Silicon Valley evokes forward-thinking leadership, new business models, agile development, and new ways of collaborating. It’s fitting, then, that one of its most well-known philanthropic leaders, Emmett Carson, founding CEO of the Silicon Valley Community Foundation (SVCF), embodies that ethos. As with eBay founder Pierre Omidyar, AOL’s Jean and Steve Case, Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg (who gave $500 million in 2012 to the SVCF), and others, Carson has a vision for cutting-edge approaches to philanthropy. Here are three philanthropic insights he shares.
Younger donors are changing philanthropy.
Carson, whose organization provides grantmaking, leadership capabilities, and other services both locally and on a global level, sees big changes coming to philanthropy, and young donors are one reason why. [See: Young Philanthropists Take Top Spots in Ranking of Most Generous Donors] Carson points out that Silicon Valley is rife with twenty- and thirtysomethings who have bet big in business and are used to 24/7 connectivity and quick turnarounds, in business and in life, and that mindset carries into their philanthropic pursuits. “They want to engage; they want partnerships; they want people who can go on the journey with them,” he says. Of the old philanthropic model, wherein donors (whether at the corporate level or at the level of more serious philanthropy) were expected to simply trust philanthropic experts to allocate funds without donor input, Carson says simply, "that model is broken."Related
