For Lisa Wolverton, philanthropy is not a passive exercise.
She is the third-generation co-owner of the Pacific Investment Corp., a family-run real estate holdings and investment company in Vancouver. But much of her work is focused on the non-profit sector, as part of a movement of next-gen donors that she says is “challenging the status quo of traditional philanthropy.”
She’s president of the Wolverton Foundation, dedicated to exposing children to the arts, which includes providing a permanent home for the Sarah McLachlan School of Music in East Vancouver. She’s also a board member and past chair of the Philanthropy Workshop, an international donor-education network with 450 members in 22 countries that is responsible for moving one billion dollars a year in philanthropic capital.
Many of these donors are “next-gen” givers who view philanthropy in a whole new way. Given the expected wealth transfer coming from baby boomers, this new face of charitable giving could have a significant impact.
Next-gen donors “hate the word ‘philanthropist,’” says Wolverton, 54, who calls herself an active investor in social change. “They want to be called ‘social investors.’ People are coming to the table with a lot of wealth and saying, ‘How do we do this differently? How do we unlock more resources? How do we collaborate? How are we entrepreneurial in our thinking?’”
Far beyond simply giving money
Indeed, their giving fully encompasses the four Ts – treasure, time, talent and ties – extending beyond making donations to volunteerism, activism, crowdfunding, micro-lending, ethical consumerism and more.
“Younger donors have demonstrated what some have coined the shift from charitable giving to charitable living,” says Sharilyn Hale, who advises philanthropic families as president of Watermark Philanthropic Counsel in Toronto. “They are hands-on, want to be engaged, they’re open to taking risks and are inspired by impact.”
They’re digital natives and they define community more broadly, even as they are drawn to the hyper-local.
Sharilyn Hale, Watermark Philanthropic Counsel
Younger philanthropists are interested in giving differently because they are “informed by the times we live in,” Hale explains, experiencing today’s pressing issues and movements differently than earlier generations.
“They’ve grown up and work in diverse communities, they’re absorbing the magnitude of climate change and the implications on their future and that of their children,” she says. “The speed of change and disruption they experience daily is phenomenal. They’re digital natives and they define community more broadly, even as they are drawn to the hyper-local.”
Organization volunteer Jon McPhedran Waitzer, 37, who is based in Montreal, says it was inspired by a group called Resource Generation operating in the U.S. for two decades “anchored in the idea of history approaching a critical tipping point around the connection between climate change and inequality.” The goal of the group is to organize people 40 and younger “who experience either class privilege or direct access to wealth” and want to put funds “into the hands of the social movements that are trying to transform society.”
Current events reverberate among young donors
The COVID-19 crisis and the killing of George Floyd in Minneapolis “opened up a global conversation around racial justice” that has reverberated among younger donors, McPhedran Waitzer notes. “That philanthropy is deploying money to try to address problems that ultimately have been created and are being perpetuated in ongoing ways by the same elites who have accumulated these resources.”
There’s a desire to “look for ways to move the power around how this money gets used,” McPhedran Waitzer says. “Participatory grant-making” has been flourishing in the U.S. and is taking root in Canada, for example in non-profits made up of teams of racialized or indigenous people. “We look for ways to prioritize organizations that are led by members of the communities where they serve.”
McPhedran Waitzer supports this directly along with four brothers through a donor-advised fund set up by their father as part of the community-based Toronto Foundation. Each year the siblings select four organizations to give micro-grants to, “and then we invite each of them to choose another group that they want to nominate to receive a grant.”
Hale says younger donors may not ultimately differ much from their parents and grandparents in the causes they support, “but their commitment to the cause transcends the organizations they may work through to tackle the issues.”
Cracks in communities
Recent social discord, the pandemic and concerns over climate change “have laid bare many of the cracks and inequalities embedded across our communities, and younger philanthropists are responding,” Hale says.
“For some it comes in the form of reflecting on their privileges and feeling a deep responsibility to step up and do something,” which may include coming to terms with the degree of their wealth, and even how it was created. “For others, conversations in the family about social justice and how to better integrate equitable practices into their giving have been more prevalent than ever.”
Wolverton, who acts as a consultant to foundations and businesses looking to enhance their social impact, says that discussions about philanthropy are part of her relationship with her own three children, aged 18 to 22.
“I think kids know inherently that they should be giving back somehow,” says Wolverton, whose family history began with a grandfather who was a missionary and ran a hospital and leper colony in India.
“My kids are aware of the family wealth, and we’re working through as a family how we bring the next generation up to speed on the family business, and how we talk about philanthropy and our family values.”
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