Children and teenagers take on nonprofit leadership roles
Aubyn Burnside had a simple reason for starting her charity, Suitcases for Kids -- to provide the
300 or so foster-care children in her home of Catawba County, N.C., with their own luggage so they would not be forced to carry their belongings in plastic trash bags each time they moved.
Ms. Burnside had learned of the children’s plight from an older sister who worked in the county’s social-services department. “I thought, If you’re putting your belongings in a black garbage bag, you feel like garbage,” Ms. Burnside says. “I wanted to make them feel special by giving them something of their own to keep.”
It’s no surprise that the founder and CEO of Suitcases for Kids has such keen insight into the way kids think; at 17, she is still one herself. Ms. Burnside started her charity when she was 10, and in the last seven years she has overseen its growth from a small gesture of goodwill into an organization with a board of directors that includes both kids and adults -- the youngest member is 9 -- and chapters in all 50 states and 42 countries. Her brother, Welland, the group’s president, is 14. The charity has distributed tens of thousands of suitcases to children in foster care.
While Ms. Burnside’s commitment to charity is certainly impressive, nonprofit leaders say she has plenty of company. Teenagers are becoming vital players in the nonprofit world by starting their own charities, sitting on grant-making boards, raising money, volunteering, and leading efforts to solve problems in their neighborhoods, schools, and beyond.
Nonprofit leaders say the number of kids doing charity work today -- and the extent of their philanthropic commitments -- reflect the payoff of nearly two decades of work by nonprofit and government leaders to increase teenage involvement. Among the signs youth service is on the rise:
- More than half of American public high schools now require service as a condition for graduation, causing the number of high-school students who volunteer to increase significantly. In 1984, 900,000 students said they volunteered; in 1997, the number was more than 6 million, according to the most recent figures available from the U.S. Department of Education -- an increase of 686 percent.
- Almost 83 percent of incoming college freshmen in 2001 said they volunteered, up from 66 percent in 1989, according to a national survey by the Higher Education Research Institute.
- An estimated 500 or more youth-led grant-making groups now exist, exemplifying a concept that got its start 15 years ago with a grant program in Michigan by the W. K. Kellogg Foundation.
“Young people are stepping up in ways they haven’t before,” says Maureen A. Sedonaen, executive director of the Youth Leadership Institute, a nonprofit organization in San Francisco that runs several youth-led advisory boards and provides training and other assistance to groups that work with young people. “Youth involvement has moved forward. It is no longer seen as a rebellious act, the way it was a few decades ago.”
‘Part of Their Lives’
Much of the credit for kids’ growing involvement in nonprofit work, experts say, belongs with the teenagers themselves.
“This generation is just amazing in terms of its desire to give,” says John A. Calhoun, presidentof the National Crime Prevention Council, and founder of Youth as Resources, a program that recruits teenagers to design and carry out projects to solve problems in their neighborhoods. “It’s part of their lives, and it’s very different from a generation ago. They really believe they can and should make a difference,” says Mr. Calhoun, who has led the program since it began in 1986.
He and other nonprofit leaders say this generation of teenagers is similar in its activist tendencies to those who participated in the civil-rights and antiwar movements of the 1960s. However, there are differences. For one thing, this generation’s philanthropic interests, far from focusing on a single issue, are diverse -- whether it be improving the juvenile criminal-justice system, raising organic crops for soup kitchens, collecting school supplies for disadvantaged kids, or distributing clothes to AIDS orphans in Africa.
Many of today’s teenagers admit that their motives are not entirely idealistic; in an increasingly competitive academic environment, many college-bound kids look to distinguish themselves from their peers by their involvement in nonprofit work. A growing number of high schools also require their students to volunteer a certain number of hours before they can graduate. More than half of all public high schools now have such service programs, up from just 9 percent in 1984, according to Steve Culbertson, president of Youth Service America, an alliance of 300 organizations that work to increase youth volunteerism.
Unlike their counterparts of the 1960s, most of today’s teenagers in general do not try to solve problems through political action.
“Those who can vote don’t feel as if their vote makes a difference,” says Scott Beale, mid-Atlantic regional director of Youth Venture, an Arlington, Va., charity. “But there are a lot of young people who see problems and want to create new ways to solve them. It’s symbolic of the self-confidence of this generation.”
Part of the reason for such optimism has to do with teenagers’ parents, says Elizabeth Rusch, author of Generation Fix: Young Ideas for a Better World. The book profiles kids who have found creative ways to tackle issues as varied as fighting discrimination and raising awareness for organ donations.
“A lot of these kids have been raised by baby-boomer parents,” says Ms. Rusch, who spent 18 months interviewing young people as part of her research for her book. “They tend to be a little more optimistic, and to run families in which kids’ ideas are valued, and in which there is discussion about the world around them.”
Computer Aid
Kids’ prowess with computers is another driving force behind their growing involvement in philanthropy, Ms. Rusch and other observers say.
“It would be hard to overstate the role of the Internet,” says Mr. Beale. “It empowers young people. They spread the word through Listserves and Web sites and they connect with kids all over the world who share their goals.”
The Internet has been indispensable for 15-year-old Alexandra Govere, who collects clothes, school supplies, and toys for distribution to children in six African countries whose parents have died of AIDS. Ms. Govere says she corresponds regularly by e-mail with the 50 or so youth volunteers around the globe who work with her. “The Internet is our main form of communication,” she says.
Role of Grant Makers
While many kids get involved in philanthropy through their own initiative, nonprofit observers say that charities, grant makers, and government leaders have played a big role in nurturing youth involvement.
