Six Generational Trends that Will Affect Your Nonprofit

Resource
Generations: The Challenge of a Lifetime for Your Nonprofit

Contents
Who We're Talking About: Five Generations Defined
Six Trends that Will Affect Your Nonprofit
    1. Financial stress
    2. Technological acceleration
    3. Diversity of population
    4. Redefining the family
    5. MeBranding
    6. Work-life balance
Questions for You to Consider

 

From Vince Hyman, Publishing Director, Fieldstone Alliance:

The pace of change today feels alternately exhilarating and wearying. And yet, if the thought leaders, executives, board volunteers, and foot soldiers in the nonprofit community don’t keep on top of change, they’ll be left behind.

This issue of Tools You Can Use is adapted from Chapter 2 of our book by Peter C. Brinckerhoff, Generations: The Challenge of a Lifetime for Your Nonprofit. If you’ve not met or heard or read something by Peter you’ve missed some great stuff. He has won two of the Alliance for Nonprofit Management’s prestigious McAdam Awards; he is a regular conference speaker, and he is author of many books (including our own award winning Nonprofit Stewardship, and the Mission-based Management Series, available on his popular web site, MissionBased.com.)

Generations is an in-depth analysis of the change the nonprofit community is undergoing as it prepares to retire its Boomer generation (which largely built the nonprofit sector and still runs its largest institutions). In this issue of Tools, we’ll identify the generations and note how they influence and interact with the major trends that should be shaping your organization—from its fundraising plan to its vision statement to its board of directors roles and more.

Who We’re Talking About: Five Generations Defined
Five generations are influencing the board, staff, and service functions of nonprofits and foundations today:

• The Greatest Generation, (born 1901–1925)
• The Silent Generation (born 1926–1944)
• The Boomers (born 1945–1962)
• GenX (born 1963–1980)
• Gen@ (born 1981–2002)

The population of those in the Greatest Generation and Silent Generation is rapidly diminishing—though it should be noted that, in addition to their incredible contributions,  these are the people who developed much of the administrative science that influences the management of organizations.

However, it is the Boomers who have lead the development of the nonprofit community. Over the next fifteen years, that generation will retire from its dominance in both for-profit and nonprofit jobs.

Boomers will start second careers, hand over their jobs in the administration of foundations and nonprofits, begin volunteering, and begin to suffer from expensive health problems that often accompany aging. They will become major consumers of the nonprofit services they once delivered or provided grants for.

Meanwhile, the oldest GenXers are taking their place as leaders of the social sector, and the younger cohort of Gen@s are entering the workforce. Both of these groups grew up with very different sets of expectations than those that shaped their Boomer parents.

Here's what we can expect as this transition unfolds over the next fifteen years, according to Peter's research:

• Financial stress
• Technological acceleration
• Diversity of population
• Redefining the family
• MeBranding
• Work-life balance

Let’s look at each.

Six Trends That Will Affect Your Nonprofit

1. Financial stress
Generational change will have major financial implications. First, the impending retirement of the Boomers is going to stress the social safety net as never before. This generation, sometimes known as the "Me Generation" for its self-centeredness, is likely to demand more than its forerunners, and have the population clout to get what it wants.

• Government money will continue to move toward issues of importance to Boomers.
• Boomers will start drawing money out of their retirement funds soon, affecting the stock market, banking, and other financial institutions. Predictions on the consequences of this vary wildly—with the only agreement being that the consequences will be very, very large.
• Continuing federal deficits and the huge federal debt will trim the amount of money left for needed social, economic, educational, health, and environmental efforts.

There’s likely to be a big squeeze coming.

2. Technological acceleration
The dependence on and expectations regarding technology are only going to grow at an increasing rate. Some of us recall dial phones, carbon paper, correspondence by mail, and waiting weeks for a precious mail order package. Compare that to today's practice: you type up, save, and file notes as you conduct a business call; answer urgent e-mails from staff, board members, spouse, aging parents, and children; and maybe browsed online for a pair of running shoes—at the same time.

Such rapid transactions blur work life, home life, and social life as never before. It is wonderful—when it works. But when technology fails, it is disastrous. Just look at what happened in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina in the U.S. Gulf states in 2005. A key element of the federal, state, and local response plans was the use of cell phones by rescue and response personnel. When the entire cell system in two states went down, people were completely cut off.

Today, in the administration of foundations and nonprofits, in our nonprofit business plans and in our strategic plans, we scale up based on this ability to process so many transactions and clients rapidly or automatically. Often this brings about increased economies, and just as often it brings risks of technological failure or less-than-courteous treatment of those we work to serve.

The most important trend that’s resulted from technological change is the expectation that we are available and reachable twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. Boomers may grow weary of this, especially as they age. But it is the air that many members of GenX and Gen@ breathe. The tension between expectations and capacity creates real problems among staff of varying technological proficiency, and with clients of diverse ages and expectations.

3. Diversity of population
Gen@ is the most diverse generation ever. That is the generation-specific outcome of a much larger national trend—a much, much more diverse population. In the United States, the Hispanic population, because of both immigration and higher birth rates, is growing at twice the national rate. Sometime in this century Caucasians in the United States will become a minority. Immigration from every corner of the globe continues to swell our population. This is causing some major rethinking for policy makers on a national, state, and local level.

