Not My Father’s Oldsmobile: Volunteerism in the Age of Now

I witness the generation gap in my own home: my son Tav, in LA this summer

While I was listening to public radio recently, I heard the Car Talk guys lamenting all the words becoming obsolete because the new generation of young pups had no practical knowledge or experience comparable to baby boomers of the meaning or application of certain words, such as “dial this number.” (“Oh dear,” the blogger thought to herself.) But of course, the word highway and our lexicon of language are littered with such casualties. Life moves on and carries with it innumerable changes reflecting the generational shift. We are now in the midst of such a sea change, but the rapidity and proportions of its effects dwarf what the country has experienced in the past: I am talking about the aging of the “boomer” generation and beyond, the over 55 crowd for which South Florida has become a retirement community of choice.

In 2004, the median age in Palm Beach County was 41.7 years, significantly older than the U.S. median of 36.2 years, according to the U.S. Census Bureau. That makes the county the 11th oldest in the nation, among the largest counties. Palm Beach County is 6th in the nation in terms of the percentage of the population over age 65, with 21.2 percent. In 2000 in Martin County, the contrast with the rest of the nation was even more striking: the median age was 47.3 years, compared with 35.3 for the nation at large. The slow creep in recognition of the significance of this trend is parallel to a growing awareness of the unique challenge it poses for the future well-being of our communities.

Tens of millions of these bright minds and vigorous intellects are leaving behind lifelong employment in search of meaningful work…but on their terms. They know how to take the bad with the good that most jobs entail, and there is willingness and tolerance to contribute time and energy as volunteers for causes they care about. But the bottom line is: older adults have expectations that must also be met when they seek opportunities to leverage well-honed skills and aptitudes for problem solving that stuffing envelopes does not require. This will be a vast talent pool that the nonprofit sector could benefit from. However, the traditional role of civic engagement will be changed dramatically by the fact of their education, experience and economic independence.

In April 2008, the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties, with the support of the Community Experience Partnership, undertook a community assessment process to gauge the barriers and the opportunities toward increasing multigenerational civic engagement in our communities. The assessment was an important tool for the Foundation to become more proactive in leading, supporting and developing community initiatives that engage elders and youth in civic affairs, in partnership with other stakeholders. We are sharing what we learned with the nonprofit community. We brought in national expert Nancy Henkin and a panel of local nonprofit leaders to discuss the issue today. More than 100 people registered for this sold out event in a matter of days, which demonstrated to us that this topic is timely and relevant to all of us.

With the area’s greater than usual percentage of retirees, volunteerism is a means through which older adults experience and become engaged in community. The assessment confirmed significant opportunities are present to increase interest in and rates of volunteerism among older adults in our region and the nonprofit sector is, potentially, a powerful engine for civic engagement in issues which matter deeply in ensuring the region’s future quality of life. But the realities of our current economy and demographic changes suggest civic engagement must be reinvented to better fit the time, opportunity, and circumstance unique to South Florida.

Further, in a recent survey of over 300 nonprofit organizations, the Community Foundation asked nonprofits to describe their current challenges. Many acknowledged having to make tough economic choices at the same time they are also being called upon to meet a rising tide of demands for the services it is their mission to provide. Organizations are cutting expenses, increasing fundraising activities and making changes in staffing as needed. More than 25% of organizations reported experiencing negative cash flow in the past 12 months and many borrowed money to stabilize cash flow and make payroll/benefits payments.

New approaches must be found to re-tool past practices and effectively leverage this largely untapped pool of human resources, requiring innovative approaches and thinking. Payment of stipends, flexible scheduling, job sharing, and pooled transportation are infrastructure issues required to resolve if to meet pressing community needs. There are other challenges as well.

We believe the “silver lining” in this otherwise “Perfect Storm” of an economic recession and decline in funding sources is to begin a campaign in the coming months to better connect the untapped experience and capacity of older adults with the opportunities created by the de facto restructuring taking place within the nonprofit sector.

This is a topic everyone can relate to: we are all part of a generation and part of this community. I encourage you to read the local assessment report, the nonprofit guide we developed and share your thoughts on this issue on the digital public square at www.yourpbc.org/generation. I look forwarding to hearing from your perspective.

