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Five Predictions for the Nonprofit World

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Excerpted in part from an article by Tracy Gary that appeared in the Chronicle of Philanthropy, dated January 10, 2008

1. “Community-based” philanthropy will emerge as the wave of the future.
   
   When donors, nonprofit groups, and community leaders work together to determine the problems facing their cities and towns, they come up with more effective solutions. At least 250 efforts in the United States and elsewhere are channeling money to projects that were explicitly designed based on suggestions from all three players.
   
   
2. The leadership crisis will grow more serious because too few older nonprofit leaders are doing enough to welcome and support the next generation.
   
   Has your board and organization taken steps to seek next-generation replacements for your employees, managers, or board members? Is your leadership fully and consciously doing a great job of serving as mentors to members of the talented next generation, or working with younger people as full partners? These are the questions that need to be addressed now in order to ensure the nonprofit community has future leadership.
   
   
3. Women will lead the push for greater attention to ethics and serious diversity throughout the nonprofit world.
   
   Sixty-six percent of nonprofit organizations are now led by women. To build upon this change from just a few decades ago, when the nonprofit world was ruled by men (most of whom were white), donors, nonprofit leaders, and consultants who advise them will increasingly seek ways to build fun-raising partnerships that cut across class, race, and gender lines.
   
   
4. Cutting-edge foundations and major nonprofit groups will make it a priority to focus on ways to educate donors and show them how their dollars can be used to transform society.
   
   To nurture great donors, established philanthropists must serve as mentors and make efforts to reach out to diverse parts of society to tap new leaders. Instead of simply making a solicitation to an affluent potential donor, nonprofit groups will focus on helping donors achieve their goals in a community and show them how to develop healthy partnerships with organizations that serve society.
   
   
5. Donors will overcome their own self-interest in supporting elite causes and do more to curb poverty in America and around the world.
   
   Donors are waking up to how much of their giving goes to individuals of similar race and class, and how much is based on promoting their own self-interest or the interests of those in their social networks. Fear of recession abounds, but as the gap between rich and poor grows wider, many affluent Americans feel compelled to express gratitude for such a long stretch of prosperity. In 2008, more people will awaken to the larger needs of society beyond those in their own social circles.