Amidst celebrities, global social entrepreneurs and world leaders, I couldn't help but think that the participants' Commitments to Action were the real stars at last weekend's Clinton Global Initiative University meeting in Austin, TX. This is where real change happens: the intersection of inspiring vision and hard work. Over a 1000 students, 100 university Presidents, and nearly as many social leaders gathered together to make their commitments of action for global change in: poverty alleviation, climate change & energy, health, human rights & peace, and education. As we launched the Fast Forward Fund, announced by former President Clinton at the CGIU 2009 Press Conference, I felt humbled and inspired to help drive a new path on the global social agenda: youth investment activism.
Through FFF, social investment--how we give and direct philanthropic capital, is a new form of activism, and becomes a means of global civic engagement. To pursue youth social investment as action, we need a better handle on how we give today and how we can imagine giving in the future. So, take a moment of reflection and let us know: what is your current thinking about social giving? What are your associations with and assumptions about strategic philanthropy? What is your experience if any as a social investor? How do you see young adults and college students as philanthropists? Look around and tell us what you see as the most creative, innovative trends in youth giving. And stretch your imagination: if you could forecast youth social investment 10 years into the future, what would it look like? Paint a picture of the Fast Forward Fund on its 10th Anniversary.
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My view on social giving and strategic philanthropy is probably the view many of us share. Previously, groups that wanted to promote social change did not engage or target young people in their twenties but focused on rich and rather aged individuals. They missed out on the potential and failed to create people who would give to the organization and other bodies in the future. Young people feel that philanthropy is something that their parents do or something that rich individuals do, they fail to understand that even they can make a difference because their numbers and power to come together outweigh many donors on this planet. This might be the reason many of us were not social investors or even remotely associated with it beforehand. By getting people involved early on means that they will probably give more in the years to come. One just needs to create awareness in their minds in order to do this. The Fast Forward Fund (FFF) is unique in this sense.
ReplyDeleteYoung adults and college students can act as philanthropists in a variety of ways. They can work on their campuses, something that CGIU is doing, or, if they wanted to, mobilize funds for many elements of society hey are related to, to give to a particular cause or organization. The ability of youth to come together and get excited about certain things is the ability and trend I see that is most beneficial when it comes to social investment and giving.
As mentioned before, the FFF is playing a vital role in this. Ten years from now I think that FFF will undoubtedly have more finances to work with and will be funding many projects, some in and some outside of its current portfolio set. It might also be working with the governments of local areas to create awareness among youth and tell them that they might get involved. I still see that the majority of the funding will be coming from private donors and other traditional sources of capital. Maybe in twenty five to thirty years, when this generation of young adults becomes the leaders of tomorrow, will the majority of funds come from them or the majority of social work will come from them. The FFF has a strong start and it will be a very established body in the future that has connections to many schools and universities, as well as local education institutions. The connection with youth and youth involvement will be much stronger.
It is my personal opinion that social philanthropy, if it is to be done by young-age 20 somethings with a penchant for virtuous giving, is going to have to harness a great deal more social networking technologies and concepts in ways prior generations never have. In the past, donations were primarily made by wealthy philanthrocapitalists who had spent their lives acquiring fortune and decided at mid to late portions of their life to give back the money they had earned. Such a system is inadequate for young entrepreneurs, who alone cannot make the inordinate amounts of wealth that are classically required to make a philanthropic difference.
ReplyDeleteThus the future of youth-oriented social philanthropy lies in networking technologies that can pool the often-times meager resources of large groups of young people into collections that, with the right cause, tools, and resonance within a group, easily exceed the efforts of one rich donor.
While connections for the Fast Forward Fund are great at the moment, the economic collapse around us leaves us little confidence that we will be able to turn to angel investors or other significant sources of private donation. If we do not only prepare for the future but also embrace it on a weekly basis of change, we will not be fit to pull ourselves out of the ashes and into the bizarre economic future that will be our shared tomorrow. Unless we free ourselves of the shackles of the old economy, I doubt the Fast Forward Fund will exist in ten years.
