by Shirley Sagawa, Chief Service Officer of NCoC, originally posted in the Huffington Post
Fifteen years ago this week, philanthropists and other leaders gathered in the White House — and thousands more watched at sites across the country — to explore the future of charitable giving in the new Millennium. This first ever White House Conference on Philanthropy, organized by then-First Lady Hillary Clinton, laid out an agenda that foreshadowed today’s important trends.
Speaking at the event, ‘NSYNC boy band member Justin Timberlake spoke on the topic of youth philanthropy. Scanning the room of silver-haired philanthropic leaders, Timberlake, then 18, noted that “this is not my usual demographic.” Timberlake had a place on the dais to speak about his own support of music education, and has gone on to become a donor to a range of causes. The youth that Timberlake represented are on track to become a similarly generous generation — in fact, surveys show that Millennials volunteer at higher rates than previous generations and 60 percent of Millennials give to charity.
The day also featured the different ways that communities of color contribute and highlighted giving by ordinary Americans, such as Mat Dawson, a 79-year-old who donated more than $1 million in savings from his job as a forklift operator, and Matthew Nonnemacher, an 11-year-old whose United Way penny drive raised $18,000.
Online giving — a recent phenomenon in 1999, the year after Google was founded — was also highlighted. AOL CEO Steve Case discussed the AOL Foundation’s new “ephilanthropy” site and Independent Sector pledged to host a convening for nonprofit leaders to discuss the emerging role of the internet in philanthropy.
Fifteen years later, all of these trends have converged in crowdfunding, tying the preference of Millennial givers for online giving to the power of small gifts. In 2012, $1.6 billion was given to charities through crowdfunding. That amount is likely to grow exponentially as this generation increases its wealth over the next decades and is joined by today’s youth, a yet-unnamed generation, that has never known a time without digital tools.