This past weekend I had the privilege of helping facilitate a board meeting for a family foundation. One of the goals of the meeting was to begin to more fully integrate the next generation (currently twentysomethings) into the foundation’s activities and financial giving over the coming years.

Part of the process included looking at philanthropy through the lens of daily life, rather than conceptualizing it as just large financial gifts given to non-profit organizations. Here are a few thoughts from that process.

A reminder that philanthropy comes from the Greek words phileo (practical love) and anthropos (meaning man or mankind). So essentially philanthropy is the act of demonstrating practical love to others.

So, at a very basic foundational level, if we think about philanthropy in daily life, it is really embodied in kindness and treating others as you would like to be treated.

We then can take practical love toward others to the level of our lifestyle decisions and how our daily decisions impact our local and global communities. Here is a list of practical areas of daily life with some brief notes of issues to consider in each area.

*Groceries (packaging, buying in bulk, local producers)
*Transportation (utilizing public, automobile choices, flying)
*Clothing, Personal Items (used, consignment, self-made)
*Gifts (consider not giving objects, self-made, Third world, charitable donations)
*Electronics (recycling computers, cell phones, TV’s / screens, energy efficiency)
*Housing (green, energy efficiency, remodeling)
*Banking (utilizing community-based, socially-involved
*Services (using global professionals from accounting, web design)
*Physical health (healthy lifestyle, exercise, equipment)
*Medical treatment (natural, preventative, high tech, insurance)
*Recycling (paper, plastic, glass, metal, in general)
*Recreation / Entertainment (low cost, low impact, big business)
*Financial investments (socially responsible, mission and program related investments)

We then also discussed ways to incorporate charitable giving in one’s daily life context (versus just thinking about annual financial gifts). These included:

*Looking for needs in your local, daily community.
*Observing organizations that intersect with your life.
*Volunteering your time, service and expertise.
*Giving financially from your monthly income.
*Attending charitable events and fundraisers of organizations you want to support.

No major earthshaking revelations here, but possibly some helpful reminders in how we can think about others through our daily life decisions.

charitable giving, Gen Y, Life Balance, Parenting Adult Children, philanthropy, wealth transfer, wealthy families, young adults

Over the past weeks I have been gathering some research articles from various publications that I thought had some interesting bits of information.  Here they are.  The topics include:  research on how Western culture and Asian culture affect problem-solving approaches, video game addiction, infant anesthesia and later learning disabilities, and age biases in the workplace that are not found to be true according to research.

Psychology Research Bits & Pieces

From the June 2009 Monitor on Psychology:

  *Infants exposed to anesthesia during surgery may be at greater risk for learning disabilities.  Researchers from the Mayo Clinic found that:

            -infants who had been anesthetized two or more times before age 4 had a 60% increased chance of having learning difficulties;

            -infants who had three or more exposure to anesthesia by age 3 doubled the child’s risk for learning problems later in life.

*Nearly one in 10 youth gamers addicted to video games.  A study of over 1100 youth 8 to 18 found that addicted gamers exhibited behavioral patterns similar to pathological gamblers and they played video games 24 hours a week (2x as much as non-addicted gamer).  Addicted gamers were also twice as likely to have been diagnosed with ADD/ADHD.

*Research does not support many age-biases that exist in the workplace.   Research reported in the June 2009 APA Monitor on Psychology  states that:

            -Older workers are happier with their work than younger workers and were in as good physical shape as their colleagues.

            -Older and younger workers want many of the same things from their work:

Schedule flexibility, opportunities to learn, a supportive supervisor, and promotion fairness.

            -There is no evidence to support the belief that Millennials and Gen Y workers are not hard workers.  They do, however, look for identity-based work – something they enjoy that suits their abilities and interests.  And younger workers tend to asset themselves and question the status quo.  Dr. Jeffrey Jensen Arnett from Clark University states, :  The fact that they are willing to question and offer criticism is something that can make an organization better.”

            -Millennials do look to change jobs more frequently but are willing to explore career alternatives within the same company.

One interesting point raised by Dr. Elisa Perry at Columbia University: “It’s hard to know how many of the things we are seeing are about generational differences or age differences. . . Those are potentially very different things.”  For example, will these characteristics of different age groups still exist in 15 or 20 years as the younger generations move into later life stages?

“East versus West: A psychology professor dares to compare how Asians and Americans think.”  Forbes, May 11, 2009.

Richard Nisbett, a cognitive psychologist at the University of Michigan has been researching the differences in how North Americans and Asians think.  He proposes the following differences:

            -Asians see things in context, while Westerners focus on the point in hand.

            -Asians are more holistic in their thinking while Americans are more analytic and reductionistic.

            For example, in presenting a virtual aquarium on a computer screen, “The Americans would say, ‘I saw three big fish swimming off to the left.  They had pink fins.’  They went for the biggest, brightest moving object and focused on that and on its attributes,”  Nisbett explains.  “The Japanese in that study would start by saying, “Well, I saw what looked like a stream.  The water was green.  There were rocks and shells on the bottom.  There were three big fish swimming off to the left.”

            A key difference Nisbett found may help explain differences in financial thinking and choices.  Canadians predict a stock whose value is rising will continue to rise, while Chinese think what goes up will come down. This might help explain why we are prone to economic “bubbles” and suggests, when things are going well, Americans should possibly temper their optimism.

            Nisbett, in his book, Intelligence and How to Get It: Why Schools and Cultures Count, examined why Asian-Americans score higher on the SAT than other Americans and why Asian students do significantly better on math and science exams than U.S. students.  He concludes, “Asian intellectual accomplishment is due more to sweat than to exceptional gray matter.”  The Asian cultural value of obligation to family drives a deeper work ethic, Nesbitt believes.

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For me, personally, the two most interesting findings are the high rate of video game addiction and the debunking of the myth that Asian students are brighter than students in the U.S. — they just tend to work harder.

career development, Cultural differences, Gen Y, Learning disabilities, Life Stages, Millenials, Video game addiction