January 6, 2010 | Read Time: 3 minutes
For the nonprofit world, the “graying” of America is both an opportunity and a problem, say charity leaders and others. While older people offer a potential windfall of talented volunteers and new philanthropic wealth, they will increase demand for health care and other assistance.
“What you’re going to see is more opportunity on the one hand, and on the other hand more stress and strain for long-term-care services and social-service providers,” says Peter Goldberg, chief executive of the Alliance for Children and Families, an association of social-service organizations, in Milwaukee.
The U.S. Census Bureau estimates that today people ages 65 and older represent almost 13 percent of the population. That percentage is likely to rise to 16 percent in 2020 and 20 percent by 2040.
The demographic shift will require some charities to refocus their mission.
“We’re going to see agencies in family service and maybe child-welfare agencies getting into multiple-generation issues and human services for older Americans,” predicts Mr. Goldberg.
His coalition received a $2.6-million grant three years ago from the Atlantic Philanthropies, in New York, to help charities with little experience aiding older people begin thinking of ways they could support them.
It will require new training and, perhaps more important, a “cultural change” as groups make links between the services they offer today and the services they need to offer tomorrow, says Mr. Goldberg.
For example, he says, child-care centers are considering providing day care for older parents of adults who require special services.
New Challenges
Other forecasters predict a growth in charities focusing on older Americans, like research institutions that study diseases that primarily affect people in their 70s, 80s, and 90s.
The emerging generation of older Americans is expected to be healthier and more active than previous ones. And baby boomers, whose oldest members will start reaching retirement age in 2011, pose a different challenge to philanthropy, say experts. The key question for 2020, says Lisa Bodell, chief executive of FutureThink, a New York company that examines future trends for businesses, is: “How do you get these folks who are perfectly capable and have lots of years of experience and tap them for volunteerism?”
Charities also need to find ways to attract boomers’ money, says Steve Gunderson, chief executive of the Council on Foundations, an association of grant makers, in Arlington, Va.
As they age, baby boomers are expected to pass on a massive amount of money to their heirs, an estimated $41-trillion. Much of that could be donated as bequests or other charitable gifts But to take advantage of the potential windfall, charities must get better at wooing older donors.
For example, by 2020, says Mr. Gunderson, it is important that community foundations and others have expanded their geographic reach so they can appeal to aging baby boomers in the Midwest and rural parts of the country.
“We need to do a map of the gaps” in fund-raising capability, he says. “I lose sleep over the fact that we are so busy surviving the current economic crisis that we don’t prepare for the growth in philanthropy, which is right around the corner.”