Population diversity is an issue for all nonprofits, not just those in urban areas, or on the coasts or the southern U.S. border. In addition to traditional concepts of racial diversity, other things are going on. More diverse communities lead to more diverse romances. Interracial marriages in the United States are at an all-time high, and the children of these marriages are facing all kinds of questions about cultural identity and where they "belong." Self-identity, cultural competence, family traditions, and related cultural identifiers are all in flux.

Expect this trend to continue, and to continue to change in its shape, scope, and direction. For example, the influx of highly educated and skilled workers from India to the United States has changed. Once a highly desirable destination for physicians, engineers, and graduate students, the United States is now seen as less desirable. Why? Because India has raced into the twenty-first century, become more politically stable, and developed a booming economy. Jobs abound for the well trained, educational opportunities are growing, and thus, in 2003 for the first time, the migration flow of Indians between the United States and India was back to India, not toward the United States.

4. Redefining the family
Regardless of political definitions of "family," nonprofit service providers have to deal with what families are today and prepare for what  families will become in the future. First, families are more mobile, and in new ways. Over the past twenty-five years—within the past two generations—we have seen an unprecedented spreading out of families, and here’s the key: the higher the education level, the more likely this is.

Communications and cheap transport has enabled long-distance families to maintain their ties—a good thing, given the trend. But this trend has changed the long-term, multigenerational commitment to a particular community and its nonprofits. It has shortened the time needed (at least in many communities) to become accepted. It has changed the need for day care—if grandma is 400 miles away, you can’t drop the kids off. It has increased the need for the famous "village" to help raise our children. And as a society, we've not yet figured out the ultimate impact of all of this, let alone how to deal with it.

Second, there's a major change in the nature of family itself. With more divorces and remarriages, the number of "steps" in any given house (stepbrother, stepfather, and so forth) has exploded. No one knows the implications of this (whether it is bad, good, or neutral is the subject of fierce and very politically charged debate). When you add same-sex marriage, multiple generations, and single parenting into the mix, the definition of family is rapidly changing.

The issue of family change has repercussions on health care benefits, social security, generational legacies, and in a dozen other areas, many of which we’re just discovering. It also impacts the kinds of family-friendly policies foundations, associations, and nonprofits set up to recruit and retain the staff they need.

5. MeBranding
Peter has coined two great terms in this book, Gen@ (which you've already figured out) and MeBranding, which is a great description of our growing expectation that things will be done exactly the way we want them. This is a social trend with immense impact.

Ultracustomization is the idea that we can segment markets down to the ultimate limit—the individual consumer. It is largely affecting the business market right now—but it will impact the expectations of staff, volunteers, boards, grantees, grantmakers, donors, clients, museum attendees, play goers, concertgoers, students, parents, and on and on. Nonprofits that figure out cost effective ways to attend to this trend—which can be very expensive—are going to accomplish their missions with greater ease than those who do not. They will thrive as others fold.

MeBranding may have another impact. As people grow more accustomed to getting things the way they like them, they lose understanding of the ways other people like things. An unintended consequence of MeBranding is that even as we have greater access to more and wider kinds of information, we self-select so minutely that we lose touch with the person sitting next to us.

This is mostly (but not completely) a Gen@ issue, with a smattering of GenX included. Boomers are certainly not exempt from being self-centered, but tend to stand confused and overwhelmed in the face of a shelf full of mega choices, while Gen@ kids just dive in.

6. Work-life balance
Work-life balance is almost purely a generation issue. As one columnist in Newsweek recently put it, Boomers, facing “their final exam,” are rethinking their work-life balance as they enter their late fifties and early sixties. Boomers have been the “Thank God It's Monday” generation—working, working, working. They developed the clueless child care rationalization of “quality time,” eliminated the idea of a two-week vacation, and proselytized that everyone could have both a high-end business career and a perfect family life.

GenX watched the consequences, Gen@ experienced them, and both are saying “No way.” Now there’s a trend to rebalance lives and priorities. Highly trained women are dropping out of the career track to stay home and raise children—and more men are making the choice to be stay-at-home dads when their wives have higher earning potential. More people want to work from home, or even from remote locations, a trend that is enabled by technology.

Questions for You to Consider
So there are the six key trends: financial stress, technological acceleration, diversity of population, redefining the family, MeBranding, and work-life balance. No doubt other important trends will affect you and your nonprofit. But these six are critically important to nonprofits and they all have deep generational foundations.

The goal of this issue was to raise some questions on how you can address generational trends, today, to keep your nonprofit organization relevant and able to meet the changing needs of your staff, volunteers, donors, and the community you serve. Consider:

• How will these nonprofit trends affect your management planning or foundation administration?
• What impact will they have on your next nonprofit business plan, nonprofit strategic plan, or nonprofit fundraising plan?
• What role should these trends play in your vision statement?
• What about leadership evaluation, board of director roles, grant writing, organizational assessment, stakeholder analysis?

If you find this issue of Tools You Can Use helpful, be sure to look for our next issue as we will cover some of Peter’s recommendations for dealing with these trends.

Sincerely,

Vince Hyman
Publishing Director
Fieldstone Alliance

February 21 , 2007

 

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