Coping with Conviction: Part II

Chicago was a long way to come for a one day meeting of community foundations. Twelve hours later, waiting on a long- delayed flight to get home, I once again had the opportunity to consider had the investment of time and resources been worthwhile? Almost all nonprofits are singing some version of “Got- the-Low-Down- Empty-Pocketbook Blues.” It might come as a surprise to some that community foundations are themselves suffering through their own version of being chastened by the fickleness of an economy run amuck.

That’s because community foundation operations depend on income and revenue generated from multiple sources, including fees received for our role of stewardship in managing charitable funds and the income and earnings from assets under management. Our ascent toward becoming self-sustaining depends upon growing endowed assets, continuously attracting new sources of donor investment, and building upward the trajectory of charitable distributions that ultimately justify all this activity. The effect of the economic slide toward global recession means the same thing it means for most nonprofits: we have more to do and less to do it with, including fewer dollars available to grant. The painful irony is, of course, the demand to meet charitable needs has never been greater.

The community foundations gathered in Chicago came to discuss what the new prevailing wisdom might be: Is this a matter of community foundations standing “pat” and riding out the economic storm? Or ought community foundations be preparing for a game changer all the way around and consider anew its approach to building sustainability? The answer reached was inconclusive. But the theme resonant with those there was that the downturn is likely to deepen and 2010 will be a very tough year, indeed. Few new ideas were prevalent regarding creative ways to attract and cultivate major gifts but all agreed that the donors you have are the ones you need to cultivate, communicate to and focus upon, in sustaining interest and investment. Sounds like good advice to me. The transfer of wealth is still on and though there might be less of it than the $40 –plus trillion once estimated, capturing charitable dollars is still a worthy goal. But you need a plan. And finally, the economics of shared back offices is being seriously considered among multiple community foundations, each struggling with duplicating the same infrastructure multiple times when perhaps only one set of everything is needed to serve the purposes of all. If this sounds familiar, too, it should be. It’s another sign of the times that old ideas are new again.

Preparing to Meet a Rising Tide

This week marked a major milestone in the life of our community and the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties. We concluded the Safety Net Challenge, an unprecedented community-wide collaborative effort to address the rising needs for food, shelter, healthcare and childcare.  As a result of the challenge, nearly $1.3 million dollars will be distributed to more than 30 nonprofit organizations. More than 11,300 families and 200,000 individuals will receive food; shelter will be provided to more than 14,925 families, more than 27,525 patients will receive access to healthcare and 518 children of working poor parents, homeless children and children living with elderly caretakers, as well as unemployed parents began summer camp this week, fully paid by the Safety Net Challenge.

Three other funders joined the Community Foundation in this effort: Allegany Franciscan Ministries, the Children’s Services Council of Palm Beach County and Quantum Foundation. Each of the four funders contributed $250,000 and matched every dollar donated by the community in the month of May. Through joining together, we were able to do more than we could ever do alone.  From providing emergency food at House of Hope in Stuart to helping the Urban League of Palm Beach County prevent homelessness through Foreclosure Prevention, to supporting the Martin County Healthy Start Coalition assist uninsured client access needed healthcare resources and providing summer childcare for hundreds of children, we made considerable strides in meeting the rising needs resulting from the economic crisis.

Next week, the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties will be announcing new grant guidelines and communicating to those seeking funding the new priorities for our Competitive Grantmaking Program. It will likely be unsurprising news to many, since few would expect the Foundation to proceed with grantmaking as if the last ten months had not changed our business or grantmaking priorities. The urgency to provide safety net social services to families in crisis has made an impression upon us all as our friends and neighbors are touched by the disastrous fall of economic fortunes and the uncertainties the fall has introduced, even among those thought to be invulnerable to its worst effects. Bernie Madoff made us think again.

Still, the Foundation’s changed approach to its competitive grantmaking will narrow and focus on issues thought perhaps in recent memory to be the function of publicly-funded programs to assist vulnerable populations ─ children, the elderly, the unemployed, and the hungry and homeless.  How odd it seems sometimes to me, in the 21^st Century, we in philanthropy are required to return to a place of 19^th Century charitable traditions in this country. Yet the necessity is clear given the times we are living in.

