It’s not the donors – it’s the world

‘Human nature doesn’t change in a generation. You’ve just forgotten being young,’ a world-renowned employee relations expert told a group of employers who were bemoaning how the ‘new employees’ were completely different from any previous group. ‘It’s not that people have fundamentally changed. It’s the world around them that’s changed,’ he pointed out.

That insight has relevance beyond the realm of pension plans and employee relations, of course. It’s an astute reminder that people don’t act in a vacuum. We may lose sight of the real forces shaping philanthropy if we concentrate too much on donors and too little on the world to which they’re responding.