“We need to engage the left and the right side of the brain,” says Alexandre Mars, a Paris-born technology entrepreneur and founder of Epic Foundation. “That’s life today. It is all about the mix between something very structured and something fun that has meaning.” This approach, Mr Mars believes, is the key to appealing to a millennial generation of philanthropists who want to have their cake and eat it, too.
The demand for emotional engagement as well as a dose of intellectual rigour is a far cry from Europe’s traditional philanthropic landscape. With a long history rooted in church “community chests” to the rise of more recognisably modern charitable structures, which first appeared in 18th-century Britain, corporate foundations now dominate European philanthropy. Europe boasts some 130,000 foundations—compared with 100,000 in the US—wielding €433bn in assets, according to a 2015 survey by a French government agency, the Fondation de France.
Young Europeans want to disrupt this fusty system. One driver may be the continent’s recent economic woes, which put traditional sources of welfare under strain. Some 38% of under-35s say that the 2008-09 global financial crisis made them think that giving back is important, compared with 30% of over-35s, according to a report on London’s young workers by the UK-based Cass Business School. Three trends emerge: a desire for fun and social philanthropy, a thirst for data and concern for global issues.
Young philanthropists are playing with ways to make giving a more social experience. In the UK, travel entrepreneur Afzaal Mauthoor and his wife, Shahanaz, set up The Philanthropy Club (TPC) in 2012 for London’s professionals. It is designed for aspiring 35- to 45-year-old philanthropists to meet, share and collaborate on projects. “We provide a network,” says Mr Mauthoor, aged 42. “That network effect allows each person to inspire others to donate or get involved…Once I donate, I know I’m part of a like-minded group on their way to being a philanthropist.” In this way, group giving helps to club typically lower amounts of individual donations from young people.
Technology makes philanthropy more attractive, too. Mr Mars’s US-based Epic Foundation presents donors with a suite of 20 children’s charities to choose from. The foundation does the hard work of finding and vetting non-governmental organisations (NGOs) to make giving as easy as possible, adding new organisations to the platform each year. With the latest intake, Epic is working on virtual reality (VR) films for some of the NGOs to ignite a strong emotional response among donors. “It may be very hard for you to travel to see the project, but technology can bring the social good directly to you,” explains Mr Mars, 41. In this way, he is hoping to bring projects in distant countries alive—and make them less abstract—for young philanthropists.
Another Epic tool, the so-called Impact app, taps into the trend for data. The donor dashboard aims to let philanthropists see all their gifts in one place. “Technology will increase giving because we will be able to show your impact in real time, without waiting six months to see it in a brochure,” explains Mr Mars. “If, for example, you look at an organisation in East Africa, you will see how many kids got their vaccines against a disease, or how many children went to a particular shelter in New York last week.”
Data on donations and their end-use matter to young Europeans. In part, this reflects the culture of where many made their money, the technology and finance sectors. Almost half of the respondents to the Cass Business School survey aged between 18 and 34 said that more information on impact would encourage them to make bigger donations; in other age groups, this dropped to 27%.
Armed with more information, young donors are more willing to take risks with their fortunes, says Christopher Mikkelsen, co-founder of a Danish non-profit, Refunite. The NGO uses data—details such as name, clan or village submitted via SMS—to reunite refugee families separated by war and disaster. “You may not have invested in philanthropy before because you felt you didn’t have enough information,” says Mr Mikkelsen, 37. “A lot of what is driving younger philanthropists now is the knowledge that, for example, to eradicate a disease it will cost x dollars to reach y number of people.”
Part of Refunite’s appeal is that it approaches doing good in the same way as young philanthropists, he argues. They both look for a global issue, such as the vast numbers of the displaced globally, that is solvable—albeit over a long timeframe. “Instead of funding 20 different causes, people are choosing one specific area where they know their donation will have a massive impact that can be demonstrated,” says Mr Mikkelsen. Mr Mauthoor agrees: “People who entered the workforce after 2000 see an increase in devastations around the world,” he says. “They are far more exposed to global issues like the refugee crisis and climate change and are constantly thinking about how they can contribute.”
Giving to overseas causes often allows young people to get more bang for their buck. Will MacAskill, philosopher and author of Doing Good Better, observes: “A donation of £2,000 to the Against Malaria Foundation can save the life of a person in sub-Saharan Africa. We’d need to donate ten or 100 times that amount to save the life of someone in our own country.”
In turn, the drive for greater impact has led to increased study of different ways of giving. There are at least seven university centres for philanthropy in the UK, four in Germany and France, and three in the Netherlands. Most have popped up since 2000. A growing academic infrastructure speaks to pent-up demand for training and professional development, says Volker Then, director of Heidelberg University’s Centre for Social Investment.
Greater intellectual engagement in giving means that donors are willing to look beyond the traditional foundation to other approaches, such as impact investing. This is particularly popular among the young: the under-45s make up just 5% of German donors with private foundations, but account for a much larger slice of those starting non-profits and social enterprises, says Dr Then.
Europe’s young philanthropists want their giving to be as ambitious as they are, says Mr Mauthoor: “Young people want to be known as philanthropists right now.” Even the label is too traditional, with young people preferring the monikers ‘social investor’ or ‘impact angel’,” he observes. Philanthropy in Europe is starting to see the new generation’s shift in mindset and gear. “They aren’t interested in making many, incremental changes. They want to change the world,” says Mr Mikkelsen. “We’ve done it already with companies, now we want to do it with our philanthropy.”
This article, written by Adrienne Cernigoi, is part of a content programme sponsored by BNP Paribas:
http://sustainablegiving.economist.com/a-new-euro-vision-the-young-donors-disrupting-philanthropy/
