EPIP GENERATING CHANGE INITIATIVE

The EPIP Generating Change Initiative encourages every generation within the funding community to address the generational workforce challenge in the nonprofit sector.

To do this, EPIP has become a founding partner in the national Nonprofit Sector Workforce Coalition, and holds funder education efvents on how funders can address the generational workforce issues facing nonprofits. A large-scale generational demographic change in American society is impacting the talent resources of the nonprofit sector – as well as government and the marketplace. In the late 1990s, the the landmark “War for Talent” study by McKinsey and Co. helped the private sector awake to the importance of talent as a critical business challenge and a critical driver of organizational performance.

The public sector took on the challenge in 2001 when the Partnership for Public Service was launched by philanthropist Samuel Heyman. The goal of the Partnership is to restore prestige to government service and reestablish the federal government as an attractive employer for America’s best and brightest. Heyman’s actions were motivated by the looming retirement of his generation; he viewed this unprecedented loss of talent from federal service and the increasing inability of government to attract and retain top workers as one of the greatest threats to our national prosperity.

The leadership of the nonprofit world became cognizant of our sector’s workforce and generational issues only in 2006 -- nearly a decade after the War for Talent report -- when The Bridgespan Group released its Leadership Deficit report. Rather than resulting in a large-scale mobilization for solutions, the new awareness caused a crisis mentality to set in. Two years out from this “aha” moment, foundations as a whole have yet to comprehensively address nonprofit workforce and generational challenges. McKinsey aims to inculcate a pervasive “talent mindset” across companies and Corporate America. The Partnership for Public Service works to build political will, recruit talent to the government sector, and fuel innovation and cultural change in Federal agencies. Instead of focusing on equipping the infrastructure and culture of our sector, foundations have largely homed in on executive director transitions within individual grantees.

This micro-focus has seen Bridgespan’s call for ‘collective attention’ ignored. Funders who are engaged these matters will tell you that they are trying to shift from making the case that there is a problem, to identifying solutions. But with limited documentation or discussion of funder interventions in this area, very little is known about innovative solutions and best practices.

As a next generation of leadership within the funding community, members of Emerging Practitioners in Philanthropy have the opportunity and responsibility to act as allies to our peers in the nonprofit sector, and to help our foundations to address generational issues in the nonprofit sector.

EPIP's Generating Change program will work with our members to explore strategies through which foundations can strengthen the pipeline for young activists into meaningful social change careers.

If we address the career needs of individuals, and the human resource needs of organizations and movements, then we can inject the fresh the energy, ideas, talent, and relevance that will mean long-term success for the social justice causes we care about.


Related Links

Research:

Blueprint for the Future: Recommendations on Leadership for the 21st Century
Reports on generational dynamics in the global women's movement, from the point of view of young women activists. Published by the Third Wave Foundation.

Help Wanted: New Nonprofit Leaders for the 21st Century
Pablo Eisenberg explores need for renewed commitment to leadership development in nonprofit sector.

Recruiting & Retaining the Next Generation of Nonprofit Sector Leadership
A study exploring the "missed connections" among nonprofits, college seniors, & campus offices of career services.

Up Next: Generation Change and the Leadership of Nonprofit Organizations
This monograph, produced in conjunction with the Annie E. Casey Foundation, reports on the combined findings of a generation study by Building Movement Project, and their follow-up sessions with young leaders ages 25–40.

Young Elected Leaders Project
Research identifying elected officials under 35 years old to see how their experiences may encourage other young people to participate in the political process.

Colleagues in Generating Change:

Action Without Borders - Idealist.org
Online nonprofit career center and job clearinghouse. Annual nonprofit career fairs in a large number of US cities. Nonprofit "Career Day" workshops and other services for campuses. Annual conferences for student activists and nonprofit human resources professionals, respectively.

American Humanics
National alliance of colleges, universities, and nonprofits whose mission is to educate, prepare, and certify undergraduate students to strengthen and lead nonprofit organizations.

Annie E. Casey Foundation
The Casey Foundation has developed tools for their grantees to manage executive director transitions (as many long-term and founding leaders are retiring now and in the coming years), and the Foundation is exploring other ways to address generational change in the nonprofit sector.

Building Movement Project
Research on social change nonprofit organizations, including generational changes, funding issues, and building movements vs. building organizations.

