I’ve just had an interesting exchange via LinkedIn with Tony Martignetti, a planned giving advisor from New York City. He wondered if boomer indulgence was a threat to planned giving, and referred to a September article in the Los Angeles Times that wasn’t flattering to baby boomers. It claimed many of them plan to spend all their money on themselves before death.
I don’t doubt Boomers are self-indulgent; that’s long been the reputation of this enormous and influential demographic. But I wonder if the problem to which Tony refers — selfish behavior versus a more magnanimous style of giving — stems more from the fact they haven’t been effectively engaged by the organizations that need their help. By not properly nurturing the interests of this “selfish” group, the boomers don’t know what they can do to help. A big part of the problem is the nonprofit culture of expectation that believes “people understand us, and will support us.” They don’t, and won’t. For me it comes down to this: nonprofits aren’t doing their job if they aren’t communicating effectively. Effective communication should be seen as being a core part of their mission, yet it isn’t.=
I tried tackling this issue in a 2001 article about venture philanthropy written for Museum News http://wp.me/pqoXT-X. Of relevance to Tony’s question is a short section in the article about our declining sense of community in which I reference Robert Putnam’s book, Bowling Alone — an excellent study that is worth re-reading.
This is, in short, an issue that nonprofits have control over and it defeats the “we can’t do anything about it” rationalization. All this reminds me of Jim Collins’s 2005 essay, Good to Great and the Social Sectors: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great. In it he noted that social sector organizations obsess on system constraints: the prevailing belief is that they can’t move ahead until the system is fixed. Collins, on the other hand, is more concerned with the notion of “what are you going to do in the meantime?” He wants them to retain faith that they can prevail, yet retain the discipline to confront the facts of the current reality. And he leaves his readers with a challenge: “what can you do today to create a pocket of greatness, despite the brutal facts of your environment?”
