Non-Profit Relevance

A friend of mine attended the WorldFuture 2009 Conference in Chicago a couple weeks ago and one of the guest speakers was Don Tapscott.  Mr. Tapscott is the Chair of NGenera Insights and has published “Wikinomics”, “Growing Up Digital” and “Grown Up Digital” (among other titles).  The focus of his work is the attitudes of people under 30 and the technological divide that occurs either by age or by economic factors.  In short, there’s a class of “haves” and a class of “have nots” when it comes to technology and how it’s used. 

People under 30 view communication, media and technology differently.  And we shouldn’t be surprised…computers, the Internet and cell phones have always been there for them and a learning curve doesn’t exist like it does for older generations.  When asked about the aspirations of the under 30 crowd, Mr. Tapscott offered:

“They mainly care about the world. I mean, just look at what kids want to do when they graduate. Of the top ten organizations they want to work for, five of them are government or not-for-profit [organizations]. When I was a kid, everyone wanted to work for IBM. In the Eighties, they wanted to work for Michael Milken or an investment bank. In the Nineties, they wanted to work for a dot-com. And today, kids graduating from Harvard want to work for Teach For America. So this is a generation with a very strong sense of integrity. They also have great B.S. detectors.”

The first of the two videos is taken from WorldFuture 2009 Conference (about 4 minutes) and details the rift.  The second is a longer interview with Don Tapscott (almost 30 minutes) and covers a gamut of his thoughts.  

A couple questions for non-profits as you watch. 

-How many people on your Board are under 30?

-Would it be worthwhile to adjust your model to be where they are…instead of wondering why they aren’t coming to you?

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