It’s not the donors - it’s the world
Melissa Berman
Alliance Magazine, March 2007
‘Human nature doesn’t change in a generation. You’ve just forgotten being young,’ a world-renowned employee relations expert told a group of employers who were bemoaning how the ‘new employees’ were completely different from any previous group. ‘It’s not that people have fundamentally changed. It’s the world around them that’s changed,’ he pointed out.
That insight has relevance beyond the realm of pension plans and employee relations, of course. It’s an astute reminder that people don’t act in a vacuum. We may lose sight of the real forces shaping philanthropy if we concentrate too much on donors and too little on the world to which they’re responding.
That world has indeed changed in important ways in the span of a generation. Understanding those changes is important if real knowledge is to be captured and spread. But in some of our enthusiasm for defining the ‘new donor’, we run the risk of losing that world perspective. Human nature has not changed in the past decade, nor are new donors a new species.
At Rockefeller Philanthropy Advisors, we have the privilege of working with many types of donors across America and outside it as well: donors who are entrepreneurs; donors who have made fortunes but might not be considered entrepreneurs; donors who are inheritors; donors who are both inheritors and wealth creators. Some are members of the Second World War
generation; many are baby boomers; others cannot remember a time before the personal computer.
Are the newer wealth holders and donors fundamentally different? Not really. Risk-taking, vision and an entrepreneurial approach to philanthropy are often found among inheritors – although they may not use the buzz words of business. By the same token, there are successful entrepreneurs who cannot convert their drive and talent to effective philanthropy, even using the model of capitalism. As any venture capitalist will tell you, there are legions of entrepreneurs who cannot manage, work in partnership, or take their idea to scale.