So at least for the next year, the Community Foundation will narrow its priorities for its larger competitive grants to basic issues of human need and dignity, to hold up access and opportunity to what Americans have come, perhaps naively, to assume what should be assumed: the absence of hunger and homeless in the midst of so many material blessings.

The changes to the guidelines will be explained at grantseeker orientation webinars next week that will also be posted on our website. Do take some encouragement: funding opportunities unaffected by this temporary change in priorities include the Foundation’s Small Grant Programs. You can visit the Foundation’s website early next week for the specific guidelines for these funds, including eligibility to apply, purposes for which funding is available, and the terms and conditions affecting the availability of funds and the dollar amount of individual awards. 

For all those organizations that have been beneficiaries over the years, and for whom these changes may mean the well has temporarily run dry, bear with us.  For even as we plan for the future, the Community Foundation won’t be content to dwell long in a place   that rests such a heavy burden on those families and communities whose circumstances are the least among us. We have not come so far over 30 years in service to community to lose our resolve to make a difference when making a difference truly matters. That time would surely be now.

Fewer Resources and Greater Community Need: Coping with Conviction

Heavy Weather Ahead

It’s no secret that nonprofits are experiencing a slow strangulation of resources and have become victim to a wasting disease whose severity might have been unthinkable a year ago. Executive Directors and CEO’s are looking at their annual budgets nervously and wonder what the future holds for an organization whose sustainability relies on the generosity of others and the quality of leadership of their staff and boards.

The twin challenge of fewer resources and escalating community needs is a formidable place to be, and not just for the nonprofits that are trying to meet the demand side of the conversation. Over $150 billion in assets overall have been lost by community foundations, private foundations, corporate giving programs, and family foundations as a result of the steep slide of the nation into economic recession. The big hit has been taken on the supply side of giving and a straw poll among local funders about it would suggest few are hopeful in the foundation world that recovery will be on the horizon by the end of this calendar year. Donors are facing these sobering realities as well. Donors are no longer certain their habits of giving can and should be sustained although the knock of urgency on their doors grows ever more insistent. In this context, coping with conviction requires not only a hardy appetite for risk taking but a willingness to shed a skin we have grown comfortable in assuming. Community foundations nationwide are on that journey and so is the Community Foundation for Palm Beach and Martin Counties.

I am on my way to a meeting in Chicago that is bringing the big and the small institutions together for a one day, community foundation pow-wow because in the world of philanthropy, community foundations are particularly vulnerable to the economic changes that have transformed giving in our time. Coming up: what are community foundations thinking, what are they doing, and what does it mean for area nonprofits?

Helping Create a New Picture of Philanthropy – in the era of now.

Leslie Lilly

My dad once said that the best way to have a garden is to move next door to one and cultivate your neighbor. I came to the Community Foundation over a year ago as its Vice President for Programs and, as often was the case, my dad had it right: in joining the Community Foundation as its new President and CEO, I am able to share in the bounty of a garden that has been under the thoughtful stewardship of so many for so long. Though new to this institution, my journey to this special place began more than twenty-five years ago, leading, managing and stewarding institutions that share in common with the Community Foundation a deep commitment and powerful vision in service to communities.

Returning to my native state after a long absence is vastly rewarding, especially given the Community Foundation’s commitment to building a better future for the communities it serves. But I also know the tough challenges confronting the nation are proliferating at an alarming rate on the doorsteps of our neighbors. This is not the time, in the words of Hodding Carter, III, to be merely a “sunshine soldier.” We must act with vision and leadership, to muster all the assets of time, talent, and treasure in our communities. If we are to make positive change, we must approach our task knowing full well we will all be challenged to do more with less.  There is, I think a  spirit of shared enterprise that feels like a spark toward possibilities beyond the reach of any single individual or organization.  Yet the field of philanthropy is changing rapidly and so is the environment for giving on which the nonprofit sector depends.  Opportunities are few to take time and reflect upon what these changes will mean longer term.  This time of all times seems to be an era of being in the moment NOW.  Nonetheless, blogging seems a tool well suited to take snapshots along the way and accomplish what I think photography often allows, to capture a place in time.  I hope you’ll join in helping to create these mental images that reveal perhaps more than the eye can see and help picture philanthropy,  now and as it can be.