Having Their Cake and Eating It, Too
The storyline has become familiar enough to be almost painful: Baby Boomer spends college and post-college years making the world a better place. Marches on behalf of ending the war/legalizing weed/passing the Equal Right Amendment/insert your cause here. Grows up, makes painful decision to enter the for-profit sector, earns tons of money, holds on to job for as long as possible, preventing younger generations from assuming their rightful place at the table. Nurses nagging guilt for decades over selling out to The Man. Years of useless therapy ensue.
Comes now a group called The Next Chapter, which “provides expertise and assistance to community groups across the country working to help people in the second half of life set a course, connect with peers, and find pathways to significant service.” According to the Puget Sound Business Journal, the organization’s Seattle branch is making the city “a testing ground for boomers searching for new and rewarding ventures” by trying to attract them into nonprofit leadership positions that are going unfilled. Okay, fine, it’s great to have that kind of experience guiding these groups. But a small part of me — the cynical part, the part I’m not often proud of — wonders whether this is simply a way for the world’s most narcissistic generation to feel better about themselves for trading in the true idealism of their youth for decades of crass overconsumption.
And, of course, I have to ask myself: Where the hell is my generation? If, as the Business Journal piece asserts, “the looming shortfall of leaders in the nonprofit sector could reach crisis proportions … [because] nonprofits will need to find 640,000 new executives over the coming decade,” then why aren’t my fellow thirty- and fortysomethings prepared to step in and lead? Are we too busy with our Xboxes and iPhones? | 501(c)
