First You Talk

Episode 23: Trends in Philanthropy for 2026

• Central Florida Foundation • Season 3 • Episode 23

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Mark and Laurie talk through three charitable giving trends they expect to see in 2026. Plus, Mark breaks down the generations and their typical giving behavior.

You'll hear from:

Mark Brewer, President/CEO, Central Florida Foundation

Laurie Crocker, VP of Strategic Communications, Central Florida Foundation


Mentioned in episode:

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As our region’s community foundation, Central Florida Foundation serves as a launchpad for high-impact philanthropy. Championing the collective power of head, heart and dollar, we coordinate the commitment and investment of philanthropists, nonprofits, and community partners to target today’s most critical challenges and those on the horizon to truly transform our community. The Foundation also offers expert giving advice, a personalized approach to managing charitable funds, and the capacity to convene collaboration across sectors. Learn more at cffound.org.

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Transcript
00:00:10 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Welcome to Central Florida Foundation's First You Talk Podcast.
00:00:14 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Here, you'll gain a better understanding of society's toughest issues.
00:00:18 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
At the end of each episode, we'll summarize the main points and offer deeper dive options if something piqued your interest.
00:00:25 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So, ready to demystify a complex issue and up your knowledge game?
00:00:30 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Let's get started.
00:00:32 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Welcome back.
00:00:33 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
We are here for another season of First You Talk.
00:00:37 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Now, this is actually our second episode, but this is the first one we're recording.
00:00:41 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
We're recording out of order, but we're really excited to be back.
00:00:45 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
We have taken a brief hiatus because we had a lot of projects going on, but we are excited to launch another season of the podcast.
00:00:54 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And today, he needs no introduction, but for clarity purposes, I think we should introduce him.
00:00:59 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
We have Mark Brewer with us.
00:01:00 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Hi, Mark.
00:01:01 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Hey, Laurie
00:01:03 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Mark's the president and CEO of Central Florida Foundation, as most of and he is here to talk with us about our topic today.
00:01:12 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But first, Mark, I'm going to share a story.
00:01:14 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Oh, good.
00:01:15 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, I know you're I know you love my stories.
00:01:18 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So, okay.
00:01:19 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So, and this is podcast related.
00:01:21 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
It'll come full circle.
00:01:24 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So a few weeks ago, I made dinner reservations for a historic
00:01:30 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Orlando establishment, Linda's La Cantina.
00:01:33 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I made that not knowing where it was.
00:01:36 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I live up in the Altamont Maitland area thinking that anything was 20 minutes away from me.
00:01:41 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But Linda's at 530 is not 20 minutes.
00:01:44 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Not easy to get to from your side of town.
00:01:46 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
No, so on the drive.
00:01:48 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I started to read the Linda's La Cantina history on their website, as one does, as they go to a historical establishment.
00:01:57 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Of course.
00:01:57 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I'm reading it because my husband and 10-year-old, you know, wanted to hear from me, I'm sure, on the drive instead of the city music.
00:02:04 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So I'm reading the history.
00:02:05 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
My husband stops me after the first paragraph, and he's like, why are you reading like that?
00:02:09 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What, like, why do you sound like that?
00:02:11 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I'm like, what are you talking about?
00:02:12 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
This is what I sound like.
00:02:14 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
and my 10-year-old in the back seat pipes up and says, oh, that's her podcast voice.
00:02:20 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I was like, he's right.
00:02:21 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I'm reading it like I would do one of the complex issue episodes that we do.
00:02:25 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I wasn't, it didn't sound like myself.
00:02:28 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And then I thought, does Mark have two voices?
00:02:31 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And the answer is no.
00:02:32 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
You sound like this no matter what.
00:02:34 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, it's true.
00:02:35 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Although my family will from time to time tell me to stop talking in my radio voice.
00:02:41 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So you do have two voices.
00:02:42 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
I don't.
00:02:45 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I definitely do.
00:02:46 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I try to lower my voice so it's more palatable.
00:02:50 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Right now is pretty much my normal voice, but down a little bit, I would say.
00:02:53 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And then when I do the voiceovers, I go even lower and smoother.
00:02:57 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
There you go.
00:02:58 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
There you go.
00:02:59 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I don't, apparently my 10-year-old has picked up on this, but I do have two voices.
00:03:04 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
You don't, but your family thinks you do.
00:03:07 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, I think so.
00:03:08 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
I think that if I launch into a description of something.
00:03:14 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
That was exactly what I was doing in the car.
00:03:17 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I was reading the history of something.
00:03:20 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I felt, I don't know.
00:03:22 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, so anyways, 2 voices, even though they're really one.
00:03:26 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I have two voices, Mark has one.
00:03:28 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I'm going to employ my second voice during this podcast.
