dynamics and described trying to adjust their ambitions to make things easier for the groups they support. They often talked about coming to this realization as they became closer and more active partners with nonprofits. They came to better appreciate the nonprofit's point of view and were able to have more candid conversations. They learned what the nonprofit truly needed—and when and how to push for changes they felt would help. We can see this in the stories told by Hannah Quimby and Daniel Lurie in this book about how they evolved their strategies to fit what they were learning from their nonprofit partners. This suggests that as next gen donors become more enmeshed with partners—in ways that we know they really want to be—they will actually become more aware of the challenges this involvement brings. They will become better partners.⁴

So, is the type of intensive engagement these next gen donors want really worth the effort? If nonprofits can figure out how to bring next gen donors into the organization in a meaningful way, these donors could become the biggest the organization has ever had. And this will continue for the long haul if the relationship is right. This is why our No. 1 recommendation to nonprofits and fundraisers in the Best Practice Guides is: Don't wait! These donors prefer getting connected early to just a few organizations and sticking with them long term rather than spreading their giving around in smaller amounts to many organizations. If you cultivate your relationships with Gen X and Millennial major donors now, they might just become the most active, best informed, most networked, and most generous partners you've ever had.

What Has Changed in the Last Few Years?

It is an obvious understatement to say that a lot has happened in the world since the data for Generation Impact was collected. The social changes and challenges are particularly dramatic now as we prepare this Updated and Expanded edition in 2020.

We originally surveyed and interviewed these next gen donors before Donald Trump was elected president in 2016, before the shootings at Pulse nightclub or Stoneman Douglas High School or Tree of Life Synagogue, before the #MeToo movement broke our silence about sexual abuse and harassment, before Greta Thunberg inspired young people around the world to become climate activists, before the killings of George Floyd and Breonna Taylor and others shown a new spotlight on police brutality and systemic racism, and of course, before the COVID-19 pandemic.

The social problems and causes that Generation Impact is so eager to tackle have become more poignant and pressing. And the social milieu in which donors must work on those causes has become more polarized and tense. Concerns about social justice, racial inequality, gun violence, sexual harassment and abuse, climate change, and other issues are now more acute and more salient in the minds of people in their twenties and thirties, including those who have the ability to be major funders addressing those issues.

The donors we surveyed for Generation Impact did indicate they already had a somewhat greater focus on certain cause areas, including Civil Rights and Advocacy and Environment and Animal-Related, than their parents and grandparents. And many donors quoted and featured in this book talked a lot about fighting wealth inequality and systemic poverty, funding movements for social justice and human rights, and giving to political organizations. Throughout our research, we observed that, on the whole, these Gen X and Millennial donors are personally committed to ideals like LGBTQ rights, race and gender equity, diversity and inclusion, and climate justice—and these issues absolutely influence their philanthropic work.

We believe that if we gathered the data today, these sorts of topics would likely be even more top-of-mind and these donors would raise them even more often when asked about their giving priorities or how they want to create impact. They would very likely raise questions of racial justice more, share more concerns about political divisiveness, and focus more on activism as a path to change. It isn't as though the other desires and dreams we identified in the book would disappear, but rather that these weighty issues would be more in the foreground.

We should point out, though, that among the donors we interviewed for Generation Impact are some of the leading voices for activist, social justice philanthropy in the country. They and others we talked to argued passionately for shifting power in their relationships with communities and partners. Some described creating conflict within their family by pushing to fund LGBTQ advocacy or racial and economic justice movements, or by questioning the lack of diversity of current grantees. And our data has many comments from next gen donors acknowledging their own privilege and struggling to overcome such constraints, like this one:

I don't have anyone that I know personally who is incarcerated or who is affected by racial profiling. I have never really had to be concerned about police potentially beating me up because I am a person of color. So, I don't know the best ways to change those issues because…they're not something that have been part of my lived experience. It is really important for me to include people who are directly affected by injustice in helping me think about where my money should go, or even deciding right alongside me. Because they've actually lived the experiences of being affected by injustice, so they best know how to allocate resources to alleviate and change those injustices.

If we were researching and writing Generation Impact now, in 2020, we assume these themes would be a bigger part of the book. And as we think about even younger groups of next gen donors who are starting to come into their philanthropic roles—younger Millennials and Gen Zers—we predict that their coming of age in this current climate will make them even more focused on activism and social justice than their predecessors.

Finally, as we are finishing this preface, the world is deep in the thick of battle with a new, truly global, truly monumental challenge: the COVID-19 pandemic, its economic fallout, and the enduring social inequities it is exacerbating. We have some early indications of how next gen donors have been responding to this challenge in ways that fit what we describe in this book—and we are starting to gather new data about this, so stay tuned. We feel confident predicting they will continue to want to do something, to be hands-on, to use their time, talent, and ties as well as their treasure. They will want to support innovations and ideas for aid, long-term recovery, or future prevention wherever they may find them, in whatever sector. And they will continue to encourage their families to take more risks and become more agile donors. Here's hoping they – and all other donors – can rise to the challenge.

