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Our Family Office is proud to announce the launch of the Our Family Office Podcast. Throughout the course of the inaugural season, host Adam Fisch speaks to various guests from across our firm, offering insights into the areas of focus for an integrated family office, and the ways that a Shared Family Office™ can help Canada’s wealthiest families.
Welcome back to the Our Family Office podcast. I'm your host, Adam Fisch. This season, we're talking about the rising generation and what makes them unique. And our theme this week is philanthropy. On this episode, you'll hear a conversation I had with Sharna Goldsecker, the founder and vice president of 21/64 , a nonprofit practice serving next gen and multigenerational philanthropic families. Sharna has also been named to the New York Business Journal's Women of Influence list. Sharna is the coauthor of the award winning bestseller, Generation Impact: How Next Gen Donors are Revolutionizing Giving. She chairs the Goldsecker Foundation founded by her great uncle and serves as non family trustee on the Felicity House Board and Leonard and Helen R. Stallman Charitable Foundation. In this episode, Sharna and I spoke about the ways that the rising generation views philanthropy, what impact means, and the importance of giving philanthropic opportunities at a younger age. I hope you enjoy it.
Adam Fisch:Sharna, thank you so much for being here.
Sharna Goldseker:Thanks for having me.
Adam Fisch:So to start with, can you tell the listeners a bit about your own story and how you came to work in next generation philanthropy?
Sharna Goldseker:Sure. My great uncle and grandfather immigrated from the territory that is now considered the Ukraine. My great uncle came to America earlier and managed to pull together enough resources to start buying what in Baltimore, Maryland we call row houses, it's kind of the archetypical architecture in Downtown Baltimore. And my grandfather came a few years later and bought a grocery store and over time the row house business grew and so everyone in the family including my father and my grandfather moved into uncle Morris's business. My father likes to say eighteen years and no vacations, he really learned how real estate worked and felt he was the successor to that family business.
Sharna Goldseker:He believed in the tradition of really taking care of one's own, right, and felt like the business would help provide for the family and the extended family. When his uncle passed and the will was read, he discovered the business would be liquidated into a private charitable foundation. And so overnight, my father who thought he was in the real estate business learned that he would be stewarding the legacy of his great uncle.
Adam Fisch:Wow.
Sharna Goldseker:And I can almost hear my head, you know, my father say, what did I know about philanthropy? Right. So I was born the year the foundation was set up. So the foundation and I turned 50 this year to be transparent and growing up I observed my father going on this journey of learning how to fulfill this responsibility and to allocate resources with impact. You know he told me great stories along the way.
Sharna Goldseker:I set up an office with a phone and an ad in the yellow pages, he would say, if anyone remembers the yellow pages. He wanted people to know how to reach the foundation. He felt like instead of sort of being- some of us might feel uncomfortable and wanna hide from people asking us for money- and what he said was this is our responsibility, this is the role we're playing. The foundation was set up to return dollars into the public domain to support in this case in particular, the people and institutions of Baltimore and so we wanted people to call and say what they needed which was a really really powerful message for me to hear and he coupled that with no one foundation can do that alone. That the challenges communities face are larger than any one foundation's assets.
Sharna Goldseker:And so he really modeled collaboration. He helped participate in the setting up the Baltimore Community Foundation and the regional association and was often encouraging the foundation to be the first in housing and other collaborations in the city. And so that left a lasting impression on me as well. I should say along the way, I have the same last name as the foundation and whether I liked it or not, I got asked for money a lot at a much younger age than most people would even anticipate. And so it caused me to say, wow, I certainly didn't earn this wealth, I didn't even inherit this wealth.
Sharna Goldseker:I'm really inheriting a legacy and how do I want to hold that in my life? And so when on my own journey of figuring out what it meant to be the future steward of a philanthropic entity, I joined the board of the foundation when I turned 29 and my father passed in 2023 and I became chair of the foundation, my cousins are the co vice chairs and so spent a long time sort of stepping into the role having watched it. And I guess the last thing I would say is along the way, a lot of other next gen would come up in a private way or in a public way and say like, if you know how to consider your role here, how might we do that? You know, my colleague Kristen Keffeler has this phrase that really stayed with me. She said, many next gen feel paralyzed by predecessor.