Center for Progressive Leadership
National political training institute dedicated to building the next generation of progressive political leaders. Through intensive training programs for youth, activists, and candidates, the Center provides individuals with the skills and resources needed to become effective political leaders.

echoing green
Through a two-year fellowship program, provides first-stage funding and support to visionary leaders with bold ideas for social change. As an "angel investor" in the social sector, Echoing Green identifies, funds and supports the world’s most exceptional emerging leaders and the organizations they launch.

Independent Sector - Emerging Leadership Resource Center
Independent Sector's site lists links to nonprofit sector leadership development programs and organizations; funders; university programs; and research.

NOA Retirement Pension Plan
The National Organizers Alliance developed this portable pension plan, which is designed for progressive community organizers, artists, social service providers, self-incorporated independent consultants, etc.

New Voices
National leadership development program that helps nonprofit organizations to recruit or retain innovative, new talent. It awards salary-support grants to small nonprofits demonstrating a commitment to cultivating and strengthening the leadership potential of creative and diverse "new voices" in the field.

Public Allies
National AmeriCorps network with local affiliates, advances diverse young leaders to strengthen communities, nonprofits and civic participation.

Young Nonprofit Professional Network
Professional development & networking for young nonprofit leaders. Affiliates in Bay Area, New York City, Los Angeles, Chicago, and other cities.

Young People For
New, long-term initiative of People for the American Way that will bring together young leaders and activists from across the nation who are eager to ensure that progressive voices are heard on current issues of concern. The 2005 class of Young People For Fellows is a cohort of 126 progressive leaders and activists from 40 colleges and universities in 8 states.


Background

EPIP was founded partially to leverage the positions and perspectives of young funders, in order to provide increased support for young nonprofit professionals and activists.

We believe there ought to be a strong “pipeline” that can recruit, educate, retain and develop thousands of passionate, talented young people, helping them to build diverse, meaningful, life-long social change careers. In doing this, the pipeline would actually strengthen the workforce (human, intellectual and financial resource pool) and long-haul sustainability of social change movements and entities (i.e. nonprofit, political and community organizations).

This pipeline issue is one important need in the broader inter-generational transition of leadership, knowledge and wealth that will take place in the nonprofit and social change communities – indeed in every sector of society – as the Baby Boom/Civil Rights generation retires and the World War II generation departs the world. Other dimensions of this transfer include making retirement viable and meaningful to Boomer leaders; sustaining organizations and movements (or not) from generation to generation; and developing new appropriate organizational and organizing models.

What there is of a pipeline is full of holes, and is unable to serve both the career services needs of young people, and the human resources needs of the public service sectors. Maintaining the pipeline is no one organization’s job; it seems to be an 'externality' to all stakeholders.

It is time, therefore, for organized philanthropy to utilize its special "research and development" role to bring this issue to the fore, and provide the needed resources for research, to ramp-up or replicate quality programs.

Within the foundation community, EPIP is one a few lonely voices raising serious generational and inter-generational issues. We believe that this is an appropriate role for our network because of our focus on young people and generational issues within the foundation field, and because many of our members, leaders and staff have struggled with accessing the information and tools needed to craft our own nonprofit careers, and so we tend to understand the challenges faced by our peers and those coming up after us.


Track Record

To date, EPIP has engaged in the following planning activities:

§ Compiled research on pipeline and generational issues in the nonprofit sector and other realms of public service. Ongoing.

§ Cosponsored a young people’s reception at the 2004 Independent Sector conference, along with Public Allies, Idealist.org, and American Humanics. Fall 2004.

§ Participated in a weekend meeting about next steps for progressive leadership development on college campuses. The retreat was pulled together by staff at Young People for the American Way, The League of Young Voters, and Rockefeller Brothers Fund. Fall 2004.

§ Led a weekend retreat called "Cross-Age Collaboration for Social Justice," which brought together 20 activists, scholars and funders across 3 generations to explore what inter-generational learning could mean for social movements. Fall 2003.

§ Our New York City and Bay Area chapters have held discussions about how our constituents can help get resources to youth organizing. Both events were held in collaboration with funders collaboratives for youth organizing. 2004.

§ Sponsored funder briefings in New York City and Boston on the Young Elected Leaders Project, a Rutgers University research effort that explores the demographics and politics of over 800 elected leaders under 35 years of age. 2003.

§ Sent members to a one day conference, “Young People’s Issues: A Conversation, ” held by the William Jefferson Clinton Foundation. 2003.


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