Читать книгу Generation Impact - Goldseker Sharna - Страница 6

Justin Rockefeller grew up in West Virginia outside the purview of the family legacy of capitalism and philanthropy. Invited to a meeting at a café near Rockefeller Center in New York City as a college freshman, he actually had to ask where Rockefeller Center was. But during college, Justin began to appreciate the doors his last name could open and the opportunities he had to effect change for good. He has since worked to help one of his family's foundations divest its charitable endowment holdings of fossil fuels – a remarkable move for America's most famous oil family. Now in his 30s, Justin devotes a significant percentage of his time beyond his tech career to helping other families align their investments with their values.

Katherine Lorenz's grandfather, the late George Mitchell, became a noted Texas billionaire by pioneering the use of hydraulic fracturing to release natural gas from shale. But Katherine started her own career far away from the family business, creating and running an agricultural and nutrition nonprofit in rural Mexico. She eventually returned to take the reins of her family's foundation, guiding the family through a planning process to ramp up their support for environmental sustainability causes in Texas.

John R. Seydel grew up in Atlanta learning about giving from his parents and grandparents, in particular from his “Grandpa Ted” Turner, the media titan and founder of CNN who donated a billion dollars to create the U.N. Foundation. Together, they travel to tour the family's vast tracts of preserved open space in the American West and go on “learning journeys” to witness the impact of their international giving. Now a college graduate, John R. is determined to carve out his own identity as a donor and social entrepreneur. He knows he has big shoes to fill, and he wants to walk his own path in them.

Most readers have likely never heard of Justin, Katherine, or John R. So why should it matter to us what they do or what they want for the future?

We should care because men and women like these three will shape our world in profound ways.

America's next generation of major donors, whether young Gen Xers or rising Millennials, will have an outsized impact on society and the planet we share, as people like Andrew Carnegie and John D. Rockefeller did in years past and as people like Bill and Melinda Gates and Warren Buffett are doing now – likely even more impact. Men and women we call “next gen donors” – inheritors like Justin, Katherine, and John R. as well as those from their generation who are earning their own wealth – will decide which diseases get the most research funding, which environmental organizations launch the biggest awareness campaigns, which new ideas for education reform are incubated around the country. And those decisions will impact, directly and daily, our health, our communities, our economies, our culture, and even our climate.

In fact, if current trends in wealth and giving continue, these rising major donors will be the most significant philanthropists ever. They not only have unprecedented financial resources but also big plans for how to wield their financial power. Simply put, they want to change giving in ways that will fundamentally transform philanthropy. And they want to do so now rather than wait until they accumulate all the wealth they can and then retire to a life of philanthropic leisure.

We need to get to know these next gen donors – find out what they're about and figure out how to engage them – so we can know what to expect from their emerging philanthropic revolution. More important, we need to make sure their historic potential is channeled in ways that make our world better, not worse. In this book, you'll meet these young men and women and learn about their ambitious plans to irrevocably alter the nonprofit organizations and social causes we care about. You'll hear them struggle to “find themselves” as philanthropists; you'll hear them make their case for a bigger role as rising leaders who simultaneously want to revolutionize the future while respecting the past.