00:03:31 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Oh, good.
00:03:32 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, okay.
00:03:33 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So we're excited to be back today.
00:03:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
We're going to be talking about 3 trends that we're seeing now in philanthropy.
00:03:40 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So
00:03:42 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
We're going to kick it off.
00:03:43 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Mark, I'm going to give you a statistic.
00:03:45 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
All right.
00:03:46 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And you're going to tell me what it means?
00:03:47 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Okay.
00:03:49 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So the first trend, I'm going to start with the data, and then we'll talk about what it means.
00:03:55 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So here's one.
00:03:57 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Everyone knows Visit Orlando's Magical Dining.
00:04:00 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
It's a hugely popular local program, and part of the bill that you get if you do with Magical Dining goes toward charity, and they choose a different charity every year.
00:04:11 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And so Visit Orlando's Magical Dining program raised 30% more in 2024 than it did in 2023.
00:04:18 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So that's one statistic.
00:04:21 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And then secondly, we're also seeing that Addition Financial Foundation, which is a
00:04:26 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
local establishment.
00:04:28 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
In 2025, the foundation donated almost $200,000 to local nonprofits.
00:04:34 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So I think that shows that there is a local focus going on.
00:04:39 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I do wonder if the magical dining situation is just because people love to go out and eat around here.
00:04:44 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I do.
00:04:45 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But there is a charitable point.
00:04:47 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
point behind it, right?
00:04:49 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And I think that particular thing attracts more people now as people are beginning to think more about home, about their neighborhoods and their communities.
00:04:59 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
and the people that are doing work in those communities that need help and support.
00:05:04 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And what better way to do it than to get a good meal and contribute?
00:05:07 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, and with Addition Financial Foundation, so I didn't realize that that's just a local organization.
00:05:14 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I had been reading a little bit about them in prep for this podcast episode, and it seems like it's
00:05:20 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
it's a really important thing for local corporations, local companies to partner and give back locally versus nationally.
00:05:30 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Now, there's nothing wrong with the national campaigns that happen, the national partnerships, but I do think that there's something to be said how an organization is looking to donate back locally in the community where their employees work, where members are, and whatnot.
00:05:47 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And you see that with major national corporations as well.
00:05:50 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
They may have a
00:05:50 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
national footprint, but their local offices are really focused on figuring out what can they get involved in here that can make a difference.
00:05:59 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, with our, in our case, as a community foundation, as Central Florida Foundation, we have donor-advised funds.
00:06:08 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
We have these fund holders that advise and recommend grants out of these funds.
00:06:13 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Now, it makes sense that, so we give a lot locally.
00:06:17 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
In fact, last year, last fiscal year, 90% of our grant
00:06:20 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
making, including donor-advised funds, went back into the community.
00:06:24 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But each year, I actually asked our finance department to pull the data for me.
00:06:29 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And we, I mean, our donor-advised funds largely give locally.
00:06:33 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Absolutely.
00:06:34 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I think that probably has to do with the fact that they're choosing to partner with a community foundation.
00:06:39 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, that's true.
00:06:40 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So look, we're a community foundation, but our community is our fund holders community.
00:06:47 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So you may be from here, you may not be from here.
00:06:49 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Your community might be widespread and might not just be here.
00:06:54 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
But I think as everyone's attention turns back to their communities and their neighborhoods, you see those funds spend more money, time, and energy here in Central Florida.
00:07:05 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Agreed.
00:07:06 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And our one thing that we.
00:07:09 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
always try to highlight to our fund holders, but also just the community at large is what's working here.
00:07:14 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Because our work, our actual work that we do outside of stewarding and managing charitable funds is community work.
00:07:22 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Now that requires sometimes an international, national, statewide lens to see what else is working, what other people are doing.
00:07:30 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But all of our work is mostly concentrated in Central Florida.
00:07:33 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Absolutely.
00:07:34 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Absolutely.
00:07:35 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
The things the foundation does
00:07:37 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
that have a national kind of feel to them.
00:07:40 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
If you look more closely at them, you'll find it's us trying to attract models here to do things here because other people may have figured out how to do it better.
00:07:51 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And what we're trying to do is bring it here.
00:07:53 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Right.
00:07:53 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So just to be clear, trend number one is that we're seeing people invest more locally, hyper-local, community-focused, rather than outside of their community.
00:08:04 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Why do you think that is?
00:08:05 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Why do you think that trend is happening?
