June 11, 2007
How to Balance the Needs of Generation X and Baby Boomers
Trista Harris says her job as a program officer at a community fund in Minnesota has forced her to balance the competing needs of two different generations.
Ms. Harris writes on her blog New Voices of Philanthropy that she is committed to getting more young people involved in organized philanthropy, but one of her work responsibilities is to oversee the foundation’s efforts to help baby boomers remain active in the nonprofit world.“Talk about competing priorities,” she writes. “On one hand I know how important it is to keep baby boomers engaged, on the other hand I am hearing from young people on a daily basis that they can’t advance because baby boomers won’t leave the philanthropic sector and make room for young people to advance.”
Ms. Harris sees a possible solution, however.
“What if a new way of working was created that still kept baby boomers engaged but allowed them to reduce the number of hours that they work so that they could keep health benefits and stay involved in a career that they love?,” she writes. “If we started thinking of the program officer position (of any other foundation or nonprofit staff member for that matter) as a collection of tasks that can be completed by one or many people depending on the time available for each worker.”
What do you think? Are baby boomers and younger Americans sometimes at odds in the nonprofit arena? What other ways have organizations discovered to solve such a dilemma? Click on the comments link below this post to share your thoughts.
— Ian Wilhelm
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Another factor to consider is that as baby boomer employees do “retire” from their first career, they may very well want to continue working but for a new organization, which may very well be a non-profit. Whether a baby boomer’s first career was in the private sector or public (federal, state, and local public servants, teachers, etc.) they are not going to go sit on a rocking chair in Florida for the next twenty to thirty years.
They may very well have extensive volunteer and board leadership experience in the non-profit sector, and many of them would be an asset to the professional staff of a non-profit.
This can actually be a great resource for a non-profit, and one that they should consider as they do their transition planning.
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— Bill Huddleston Jun 11, 05:14 PM #
I see this tension playing out more and more in the sector. Unfortunately, what usually happens is that the younger folks leave to work in the private sector, or they go start their own thing. I, too, would love to see a compromise, as it would help sustain the industry.
— Sam Davidson Jun 12, 06:22 AM #