Sharna Goldseker:You know, these people who like my uncle had great success and left a large legacy that next generation members feel looms large, right? Like how will I follow in that predecessor's footprint?
Adam Fisch:Shadow, yeah.
Sharna Goldseker:Right? Or shadow, exactly. Some feel paralyzed by privilege. How come I have so much when there are so many people in the world with much less? Like I inherited the uterine lottery, one said, I didn't do anything to come to this privilege.
Sharna Goldseker:And then some next gen feel paralyzed by possibility. So there are a million and a half nonprofits in The United States alone, 10,000,000 globally. And so even if you're comfortable following in your predecessor's footsteps and you feel comfortable sort of, okay, I'm going to steward the privilege and the resources, then what do I do, right? How do I make an impact? And so I feel like a lot of the work that I've come to do, you asked me how I came into this work, was to have a professional outlet to respond to some of those challenges of NextGen. And so I'm happy to tell you more about how two thousand one hundred sixty four was set up twenty some years ago. That's been my professional life for the last twenty plus years.
Adam Fisch:Yeah. I mean, it's an incredible story, and you've obviously drawn so many lessons both from your own experience and from working with other next gen families. You touched along the way as you were recounting your family's story, obviously, a lot of values and lessons that you took from your own family in building your own philanthropic legacy. Thinking about the rising generation broadly, what have you learned about the ways that the rising generation views philanthropy and the lessons that they've learned, maybe positive and negative, from their parents and grandparents?
Sharna Goldseker:Well, as you may know, I worked on a number of research studies and one was translated into a book that I co researched and co authored with Michael Moody, who at the time held the first endowed chair of family philanthropy in the country. He's now at the Lilly School for Philanthropy and we interviewed Gen X and Millennials and surveyed hundreds more and really tried to understand what did they perceive were the messages that they inherited from their parents and grandparents about philanthropy, and what was important to them. And so, you know, I have a book's worth so I could, could talk a long time about the answer to your question you know, I would say the name of the book is called Generation Impact because that really was the top finding that NextGen perceived, right, I use that word carefully, perceived their parents and grandparents to be more motivated by a sense of duty and obligation or because their friends asked them to give to something or maybe even they're doing it for a tax write off and instead they felt that their top motivations were always around impact, right? Like the world needs us, I'm not going to wait until I retire into philanthropic legacy like many previous generations.
Sharna Goldseker:You know, you worked, earned your income, you took care of your family and if you were lucky you could retire and have some resources to give back so to speak and what we heard you know resounding chorus was the needs are great, they're mounting. I'm not going to wait decades to participate in philanthropy. I'd like to contribute to making an impact in society today.
Adam Fisch:And why do you think that is? Like, what has caused that shift? Is it that the next generation is maybe more aware just with social media and kind of new like, are people more aware of the challenges so it's harder for them to feel like they should wait? Is it because they've maybe some of them that are inheritors feel like, well, like you said, you know, I hit the lottery, so why should I wait until I'm retired to give this away? In your view, kind of where does that originate?
Sharna Goldseker:There are a number of factors. One is that we're amid the largest wealth transfer in history. Right? So Paul Sherbish and John Havens from Boston's Center for Wealth and Philanthropy came out with the original wealth transfer research which a lot of other entities now quote different numbers but at the time of doing the book you know 59 trillion dollars was coming down the pike to gen x and millennials and about half of that was considered to go philanthropically.
Sharna Goldseker:And so what used to be the purview of a private conversation, like between my great uncle and his attorney who drafted the document never shared it with the family, all of a sudden the wealth transfer research kind of pulled back the curtain and said, oh this is becoming a more of a public discourse. And families were saying, if you're going to transfer the funds eventually, right, how do we prepare the next generation for the resources and prepare the resources for the next generation? And so that all you know that wealth transfer not just the actual dollars but coupled with the conversations with advisors started earlier than generations before. Right? So that's a factor.
