Marc Freedman founded Civic Ventures, a San Francisco think tank, to promote career opportunities for older adults, and especially to encourage them to work in socially significant organizations. He discussed his new book, The Big Shift: Navigating the New Stage Beyond Midlife (Public Affairs), in an interview with The Chronicle:
Why did you write this book?
As 10,000 boomers a day are turning 60, a group that’s between the end of midlife and the beginning of anything resembling old age is becoming the biggest group in society. I felt like it was time to better understand this period and also to see how we could shape it in a way that worked better for individuals and for the country.
Has the recession affected your ideas about what retirement should look like?
It accelerated the realization that we’re going to need to extend working lives for those who are in a position healthwise to continue working, and at the same time, it’s made it much more difficult for people to actually find work.
But I think that the change that we’re looking at is really one that’s going to transcend any kind of boom or bust period, that’s really more about the shape of lives than what people do in this economic context.
What are the implications that nonprofits should grapple with?
In the past, this population was viewed as a potential source of volunteers and of board members, and that’s still true to a certain extent. But now, we’re seeing the growth in a group of people who can have entire second careers in the social sector and who bring with them the experience from these earlier chapters.
It’s almost like realizing there’s an undiscovered continent of talent out there, comparable in many ways to the movement of women into roles that had been off limits to their mothers’ generation beginning in the ’60s and ’70s.
Now when we look back we think, how would we have survived as a society without this extraordinary wealth of human capital? In the future, we’ll think about this boomer segment of society in the same way.
How can nonprofits afford to pay the salaries of experienced workers?
Few people that I’ve interviewed feel that they expect to make as much money working in the nonprofit sector as in the for-profit sector.
They’re willing and prepared to work for less money if they feel that they’re receiving personally from the work, and the impact that they’re having on issues that they care about is also an important part of the equation.
Many people are willing to swap a certain amount of income if there are other kinds of psychic compensation and a feeling that their experience is being used in ways that matter.
How can higher education better meet the needs of older adults seeking new careers?
One of the great success stories in the nonprofit sector is the invention of lifelong learning. It used to be that we learned when we were young, we worked in midlife, and then we headed off to the golf course or the bingo parlor.
We need to invent something as equally bold for this period that’s between the education that we offer young people and what constitutes most of lifelong learning, which is focused more on self-development.
The nonprofit sector again can develop new models and prototypes for that kind of education. I’ve been impressed with the emergence of a number of sustainability M.B.A. programs drawing many people from this segment of the population. We’re seeing a hunger on the part of people in this age group to go back to school.
What do you hope readers take away from your book?
The period that’s opening up between midlife and anything resembling old age is a time that’s long enough to do something significant, and requires preparation. I’d like to see people plan for this period, invest in it, and recognize that it’s a time when they can do some of the most important work. It’s a natural time for people to be thinking about moving into the nonprofit sector.
Now, people are essentially told they should go in one of two directions: in the “60 is the new 30” direction you should just hang on to your lost youth, or in “60 is the new 90” you’re eligible at 60 for senior discounts and suddenly, in a near-overnight process, you’ve become elderly.
We need to see this group as distinct. The longer that we conflate them with the group that truly is elderly, we’re going to do a poor job of serving either one.
