Julia Sanders (left) and Erica Corsano network at an event for Rogerson Communities.
(ERIK JACOBS FOR THE BOSTON GLOBE)
Four stylish young women in tiny dresses posed for a picture with pink martinis as they stood on the deck of a Beacon Hill apartment. To an outsider, the photo looked like a standard scene on a hot summer night in Boston. But it was more than that.
The party, thrown by Erica Corsano, was actually a fund-raiser - but not for one of the fashionable causes (art museums, Darfur) that usually earn attention from others her age. Corsano, 29, gathered her friends to raise awareness for a nonprofit social services agency that provides affordable housing and day care to low-income elders. To drive that point home, the party wasn't held at a millionaire's digs. About 50 young people gathered at one of the organization's low-income units.
"I wanted to give back," said Corsano, a freelance fashion writer and editor. "I find that a lot of young people want to give back and don't know how. So I just e-mailed my friends and contacts and they e-mailed their friends and contacts, who are all very interesting people, cool, movers and shakers - people who are out and about."
The group she's creating, called Young Friends of Rogerson Communities - they're just getting to the point of thinking about committee meetings - is meant to serve as part of the answer to one of the central challenges nonprofits face: how to recruit new, young members who will give their time, or, better yet, give their money and time. That's important in a city such as Boston, where corporate mergers - and an aging donor base - have made it essential to search out, and nurture, the next generation of big givers.
Arts organizations have found this effort a natural extension of their outreach and fund-raising, with special under-35 groups and programs running at the Institute of Contemporary Art, Boston Ballet, and Boston Symphony Orchestra.
But drawing a crowd for a pre-concert schmooze at a museum is a lot different than holding a fete to raise money in the fight against Alzheimer's.
"This is not a sexy organization. This is not the ballet. It's not the ICA," says Barbara Quiroga, a local PR maven and longtime supporter of the elder-focused Roberson Communities who worked on the party with Corsano. "So we said, 'Let's have a cocktail party.' The joke, so to speak, was, 'Come to a cocktail party in Beacon Hill on a superb deck.' They didn't know they were coming to a low-income housing deck."
All of this is encouraging, and familiar, to Bob Giannino-Racine, executive director of ACCESS or the Action Center for Educational Services and Scholarships. Back in 2005, when Giannino-Racine took over his post, he decided his board of directors needed a youth infusion. In Boston, he said, there are too few gray-haired philanthropists to go around.
"When you look at the boards of the highest performing nonprofit organizations in the city," Giannino-Racine says, "you see a lot of the same names. And the challenge for a lot of us who are getting to this idea late, if you will, is: How do you find the next set of people who aren't quite there yet? The late 20s, early 30s folks who are in the third of fourth or fifth years at their venture capital firms or other types of high-growth companies, who in five years will be at the same charitable philanthropic level as some of the wealthier folks in town?"
The answer isn't necessarily the big ticket - think $1,000-a-plate - galas that drive so many of the larger nonprofits in town, he says. Twenty- and 30-somethings can't afford to slap down that kind of money yet. Also, he says, that's simply not how the young, smart, hip set operates. They prefer small-scale, intimate settings where they can hear about a cause and see what the return will be on their time and money.
"I've heard about things like people having breakfast events at different board members' houses. They'll invite six to eight friends. We've also heard of small cocktail parties or dinners at different restaurants in the city," says Giannino-Racine, whose group provides financial aid advice and college scholarships to Boston Public Schools students.
Margaret Hall is also in the market for young board members, but on a larger scale. Her agency, the Cambridge-based GreenLight Fund, looks for innovative nonprofits in other parts of the country to bring to the Boston area. As part of that, she creates their boards. She recruits through three major events a year, including a big golf competition. Her primary target: "professionals in the venture capital, high-tech entrepreneur, and private equity worlds."
"These are younger board members," she explains. "They have been successful professionally. They are savvy business people. They make very good strategic advisers. They're connected to people with resources. And they have a real appetite for starting and growing things. So it's a great match."
Susan Abbott, an attorney in Boston, got involved supporting a nonprofit - Boston Public Library - seven years ago. Now, at 39, she's cochair of its Young Professionals Group, whose "Paint the Town Read" is one of the city's swankiest nonprofit fund-raising events.
"If [groups] can get these kinds of people onto their boards, they have a lot to offer," says Abbott, whose committee also offers a smaller speaker series geared toward YPs, as she calls them. "The young professionals are the people who are the rising leaders in Boston, and it's great to get them involved early in their careers."
David Shapiro, president and CEO of Boston-based Massachusetts Mentoring Partnership, said he's encouraged by the shifting attitudes among the affluent younger set.
In the 1980s, he says, up-and-comers showed they "arrived" by purchasing expensive, flashy things. Now, younger professionals are starting to measure their success by the charitable boards they assist, and the dollars they can say they donated.
These young people might not be interested in standing in line at a soup kitchen, but the desire to help is there. The agencies just have to figure out how to find them, he says.
"You're hopeful that they will become ambassadors for the organization, and hope they will go to their friends, or get you a meeting with their friends who might become individual donors," Shapiro says.
Corsano couldn't agree more.
"I can't tell you how many times I've seen young people say, 'I want to get involved, I just don't know how,' " says Corsano, who is also on the board of the MSPCA and the MFA Young Council. "I think a lot of charitable organizations haven't figured that out. But they will."
© Copyright 2007 Globe Newspaper Company.