Sharna Goldseker:Then you have wealth earned at earlier ages than ever before. So whether it's in Silicon Valley or on Wall Street, younger people were stepping into greater assets and felt that they could have more than they needed and wanted to give some charitably. Again, not waiting until retirement. And I think, you know you're right that you have just mounting and entrenched challenges and people are often closer to those challenges you know whether it's in the public schools in their own neighborhoods or environmental crises that are in fact affecting our health or climate, women's rights that people feel more agency to act on so forth and so on. I think, you know, there are a number of factors that came together in this vortex where the wealth transfer, the earning, the perception of need, like being closer to home.
Sharna Goldseker:And then I guess the last thing, right, you touched on social media which to me is one aspect of a larger set of disruptions if you will. I mean, is a generation that grew up with sort of Uber disrupting transportation and Airbnb disrupting like, the hospitality industry and PayPal changing how finance worked and we can continue. So, you know, there were revolutions happening in society that Gen X and millennials were leading and experiencing and being very comfortable with. And so I think they also were felt the agency to call to question a revolution, so to speak, in the charitable sector. Right?
Sharna Goldseker:If we wanna make an impact, Daniel Lurie, who established the Tipping Point Foundation, he's now the mayor of San Francisco. Right? We interviewed him, and in our book, he talks about how you can keep doing the same thing and expect different results.
Adam Fisch:Sure.
Sharna Goldseker:And so if the next generation wants to make an impact on some of these, you know, very challenging, pressing social issues, they were real willing to have disruption, willing to try innovative things, new strategies, tactics, etcetera, in order to help advance the challenges they were caring about.
Adam Fisch:Yeah. And you used the word impact again, and I know you referenced it earlier as kind of that that being the biggest difference when it comes to the rising generations and sort of how they view philanthropy. So how can you define that a little bit more? Like, how do they think of impact, and what does that mean for them?
Sharna Goldseker:Yeah. This is the $64,000 question that Michael and I have been asked since the the first book came out. And, really, I wish I could be much more specific and say it's ABC, go get it. You know? And and it's not.
Sharna Goldseker:I mean, a lot of it is by asking the question, one assumes that they are a partner in change. So no longer is the relationship between a donor writing a check to an organization and being hands off, but it's almost having permission to have the audacity to ask the question, how are you gonna make an impact? How are you gonna use my resources to make a difference in a meaningful way? And so just that paradigm shift of next gen saying, we wanna roll up our sleeves. We wanna be partners. We wanna be in relationship with you. We wanna bring you not only our checks, but our time, talent, treasure, and ties. And we wanna help . Is really one of the biggest sea changes, which is sometimes, you know, welcome with open arms and sometimes difficult for nonprofits.
Sharna Goldseker:So, you know, in some ways, that's it's an opportunity and it's a challenge. And I think that non profits who can be in conversation with next gen donors who ask that question and know that they're not actually looking for a specific impact, they're actually looking to the nonprofit to say, you know the most about your mission and the stakeholders you're serving. And so you tell us what would impact look like. How long will it take, and how can I help you get there? And a nonprofit who's open to being in that conversation, I think, would be a great marriage for a NextGen donor over time.
Sharna Goldseker:And they are willing to stay with that organization over time, we found.
Adam Fisch:Yeah. And I think just having the conversation, you know, as you talk about what impact can mean even kind of in the almost abstract because, like you said, it's not one specific thing. But I think it would be empowering for the next generation, especially if they've modeled their philanthropic values after maybe their parents or grandparents that were more hands off. Just having the permission of just, you know, hearing as you describe it of saying like, it actually is okay to ask. Like, if this is something that is that you're feeling intrinsically, it's okay to ask.
Adam Fisch:Like, parents might not have had these discussions, but it actually is okay to ask the nonprofits how it's being used, how I can help in a more meaningful way, giving my time and talents as you alluded to. And I think just having that discussion, I imagine, can be empowering for the next generation to kind of be permitted that, hey, that different perspective is actually that's okay.