The world is changing rapidly, for sure. Still, Generation Impact remains the most reliable guide to the mindset and plans of the incredibly important and powerful group of next gen donors. The book exposes the philanthropic identities they are forming in this crucial time of their lives and reveals the changes they plan to make for years to come. And now that this updated edition includes both the original insights as well as extensive practical advice and detailed lessons of the three Best Practice Guides, we hope it will be even more useful to anyone seeking to engage, recruit, assist, or just understand Generation Impact.

Our two organizations—21/64 and the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy—continue to partner with many others in the field who work closely with next gen donors. Please reach out to us to let us know what you're discovering in your work, what new ideas or big questions you have, and how we might build a healthy next gen future together.

Thanks for taking this journey with us.

Sharna Goldseker and Michael Moody

generationimpactbook.org

Notes

1. Generation Impact, Chap. 1, p. 2.

2. For instance, updated data on generational giving shows that Gen Xers and Millennials are making up a greater and greater slice of the overall giving pie every year. See Mark Rovner, The Next Generation of American Giving (Blackbaud Institute for Philanthropic Impact, 2018). Further, there is good evidence that, while fewer Americans are giving (unfortunately), the overall amount of giving is still increasing. This means that those donors who give at the highest levels – including next gen major donors – are responsible for a greater slice of that giving pie. See Patrick M. Rooney, The Growth in Total Household Giving Is Camouflaging a Decline in Giving by Small and Medium Donors: What Can We Do about It? Nonprofit Quarterly, April 27, 2019.

3. Some next gen donors are both earners and inheritors—and there were some of these individuals in our research sample. These donors actually helped us uncover the similarities and differences in the two identities, as they often talked about the tensions they experienced and how they navigated those—for example, by giving in new ways right now through their personal vehicles, while also trying to shift their family vehicles incrementally over time.

4. Another way that this desired deep engagement with organizations can help donors become better partners is by leading them to see the value of the sorts of funding that the organizations often say they want: operations support not just program funding, endowment and planned gifts not just short-term grants. Next gen donors are not predisposed to providing this sort of funding—why wait to give until after you die, when you can't see the impact?—but they will if they come to understand its value to the groups they work closely with.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

First and foremost, thank you to the hundreds of next gen donors—the majority of whom are presented anonymously—who are at the heart of this book. A project like this goes nowhere without your willingness to open up to us, to reflect candidly on your hopes and fears, your dreams and difficulties. Thank you for trusting us. We hope we did you justice.

Special thanks to the 13 individuals who agreed to step out from behind the curtain and be featured in the book. Not only did you give so much of your time during the various stages of the writing and editing process, but you did so in a collaborative spirit. We hope this endeavor shines a spotlight on the issues you care about and encourages others to deploy the innovative strategies you have courageously offered. Thank you for being leaders of the next—and the now—generation.

Whether responding to the survey or sitting down for a long interview, the next gen donors profiled here took their integral role in this book seriously, like they are taking their outsized philanthropic responsibility and opportunity seriously. Candidly, many people asked us during our work on this project if these rising donors were really as earnest as we claimed. We think the evidence for this is clear as you read through the book. You will see their authentic generosity, sincerity, and even vulnerability in these pages, in what they say about themselves and their giving, and in their willingness to share with others. Both their hearts and minds are committed to helping solve problems that trouble us all.

An ambitious effort like this, taking significant time and energy over several years, requires resources, patience, and continual support from our core partners.

Sharna is grateful to Charles Bronfman, the late Andrea Bronfman, Jeffrey Solomon, and John Hoover from the Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies (which sunset in 2015) for their belief in her and their initial investment in 21/64, which inspired her work on this book. She also thanks the current board members of 21/64, Inc, including John Hoover, Dorian Goldman, Marvin Israelow, Jennifer Grubman Rothenberg, Gail Norry, and Sara Ojjeh for their encouragement and support of her leadership, the team, and the organization's mission.

Michael thanks the supporters of his work as the Frey Foundation Chair for Family Philanthropy at the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy, especially the Frey Foundation and Grand Valley State University. The leadership of the center and the university took the long view and gave him both the space and the encouragement to see this project through. Special thanks to Dean George Grant, Kyle Caldwell, Paul Stansbie, Teri Behrens, and the late, great Jim Edwards.

We want to thank those early and committed funders whose support enabled the research, development, and production of this book, including Andrea and Charles Bronfman Philanthropies, Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Foundation, Shelley and Sheldon Goldseker, Tarsadia Foundation, Tecovas Foundation, and the Youth Philanthropy Connect program of the Frieda C. Fox Family Foundation. Thank you to the Bill & Melinda Gates Foundation for allowing this new knowledge, and these complementary resources, to be widely distributed to the philanthropic community and many other audiences in the hopes that it can advance and expand effective multigenerational giving.