00:08:07 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
The data are kind of clear that after the election last year, everyone turned inward, thinking now that there's no more time to be thinking nationally about how do we change trends or do things nationally.
00:08:22 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
That's settled for now.
00:08:24 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So everyone's attention really comes back to their own neighborhoods and their own communities.
00:08:30 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And we've seen that happen, and all of the data that reflect that
00:08:34 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
are data that are collected asking people, what's most important to you now?
00:08:38 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And what you'll see is the number of things that during the election year were kind of big things.
00:08:44 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
A lot of people said, well, I'm really worried about democracy during the election.
00:08:48 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Well, they're still worried about democracy, but they can do something about it in their neighborhood or in their community as opposed to thinking about it at a larger scale.
00:08:57 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I would imagine that, at least for me, it felt overwhelming during an election year.
00:09:02 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And so once the big election
00:09:04 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
was done, it feels more manageable too to focus on community, your community versus a national stage, which can feel overwhelming.
00:09:14 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Absolutely.
00:09:15 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
You can watch rallies on TV, but you can go to local meetings where people are actually trying to figure out how to solve things.
00:09:21 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, absolutely.
00:09:24 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I think that
00:09:26 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Now that we're heading in 2026 for a midterm election, would you imagine that might get disrupted a little bit?
00:09:34 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
It might, but midterms by their nature are more locally focused.
00:09:38 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Right.
00:09:39 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So people are trying to figure out who are the people that represent me here.
00:09:43 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And they may sit on a national stage, but they live here.
00:09:47 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Right.
00:09:48 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
You know, in terms of civic engagement, I always remind people, a lot of people don't, their antenna don't go up until it's
00:09:56 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
it's a national election.
00:09:58 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
But at the same time, there are commission seats, there are local folks that are working in your neighborhood that will have an election, and you can't lose track of that.
00:10:08 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And that may be more appealing to you than whoever's running for the national seat.
00:10:13 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Absolutely, that makes sense.
00:10:14 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I don't know if I thought of it that way 5, 10 years ago, but now just working in this area, you realize how important it is, the midterm and more hyper-local elections.
00:10:24 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So thinking about how businesses are maybe looking to give back locally, how local initiatives are maybe gaining momentum, what do you see for the future?
00:10:38 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What do you expect to happen?
00:10:40 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Do you think that there'll be an increase in more private businesses looking to figure out how to give back locally?
00:10:47 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What are you seeing?
00:10:48 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, so one of the things we see regularly is that
00:10:53 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
businesses who use a strategy called corporate social responsibility, or CSR, in which wherever their headquarters is, they're saying, okay, we're interested in education, we're interested in this and this and this.
00:11:06 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
The local folks have a bigger voice now than they did, because what they're trying to do is guide dollars to things that are driven by trend data.
00:11:14 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So if we do this, and we can see it works, which is, of course, what we do all the time.
00:11:20 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so being able to find more partners interested in fixing local things that are complex, but you have a better chance of fixing them in a local environment than you do at a statewide or national or even a regional environment.
00:11:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Absolutely.
00:11:36 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I think it's the sparkly thing when things are happening at the national level, but the real kind of change in work and whatnot can more manageably happen at the local level.
00:11:48 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, I was in a meeting yesterday in which everyone was, as they typically are, talking about housing.
00:11:53 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
But it's hard to see housing move forward at the national level because it's too big.
00:11:59 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
You can see housing working at the local level.
00:12:02 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
You can see people being housed and you can see the success that they have with it.
00:12:06 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And that inspires people to get involved and do more things.
00:12:09 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah.
00:12:09 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay.
00:12:10 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So trend number one is that we're seeing more locally focused efforts.
00:12:15 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And I don't think that'll change.
00:12:16 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
I mean, look, in 3 1/2 years, there'll be another major national election.
00:12:21 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Everybody's attention will go to the national stage.
00:12:24 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
But I think what typically happens is that people get
00:12:28 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
engaged in things locally, and they don't ignore them when something national is happening.
00:12:34 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So we have more time to engage people to think hyper-locally about their neighborhoods and their communities.
00:12:39 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
That makes sense.
00:12:40 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So when you, once the engagement piece happens, once you're engaged, you're probably not going to become unengaged just because of a national object.
00:12:48 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
That shiny object thing, which can be troubling, that shiny object thing only happens in communities that don't have any engagement.
00:12:56 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
If I got nothing going on here,
00:12:58 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