Sharna Goldseker:Yes. There was a a next gen donor woman based in New York who we interviewed, and she said, you know, I'm an entrepreneur, I have a million ideas, I like to understand how an organization is making an impact, tracking the impact, etcetera and so on and and I would say, Michael and I asked her, how is that received and what kind of response are you expecting? And what happens if they don't want to pursue all of your ideas? And Right. Right?
Sharna Goldseker:And and she said, honestly, I want to be able to ask the questions, and I want the organization to be honest back. So if what I'm suggesting is not actually something the nonprofit wants to do, right, like, don't wanna add this component to the program I'm funding. I'd rather they tell me that. She said, you know how many times people have looked at me and said, oh, that's really interesting. Thank you. We'll look into it and not gotten back to me.
Adam Fisch:Right.
Sharna Goldseker:She said, that's worse.
Adam Fisch:Right.
Sharna Goldseker:Like, I wanna partnership. I wanna be in communication. And I don't expect everyone's gonna take all my ideas, but, yeah. You know? I I I don't wanna be treated with kid gloves either.
Sharna Goldseker:Yeah. Not a you know, I'm not an ATM.
Adam Fisch:It's not about coming in and running the show. It's just saying, like you said, it's a partnership. Like, I just wanna I wanna see it at the table to at least know if I'm writing these meaningful checks, you know, how is it gonna be used? Do maybe I have some other ideas. Like, it's let's try to solve this together. Right? We all wanna see this change, but there might be different ways to go about it.
Sharna Goldseker:Right. Emily Davis, who we interviewed as a NextGen donor and actually a fundraising consultant, previous professional life, she would say, you know, the the the flip side of the nonprofit not wanting to be in conversation with me is I often feel like I'm an ATM.
Adam Fisch:Right. Right. Which, again, you know, going back to the generational differences, you know, there might have been maybe earlier generations that they may have just wanted to write a check. And so that feeling maybe didn't bother them at all. Like, they wanted to write a check. They wrote it. They felt good. The charity took it. And, you know, that was a different kind of partnership and maybe just the expectations are changing.
Sharna Goldseker:I think it could be. I was asked to speak at to remain confidential, let's say, an esteemed university in The United States to speak to the board and a couple of other NextGen joined me, one who I actually had interviewed for the book and knew well, he's a successful entrepreneur, a millennial. And we listened to the fundraising committee chair give a briefing right before our program, our session was up for the board. And the briefing from the program, the excuse me, the fundraising chair was about the golf outing they were having for donors in Florida, which was in a very different location than where the university was.
Sharna Goldseker:And so, you know, we listened, it was our turn to speak and the audience asked the millennial entrepreneur who was a graduate of that university, you know, do you wanna come to the golf outing and how would you like to be approached basically? And he said, I have to be honest with you, I'm never gonna come to the golf outing because what does that have to do with the university? I have friends to play golf with, I'd rather have you invite me back to the university and walk me around and show me what you're building and show me what your challenges are and show me where the gaps and the needs are and how I can make a difference.
Sharna Goldseker:And he said this is someone already making a 6 figure gift. So it's not like he was complaining from the peanut gallery. You know, it's just, for me, it was the illustration of something you're describing which, you know, is it maybe a different generational practice among next gen and how they wanna be partners and change.
Adam Fisch:Sure. So let's talk about 21/64, a little bit. So you've been running it for over twenty years. For listeners that aren't familiar with the organization, can you talk a bit about it and maybe share some success stories that have come out of it?
Sharna Goldseker:Sure. Thank you for asking. One, I'll tell you about later is I founded it, but we actually have had our own generational transfer of leadership. So I still work there, but, my title is now founder. I would start with really the story that Andrea and Charles Bronfman originally from Canada moved to New York City and set up a family office in the Andrea and Charles Bronfman philanthropies, and they were investing in Birthright Israel and other next gen programs and said, we are thrilled to support the next generation, but we'd like to do that alongside other next gen donors.
