In the past I have blogged about working closely with young people (read: the under under-thirty crowd) – and find that young folks’ energy and dedication to excellence is phenomenal; plus their ability to look at a challenge and bring a a new way of thinking is amazing and consequently shouldn’t ever be overlooked.
PLUS their ability to bring a certain sense of naiveté coupled with a dose of “I am going to take on the world and do this nonprofit thing better than you ever did” is down-right invigorating.
Simply put they have great ideas and perspectives that cannot and shouldn’t be overlooked.
Youthful talent is the future of any organization – nonprofit and for-profit. They have a way of looking at things from a perspective the older generation simply isn’t equiped to do. They are wired differently. Not that the older generation doesn’t have something to offer – because they do – including seasoned experience and knowledge that may trump a twenty-something’s viewpoint of the world. But that still doesn’t mean one perspective is more important.
Frankly, it’s the ying and yang of the two dimensions that make it all work. The youthful perspective of life and business from people that grew up in the digital age coupled with the “seasoned” experience of the older crowd that grew up in the “old school” (rotary phones, B+W television, VHS movies and no cell phones – gasp!) but somehow has managed to adapt and transition into the digital world.
Both perspectives/worlds need to be acknowledged and combined to complement each other. We need both – the young and the old; so to speak….
The new paradigm of marketing and fundraising calls for total collaboration between the “old” and the “new” way of viewing the world. It’s this combination of experiences that will be the catalyst to solve the challenging issues we all confront in the nonprofit sector, including from both a programmatic and fundraising perspective.
Bottom-line: make sure you hire young, intelligent, optimistic, dedicated, innovative men and women that have a strong character and are grounded in life and its true meaning. And that also have a lively, youthful perspective that will ultimately help balance perspective and help any organization get to the next level through innovative thinking that arises from the blending of the “old school” thought process with the digital age mentality.