About

About Us 

Philanthropy is a multi-billion dollar industry.  There are thousands of grant-making institutions and hundreds of supporting organizations clustered around causes, regions, political affiliations and more.  According to recent reports more than $40 trillion will transfer from older to younger generations before 2050 in the United States alone.  In 2009, roughly 115,000 American households held fortunes of $25 million or more, a substantial increase from the previous decade. Despite these numbers, not enough young people from families of extreme wealth get involved in strategic philanthropy.  To change this tide and motivate greater generosity we are developing programs to support young wealth-holders and offering a conceptual model to describe the “lifecycle” of philanthropists.  The innovation offered by this model is the attempt to consider young donor education in a holistic way.

How do young wealth-holders, today, differ from previous generations?  What values and ideologies do young inheritors have in common?  Why do only some from ultra-affluent families get involved in strategic philanthropy?  We observe that a chief limiting factor of philanthropic inclination is an “inspiration and awareness deficit,” defined as a lack of awareness, vision, or hope.  Our work seeks to overcome this Inspiration & Awareness Gap in a systemic way by:

1) Encouraging families to look more deeply into the character and identity development of their children,

2) Building networks and facilitating collaboration among existing young philanthropy support organizations, and

3) Empowering young wealth-holders to see their age and their “generation” as important resources for social change.  “If all you have is a hammer, then every problem looks like a nail.”  Donors become motivated when they can give in more ways than money. Just as women’s issues motivated and galvanized women philanthropists to imagine and join movements of women, so too can youth issues motivate and galvanize young philanthropists.

Our Origin and Trajectory

On Wednesday July 28th, 2010, a group of 15 stakeholders in the sector of organized philanthropy came together in Washington, D.C. The previous day most had participated in a White House conference on philanthropy and social entrepreneurship. Both gatherings were successful in galvanizing future action.

After a collective brainstorm and mapping of groups (presented on this website) we discussed a number of other ideas which set the stage for an emerging series of projects and the inaugural Nexus Global Youth Summit which became NEXUS.

Beyond the concepts and links on this website, all of our programming is developed today through NEXUS.