Sharna Goldseker:Right? We're decades older and we know that, you know, our children had ideas about what worked for their generation, and so where are the next generation of funders? And that's originally why I was hired to start next gen donor programming. And we started many for earners, inheritors, gen xers, millennials, and learned a lot about what works best for that audience. And so families would approach us eventually and say, if you know how to work with the next gen, can you consult to our family as we engage them in our family enterprise and our family office or philanthropy.
Sharna Goldseker:And then eventually when the Bronfmans announced the spend down of their foundation, they encouraged us to offer training to professionals so that we could convey the methods and the tools that we had developed to do this generational work for other professionals to do and have a ripple effect in the professional field. All of that which we did and then we incubated out when they spent down to be a standalone nonprofit consulting practice. So we still offer donor programs, consulting for multigenerational family enterprises, and training for professionals. To your question about success, I just happened to last year finish a study that I did of we called it twenty years later, a longitudinal study of next gen donors because for twenty years, we had consistently run one of those next gen programs that we started at inception.
Adam Fisch:Yeah. Wow.
Sharna Goldseker:And had the opportunity to interview people from all the cohorts over the years, which admittedly was extremely fulfilling. And, you know, the upshot, which maybe is not revolutionary, but the context, I would just remind people that twenty some years ago, no one used the term next gen. Right? I mean, the field was about elders, leaders, entrepreneurs, businessmen and mostly men and sometimes women who, you know, when they passed, there would be a passing of a baton, a transfer to the next generation of leadership. And we weren't really aware that there were now five generations above the age of 21 in society in North America.
Sharna Goldseker:And so I think one of the things that our organization did was sort of shine a spotlight and say, this isn't a baton passing from one generation to the next. It's actually multiple generations living, working, and giving together. And so how do we create a multigenerational experience for many families where you're not passing the baton, but you're actually fielding a team together? So one of the things that the study revealed is that, you know, if you invest in people during a formative stage of their lives, which is much younger than most of the field did. Right?
Sharna Goldseker:We're saying start in their twenties when they're individuating, and they'll gain confidence in themselves and then feel an agency to act in the world. So by providing them with the permission to find their own voice and the tools with which to act, the study came back to show, right, that ninety four percent of participants expressed the sense of empowerment and the shift in perspective and gained confidence and self awareness to act out their philanthropic identity. Eighty three percent of participants said they experienced that shift of sort of only holding their family's impact, if you will, and feeling that that was an opportunity to gain their own philanthropic principles and priorities so they could give with or alongside their own family's work. And it turns out that eighty three percent of participants did become involved in their family's philanthropy, seventy two percent remarking on the importance of that intergenerational engagement. There were a bunch of interviewees who said, look, I came out of Grand Street totally raring to go and participate in family philanthropy.
Sharna Goldseker:My family sent me to the program, and yet the families weren't actually ready for the 20 somethings to join the governing boards.
Adam Fisch:Right.
Sharna Goldseker:And so many of them said, you know, while that was frustrating, I still set up my own donor advised fund, my own foundation, my own giving circle, you know, I'm still a donor in my own right, all of them. So it was incredibly rewarding to do that piece of research.
Adam Fisch:Yeah. That I mean, it's those are pretty amazing numbers, and I think so much of finding one's philanthropic identity is also just finding one's identity. And, you know, for members of that rising generation that are in their twenties and thirties, you know, a journey like this will be incredibly valuable even if, as you said, you know, maybe the family isn't ready to give them a board seat on the family foundation, and maybe that'll come later. But in the meantime, you know, when for young people that are otherwise on that journey anyway, it would still have incredible value.
Sharna Goldseker:100%. So, you know, the opportunity to be in a peer cohort even as you're individuating from your parents and grandparents and figuring out who you are and who you want to be in the world and how you want to make an impact to ask off the record questions about what does this inheritance and this legacy mean and who am I and what do I value and what do I want to do about that in the world is really a philanthropic equation that we learned from working with that original group in this NextGen cohort and have applied for all the years since that that opportunity to- let me say it this way, most nonprofits approach donors with an ask. Right. If you think about it, it's like the end of the donor equation. Here, do you wanna fund my education climate fill in the blank program? Yes/ no?