and whatever is out there that looks more interesting will get my attention.
00:13:01 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
But if I'm really engaged in doing something here, I'll still pay attention to the national thing, but I'll pay attention to it with a local lens.
00:13:10 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So that's probably a message to all those community initiatives and organizations out there that now is the time to engage.
00:13:18 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Now is the time.
00:13:19 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Absolutely.
00:13:20 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay.
00:13:21 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
All right, trend two, we will start with a statistic again.
00:13:26 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay, so here we go.
00:13:27 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Between 2017 and 2023, nearly 4,000 collective giving groups mobilized around 137,000 philanthropists to donate more than $3.1 billion.
00:13:40 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
That's a lot of numbers, but the point is, that we are seeing momentum in collective giving.
00:13:47 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Now, we have a couple examples that we'll share from our lens here.
00:13:52 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But what have you been seeing in collective giving?
00:13:55 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Why do you think this is so attractive to people?
00:13:58 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Well, it's an extension of your first trend, right?
00:14:01 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So if I'm getting engaged in something locally here, and I meet you and you're already engaged in it, then the two of us can do more together than we can separately, both in terms of money, but just in terms of time, energy, and engagement.
00:14:14 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so what happens is, as these things kind of blossom, because that's really what happens, people get together, then they have to figure out what they're
00:14:21 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
going to go after.
00:14:23 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
It's easier if I could just run into a bunch of people that are already doing what I'm interested in, and we can take that to the next level.
00:14:31 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So my sense is the data there is pretty clear that this will continue, and there'll be more of them, but also larger groups of people working together.
00:14:42 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So collective giving can look a few different ways, right?
00:14:46 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
One example that we launched a year ago was the Thrive Venture Philanthropy cohort, which is in its second year now.
00:14:54 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And that was actually built out because we had fund holders coming to us saying, we're looking for this collective giving model.
00:15:04 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What do you think?
00:15:06 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And so our team kind of sat back and thought, okay, how can we make this happen?
00:15:10 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But in a way that
00:15:12 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
is definitively Central Florida Foundation, which means not transactional, not write a check and forget about it.
00:15:18 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So this program developed to be two-pronged.
00:15:21 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
One is values-based philanthropy.
00:15:23 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So doing values exercises to figure out why you give, how you give, narratives that you've told yourself, and
00:15:31 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
kind of the personal piece of it.
00:15:33 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And then the other side of that is going through Central Florida Foundation's grant-making strategy and grant-making process so that you feel or that the grant that you are making is data-based, research-backed, values-aligned, relationship-forward, throwing around a lot of words that might not make sense, but basically that you're making an impactful grant.
00:15:56 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, that's exactly right.
00:15:58 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So collective giving by its nature
00:16:01 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
always attracts retail giving.
00:16:04 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So if I throw $5 in and you throw $5 in, then we got 10 bucks.
00:16:08 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
That's a good thing.
00:16:08 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
We'll go further with that.
00:16:10 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
But when you look more closely at collective giving, you're bringing values and you're bringing like-minded people together to accomplish things.
00:16:18 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And that leans to strategic, which is kind of what we do at Central Florida Foundation.
00:16:23 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Absolutely.
00:16:24 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I think one of our goals in general, I mean, our mission is to build community by building philanthropy.
00:16:30 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I think that creating a space for other like-minded, and when I say like-minded, I don't mean that we agree with everything.
00:16:37 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I mean, we're invested in the community and we want to give back.
00:16:42 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And that's where being invested in outcomes, not in pure values, is important.
00:16:48 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What does that mean?
00:16:49 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Well, pure values can become political, right?
00:16:51 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What is pure?
00:16:52 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Oh, you mean like my personal?
00:16:53 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Your own personal pure values.
00:16:55 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So having a value that I want to do something important that's measurable and I want to see outcomes that help
00:17:00 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
help people, that's a value that we can build strategy on.
00:17:05 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
But if my values is I only like one certain kind of thing or I only like it being done a certain way, that's more complicated and will draw transactional giving.
00:17:16 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, that makes sense.
00:17:17 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So leading, going down this little rabbit hole of collective giving, there is a clearly overwhelmingly
00:17:28 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
large demographic that leads this, and it's women.
00:17:31 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Women do a lot of collective giving.
00:17:34 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Collective giving groups are overwhelmingly led by women, and 60% of groups are entirely composed of women, which is kind of interesting.
00:17:42 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And that brings us to our obvious example with the foundation is 100 Women Strong.
00:17:48 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So 100 Women Strong, now there are collective,
00:17:51 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I'm sorry, giving circles out there.