And thanks also to the funders of the original 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, Robyn Schein, Andine Sutarjadi, Darby Lasky and Jos Thalheimer at 21/64; and to Tara Baker, Alicia Chiasson, Andrew Claucherty, Sherry Collver, Julie Couturier, Sherri Hall, Bev Harkema, Tiana Hawver, Karen Hoekstra, Holly Honig, Katie Kirouac, Allison Lugo Knapp, Danielle LaJoie, Tory Martin, 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 Alberg-Seberich, 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, Bruce Karmazin, Shawn Landres, Laura Lauder, Colleen Durbin Mitchell, 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. Heidi also worked very closely alongside us to develop the Best Practice Guides and Discussion Guide that are included in this expanded edition. Huge thank you also to Lisa Zuniga, Laurie Fink, Karen Berry, Collette Shin, Lisa Wang, Peter Ruchti, Mark Fortier, Matt Dorf, 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, which 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 thirties, 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 III 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, especially in terms of describing the next gen donors we will introduce you to in this book.

Major donors affect your life more than you might know—maybe even more than you might find comfortable.

Ever been cared for by a nurse? Received a scholarship? Used a library? Consumed pasteurized milk? Then you've benefited directly from the decisions by major funders to support causes such as modern medical training, the arts, and public health. If you get your news from National Public Radio or allow Sesame Street to entertain and educate your preschooler, or if you're a woman who's had a Pap smear test, then your life is affected in a direct way by the actions of major donors. All of those innovations were driven primarily by philanthropic—rather than market or government—investments.

Many good things we take for granted are due in large part to wealthy donors giving big donations—things like community centers and local parks; beautiful churches, synagogues, and mosques; a world-class higher education system; and even the ideas for a 911 emergency system and white lines on the sides of highways. The same can be said for the eradication of many bad things we no longer have to worry about (at least in the United States), like sewage in the streets, children working in factories, and diseases such as polio and yellow fever.

Philanthropists were primary funders behind the development of modern mental health treatment, hospice care, and autism treatments. They helped create many of our institutions serving widows, orphans, and people with disabilities. Medical breakthroughs such as the use of insulin to treat diabetes and antiretroviral drugs to treat HIV were made possible by donors with singular dedications to those issues. And of course, outside the United States, philanthropic giving by large donors, from the Rockefellers to the Gateses, has literally saved millions of lives, whether through the eradication of hookworm, the fight against tuberculosis, or the availability of antimalarial bed nets.

But as the history of international giving shows, how—and how much—major donors affect our lives can sometimes be controversial. While most of us are happy that big donors in the past were behind nascent social movements such as the abolition of slavery, suffrage, and civil rights, other movements funded by philanthropists divide us just as they divide the donors themselves. For instance, major donors are backing both sides of the marriage equality and the charter school debates, both the prochoice and prolife movements, and both the founding of the state of Israel and the Palestinian desire for a homeland.¹

Still think your life isn't fundamentally different because of the choices that major donors make?

While they have a complicated and sometimes disputed legacy, the impact of philanthropic giants like Andrew Carnegie and Henry Ford on American life is undeniable. They created enduring institutions like hospitals, universities, museums, libraries, and the modern philanthropic foundation. Philanthropy today is based largely on the ideas and innovations of these corporate lions. They set the norms and shaped our collective image for how major donors give. Yet there are many others who fit into this category of big donors and who often had tremendous philanthropic influence but whose names and stories are not as well known. They, too, have affected our lives, but in often underappreciated ways.²

This pattern continues with major philanthropists today. Many people know of the work of big donors with famous last names like Buffett, Hewlett, Packard, Bloomberg, and Walton. And you most likely have heard of a few members of the emerging class of Gen X and Millennial megadonors, people like tech billionaire Sean Parker, who practices what he calls hacker philanthropy.³ But what do we know of the less famous next gen donors who have significant resources to give, who will be tremendously important to all of our lives? What about the donors in your hometown—some of whom might just be in their twenties or thirties—who write big checks to your community theater or that women's shelter you pass on your way to work?

As the influence and power of major donors—well-known or anonymous—expands, this lack of awareness becomes even more problematic. Those at the top of the donor pyramid have more and more wealth to give, and donors of the next generation—both young inheritors and earners of major wealth—are increasingly taking their place at that apex of giving, so our need to know about them is urgent and growing. Our current global and domestic political tumult only increases this need to decipher and then help inform the plans of the most powerful and generously resourced elites. In times of uncertainty, major donors can step into the fray and shape our lives and futures in even more profound ways.

Profiles of a few celebrated individuals won't suffice. We need to understand the collective mindset and plans of the donors of this generation, even if we don't yet know which of these donors will be the Carnegies and Gateses of the future.

The impact of the next group of big donors will eclipse even the giants who've come before them, in part because they are not content to just step passively into their predecessors' shoes; they want to forge bold new paths in those shoes—muck them up and wear them thin. If the philanthropists of the fabled Gilded Age of the early 1900s set the norms for our current giving, the donors of a Golden Age of Giving that is now dawning want to change those norms. They want even greater impact.

The New Golden Age of Giving

We are entering what prominent philanthropic observers are starting to call