Adam Fisch:Sure.
Sharna Goldseker:And instead what we tried to do was take, you know, three steps back and say, well, what's your philanthropic identity and how do you know how you would even answer those questions? And with NextGen, it might be very apparent that they are at the beginning of that journey becoming the donors they aspire to be and so needed to work on those questions. But you know what it turns out at 21/64, we learned that all donors need to reflect on those questions. Yeah. And that many people go through that re clarification of their identity at different stages.
Sharna Goldseker:They sell a business and they have more assets to give. Oh, right, how did I wanna make an impact here or you know, they get married, divorced, have kids, have grandkids, move to a different geographic community and ask again, know, how do I wanna make an impact here? So to your point, right, even if they didn't go on to the board of a family foundation, we learned that letting a donor have the space and the self reflection to ask those questions and being an adviser who can help them clarify those is just really discerning for donors who want to make an impact with their resources. It's almost like saying it's like, you don't give and then say, did this work? You know?
Sharna Goldseker:Like, it's like you gotta do the research to say, like, oh, right. This is a smart investment upfront.
Adam Fisch:Right. This has been a wonderful conversation, Sharna. Thank you. Before we wrap up, as a member of the rising generation that's listening to this discussion, what would be one takeaway or a piece of advice about philanthropy that you would leave for that listener?
Sharna Goldseker:I don't think we have to wait till we perfect the art of giving to engage in the activity of giving. I think most people wanna do it well, but a lot of learning comes from doing. So again, 21/64 has this equation of, what's the legacy I'm stepping into this with and who am I, what do I value, and how do I wanna make a difference. Right? But that those that set of questions can be asked over and over and over again in our philanthropic careers. So I also don't want people to how does the saying go? Make perfect the enemy of the good. Like, there's so much need out there.
Sharna Goldseker:And so sometimes starting and figuring out, like, how your values align with your giving and adjusting that course correction over time is fine. And then secondly, would say there's this growing field of philanthropic advisors and professionals, many of whom 21/64 has had the privilege of helping to train who are available now. Right? We used to think like, oh, I can only have a staff person if I have a major private foundation. But actually, there's amazing people who are in touch with the communities in which we're operating who can help be our, I don't know, our guide or at least walk alongside us as we're trying to find how to move our resources to make an impact.
Sharna Goldseker:And so, you know, looking around or asking in your networks how to find those philanthropic advisors or or trusted professionals is not as hard as we think anymore and, you know, are really available no matter what level of giving you're coming into the community with.
Adam Fisch:That's wonderful. Sharna, thank you again for your insights. This was a great conversation.
Sharna Goldseker:Thanks for having me. It was a pleasure.
Adam Fisch:Thank you so much for listening. Our Family Office is Canada's first purpose built shared family office, and the Our Family Office podcast is produced by Henry Shew. Please visit ourfamilyoffice.ca for more information about our firm, and don't forget to rate, review, and subscribe so you don't miss an episode. And of course, share it with your family. See you next time.
Adam Fisch:The information in this podcast is presented as a general educational and informational resource only. While certain participants in this podcast may be registered to provide investment advice as a representative of Our Family Office, Inc, itself a registered firm in certain Canadian jurisdictions, this podcast does not provide individualized investment, financial planning, legal, tax, or insurance advice, nor is it meant as a recommendation to any listener to buy or sell any specific securities, or otherwise take any other investment action. Any action you may take as a result of the information presented in this podcast is your own responsibility. Our Family Office, Inc. And each of its representatives that participate in any podcast disclaim that any listeners should rely in any way on any of this content as investment, tax, legal, or insurance advice.
Adam Fisch:Listeners are encouraged to consult with their individual investment advisor and other financial professionals prior to taking any potential investment actions or making any insurance or tax decisions.