June 11, 2007 | Read Time: 1 minute
Trista Harris says her job as a program officer at a community fund in Minnesota has forced her to balance the competing needs of two different generations.
Ms. Harris writes on her blog New Voices of Philanthropy that she is committed to getting more young people involved in organized philanthropy, but one of her work responsibilities is to oversee the foundation’s efforts to help baby boomers remain active in the nonprofit world.
“Talk about competing priorities,” she writes. “On one hand I know how important it is to keep baby boomers engaged, on the other hand I am hearing from young people on a daily basis that they can’t advance because baby boomers won’t leave the philanthropic sector and make room for young people to advance.”
Ms. Harris sees a possible solution, however.
“What if a new way of working was created that still kept baby boomers engaged but allowed them to reduce the number of hours that they work so that they could keep health benefits and stay involved in a career that they love?,” she writes. “If we started thinking of the program officer position (of any other foundation or nonprofit staff member for that matter) as a collection of tasks that can be completed by one or many people depending on the time available for each worker.”
What do you think? Are baby boomers and younger Americans sometimes at odds in the nonprofit arena? What other ways have organizations discovered to solve such a dilemma? Click on the comments link below this post to share your thoughts.