The list of charities promoting youth service has grown rapidly in recent years. YouthNoise, an Internet-based project of Save the Children started in 2001, aims to get young people involved in philanthropy and volunteerism by, among other things, promoting the good works of their peers, helping kids find specific volunteer projects to work on, and hosting discussions on issues that affect teenagers. Other youth charities -- including Do Something (New York), Youth Service America (Washington), and Youth Venture -- provide small grants to teenage “social entrepreneurs,” kids who come up with innovative solutions to local, and global, problems.
Many nonprofit leaders credit the Kellogg Foundation with helping to jump-start the movement in youth philanthropy with its $65-million Michigan Community Foundations’ Youth Project, begun in 1988. The program provided matching funds to any Michigan city or town that sought to start a community fund or to increase the assets of an existing fund -- provided that the assets generated from Kellogg money would be managed and invested by young people. Eighty-six youth advisory councils now operate in Michigan, and more than 8,000 teenagers have participated in the program, says Bob Long, vice president for Kellogg’s Philanthropy and Volunteerism program. And many community foundations nationwide have started similar programs.
The Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, in Kansas City, Mo., entrusts its 30-member youth board, created in 1997 and composed of high-school students, with deciding how to distribute what is probably the largest pot of money: some $250,000 each year for charity programs that encourage and train young people to become leaders and get involved in service in their schools and neighborhoods.
More recently, some grant makers in youth philanthropy have begun to focus beyond youth volunteering to youth organizing or activism as a way to encourage them to solve problems in schools and neighborhoods. Since 1998, the Edward W. Hazen Foundation, in New York, has distributed $2.5-million in grants to youth-led groups that focus on such issues as tackling environmental problems and ensuring better treatment for young people in the criminal-justice system. (See article on Page 11.)
National Service
Many nonprofit observers credit government community-service efforts of the past 12 years with spurring youth involvement in nonprofit activities, particularly after Congress passed legislation in 1990 authorizing hundreds of millions of dollars in federal spending for AmeriCorps and other community-service programs.
“That legislation changed the entire youth world,” says Cynthia Shearer, vice president for youth outreach at the Points of Light Foundation. “It created an awareness, a motivation, and a mobilization around young people in youth service that has continued to crescendo.”
Groups such as Points of Light, as well as the federal Corporation for National and Community Service’s Learn and Serve program, have steered millions of high-school students, and more recently, middle- and elementary-school children, toward community service through programs that link service with classroom learning.
Finding ways to get even more kids involved in charity work in the future should be a high priority for all nonprofit leaders, youth-service experts say. A recent report by Independent Sector and Youth Service America found that people who began volunteering as youths are twice as likely to volunteer as adults as are those who did not volunteer when they were younger. The report, based on information gathered in 1996, also found that adults who volunteered as youths tend to give more money to charity than those who did not. (See article on Page 22.)
The report has helped buttress the arguments made by foundation officials who say efforts to encourage youths to be philanthropic have a greater return on investment than those that target adults.
“Once you’ve got a committed philanthropist, they’re going to be committed the rest of their life, so why not get 70 years out of them, rather than thinking about philanthropy about a year before they’re about to die and they’re going to write their wills,” says Tom Reis, a program director at the Kellogg Foundation.
Not ‘Getting It’
Not that youth philanthropy has been trouble-free. Many charities still balk at the idea of kids taking on leadership roles, says Karen Young, director of Youth on Board, a program of YouthBuild U.S.A. that helps charities recruit and retain young board members. “Lots of organizations, especially small ones, still aren’t getting it,” she says. “They still have this notion that young people should be protected, not be the decision makers.”
Some states have minimum age requirements that prevent teenagers from serving on some nonprofit boards. In Michigan, for example, teenagers under 18 were prohibited from serving on the boards of nonprofit organizations that focus on youths until 1998, when charity leaders were able to persuade state legislators to lower the requirement to age 16.
Another challenge for nonprofit groups has been recruiting and retaining teenagers from diverse ethnic, racial, and economic backgrounds. Surveys by the Youth Leadership Institute have found that the majority of teenagers who volunteer are white, middle-class females.
“It’s a lot easier to work with the kid that’s got the Palm Pilot, that’s got a car, that’s got a parent who trusts them,” Ms. Young says. “If you’ve got the frazzled staff person who can only spend 5 percent of their time on this project, they’re going to want the usual suspects, the student-council presidents, the self-starters who are not going to take up too much time. You’ve got to have a youth worker who knows how to work with young people, who can identify leadership qualities and will search for the kids that show those qualities, even if they’re hidden. It is hard work and it takes some thought.”
Limited Successes
Still, many programs have been successful in recruiting diverse kids, according to the Youth Leadership Institute. The institute’s report, “Changing the Face of Giving: An Assessment of Youth Philanthropy,” found that six of the seven youth grant-making boards at nonprofit organizations in the San Francisco Bay area had a majority of non-white members. One board, the San Francisco Youth Initiated Projects’ Review Board, reported that 90 percent of its members were from minority groups, and 30 percent lived in public housing.
Many teenagers involved in community-service efforts see recruitment of their peers as a key part of their work.
Ms. Burnside of Suitcases for Kids, for example, has a section on her Web site where anyone interested in starting a chapter can easily download a 12-page starter kit. She advises others that having young people involved in providing services to young people is a key ingredient to success.
“Kids have really been the foundation of this project,” Ms. Burnside says. “The whole experience has just shown me that young people, even one or two, can make big changes in their community and in their world.”