As I'd mentioned after class last Thursday, the best model I've seen for social giving -- particularly keeping young adults and college students in mind -- is that exemplified in Hungry for Change: http://apps.facebook.com/causes/162489. From the site: "Through "Hungry for Change", your spare change from every bank card purchase will automatically provide a school-based meal for a hungry child in the developing world, thus making giving automatic, effortless, and sustainable."
ReplyDeleteTranslating applying this concept to work with FFF is not immediately obvious. Perhaps a system could be put in place on the FFF website whereby each individual's credit or debit card information was kept on the site so that the spare change from web-based purchases would be devoted to a specified social venture, such as FFF.
The point is that young people can't afford or can't envision themselves affording a whole chunk of change at once, but a little bit at a time seems much less daunting on the side of the investor and just as cumulative on the side of the investment.
I totally agree with you on the idea of youth investment activism. Youths are the ones that keep dreaming constantly about a bright future with no crime, poverty alleviation or diseases. Youths are the driving force that creates motion in the motionless world of no hope. Not that as we grow up we stop dreaming or stop being active, but we become more realistic about what we can possibly do to create a global change.
ReplyDeleteThe fact is, as we already discussed in class, that in order to be a good social investor one need to be a little bit 'crazy', passionate and unreasonable. Too much thinking can lead to too much postponing and no action as a result.
However, even though youths are the ones with the creative power, they are not the ones with the capital power. Therefore, they have been needed and they still need the support of other philanthropist who also want to make a social change, but who have money to turn youths' ideas into real actions. I am not saying that youths are not capable of being fully active participants in the global change, but that in most cases they lack money supplies.
Talking about myself, I have not been a great social activist, but I did some contributions to create a positive change in our society. I worked for several months in the Bulgarian Youth Red Cross and we had various activities in which youths were working together trying to create a local social change that would turn into a global change some day. We were working with children hospitals, orphanages , and schools and we we were trying to not only educate students on some health-related topics, but also to make social philanthropists from the private sector interested in our work and in the idea of crating a positive social change. By raising money through different campaigns and projects, we were trying to be as active as possible.
Thinking about the future and about how I foresee FFF in 10 years, I believe that FFF will already have a great popularity not only among students, but also among different social, age and economic groups because of its fast tempo of development, its leaders and participants and its great socially-oriented goals. Moreover, I believe that in 10 years youths will be even more powerful not only to take decisions about changes, but also to create those ideas into real results. Youths are getting more and more trust and they will continue because of the way they have proven that they can work efficiently and with a specific goal. I hope in 10 years more political leaders and influential persons will have joined FFF. Till then, we should be the ones to make it work on a global scale.
Ivelina
The part that I love about investment as part of economy, and going with that what I love in this time period is that we are able to do something although we do not have needs for it. It is great that people with idea can take money from people with money, or they can collect money on different ways, to make theirs project work and bring gain to everybody. And if it is a social thing, we have gain for both investors –directly or through improvement of society they live in, the idea maker – on the same ways, and the most important for the community.
ReplyDeleteAs for the best way of making students to become investors I would just agree with what Rachel said about small steps and small contributions that make big difference.
Furthermore, for the future I hope that through raising awareness about the importance of everybody helping and at least doing small things that are on everyday basis really simple and affordable to everybody will make a big change. That could not only money, but time, ideas, etc. FFF could make a big help with that, and in that case I think that in ten years world will be better place =)
When I first reflect on “social giving” in terms of how successful a project can be, I automatically feel anxious about the level of funding (or what happens in a lot of cases lack of funding) as that determines the actual potential impact of a project (depending on the project of course). Bottom line, generating enough revenue is a consistent worry for many people (I don’t have to state why this is especially true given our current economic position). Giving donations cannot be the sole provider for such projects, but is one I often link to social entrepreneurship. Giving one’s time and effort is just as valuable, which is why I think promoting youth social entrepreneurship is highly valuable. College students may not have enough money, but the level of resources and connections available to students are vast (CGIU is a prime example of this). I believe promoting young social investors is key, not only because this age group is most likely not yet fixed in a job/career and thus can donate their time, but also because the projects are most likely to be built upon to a much a greater extent if those students/20 year-olds decide to continue the project for years (which would greatly enhance the future success rate of that project). I believe the future of youth social investment will sustain as long as there are multiple ways in which people can be involved (not just relying on financial resources). I’m not sure how likely it is to instill a “social investment” mentality to vast societies, but the more this concept/goal is available and easily accessible to the general population, the less social investment will be considered going above one’s social duties and become the “norm” of everyday living.
ReplyDelete-Katharine
With the role of the government being challenged by the current recession, more consideration has been given to the role of the individual to both criticize and complement the work of established institutions. The inability of government to respond quickly enough has left the civil society with the responsibility to grapple with emerging social problems. In my opinion, there is a trend for people to be more proactive and to get involved in the issues they care about. In ten years, I believe the majority of people will donate at least ocasionally. An essential change that must occur is the way philanthropy is regarded. I trust that when people will understand that they can contribute to a cause even if they are not rich – or out of college – social investment will become a very powerful instrument for generating progress.
ReplyDeleteI also really liked Rachel’s example. Despite being relatively poor, I think young people can easily be convinced to donate small sums of money. Being generous does make people feel good about themselves, and perhaps making it seem insignificant financially and effortless facilitates the process.
The first part of the “Be the change” book, re-caped my initial thoughts on social giving. Even though, in philanthropy, financial support indeed plays a crucial role (as previously stated by Rachel and Ioanna), yet quoting from the book, an “Exceptional philanthropy comes not from fortunes but from commitment.”
ReplyDeleteSara
Sadly enough, it is conjectural but conceivable to me that in this fast past changing world and this financial global crisis, there are not many people that have chosen and will choose to devote a considerable amount of time and part of their lives for such activities. On the other hand, young generation (here we include students, young adults) slowly but effectively did understand the altruistic nature on giving protection, love, peace to the people in need.
No matter how selfish this sounds, they know that it is mutually beneficial. Through commiting their time they gain experience, meet new people, travel, new connections, satisfaction etc. Through rapid spread of globalization, young adults are the ones that are inspired by international laws and humanitarian interventions. Bluntly speaking,it challenges their thinking, and our ideas!
Hence, I do frankly believe that Fast Forward Fund in the next few years would be an international linkage strongly maintained by young goal oriented investors, eager to learn, explore new paths, able to overcome any budget constraints, economic crisis, or even political obstacles. Fast Forward Fund investors shall anticipate change,take succesful actions, and learn from them :)
I like the idea behind youth investment, however without being educated on the matter I think it is a topic that could be intimidating for many young people. Especially those within the early 20 set, even a small donation is sometimes not feasible. I think that is actually partially the appeal of the Fast Forward Fund. It allows youth to become financially involved in social entrepreneurship without necessarily needing financial means.
ReplyDeleteOn the other hand, I think we are currently witnessing a moment in time where socially responsible investment has become increasingly important to many young people. There are many possible ways youth investment could play out in the future, which for the most part, are largely contingent on the economy. Organizations like the Fast Forward Fund seem like the most attractive alternatives, especially for those who are very financially limited. This type of social philanthropy is sustainable, as long as funding comes from an outside source (which of course is still susceptible to many factors). Purchasing power is social investment power, as discussed in class, however it might be less sustainable if those products which are socially conscious continue to cost more than products which are not. This type of social investment is not as sustainable during difficult times.
Ten Years in the future the Fast Forward Fund has the ability to blossom. There is the possibility that FFF looks towards outside submissions of projects (not only those in the Clinton Global initiative) to fund—including internationally. Hopefully the board of youth directors could expand beyond BGIA, giving others the ability to become youth investors.
-Rachel F