00:17:54 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Local too and across the country where you join, you write a check, and then you never really hear from them again or they tell you what the grant outcome was.
00:18:05 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And that's fine.
00:18:06 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
That is giving back and that's great.
00:18:08 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
It's a start.
00:18:09 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
It's a start.
00:18:10 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
100 women strong is a slightly different structure.
00:18:14 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah.
00:18:15 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So these are local women who do the collective giving, right?
00:18:19 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
They all invest $1,100 personally into a collective grant.
00:18:24 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But then there is a whole, we have a research and grants team that works all year long on investigating the focus area.
00:18:33 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And they really want to, what I find so interesting is that they're looking and we look to make sure that whatever they invest in,
00:18:40 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
is sustainable and is actually going to work.
00:18:43 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
It's less about how much they give and more about will this actually work or not.
00:18:49 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Right, that's it.
00:18:50 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And by the way, women have led in this space for now 2 generations.
00:18:56 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So this isn't a recent thing where women suddenly started doing this.
00:19:02 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Women have a giving value that's different from men.
00:19:06 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Tell me more about women, Mark.
00:19:08 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So, you really should be telling me this.
00:19:12 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Well, I'm just going by data here.
00:19:15 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Men, by nature, are more transactional in everything they do.
00:19:19 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
They like to scale things, right?
00:19:21 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Women want to make sure something works and they want to understand how it works and make certain that they're not creating unintended consequences.
00:19:30 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so when they approach giving with those values, they tend to take more time, they're more thoughtful about it, and measurement tends to be something that's more trend-based and not so much just output-based.
00:19:44 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, and just a quick note on outcomes versus outputs.
00:19:48 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Mark, can you give that quick definition again?
00:19:50 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, so outputs are really an efficiency measure.
00:19:53 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
How many people did we serve?
00:19:55 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
How much did it cost to do it?
00:19:56 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Those are outputs.
00:19:58 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
But outputs don't really tell us
00:20:00 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
why it mattered that we served all those people.
00:20:03 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So an outcome will help you understand how people are different once they've been served than they were before they were served.
00:20:10 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And those are important things to watch because transactional giving works almost entirely on outputs.
00:20:17 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
How many people can we serve?
00:20:18 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
How cheaply can we do it?
00:20:20 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And how happy are they after we serve them?
00:20:23 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Those are outputs that are pretty common among collective groups.
00:20:27 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
But the problem is there's no
00:20:29 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
there, right?
00:20:30 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
I can't really figure out if the people are better after they're served unless I have a measurement that helps me see that.
00:20:37 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I also think of it as for outcomes, kind of like just raising our level of the standard of living for people and just like, or are we filling up our community cup versus just looking at the surface levels?
00:20:51 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, that's exactly right.
00:20:52 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
That's exactly right.
00:20:53 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So output is like how many people did we house, how many people did we feed?
00:20:57 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Those aren't bad measures.
00:20:59 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
But once you feed somebody, if you're not going to feed them again, you didn't actually solve anything.
00:21:05 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Right.
00:21:05 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And same thing with housing, right?
00:21:07 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
If you house me, but you can't keep me housed, then I'll just be back in the system again.
00:21:13 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And it was a good output.
00:21:15 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
while it lasted, but it wasn't an outcome for my life.
00:21:18 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, a little bit deeper when you get to the outcomes, right?
00:21:21 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So we have a past chair of 100 Women Strong, Renika Sastry, who is currently co-chairing Philonos, which is a network of women giving circles.
00:21:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And anyway, she's amazing.
00:21:36 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
She's still a part of 100 Women Strong.
00:21:38 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And she said in a Thrive Magazine, our annual impact report, Thrive Magazine, she said that
00:21:45 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
that giving circles to her, democratizing philanthropy, and said that, not only is it a better, what's the word I'm looking for, entry-level point, right, for people who are looking to get into philanthropy,
00:22:01 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
because it's a smaller buy-in than, say, starting a donor-advised fund or something like that, right?
00:22:07 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
You can get in at a lower price point, but it's also just more accessible to more people.
00:22:14 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And it engages them to learn something.
00:22:18 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
You know, a lot of people don't get involved in philanthropy because it seems like it must be complicated.
00:22:24 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
But when you're doing it with 99 other people, it's not so complicated.
00:22:28 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah.
00:22:28 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I do think going back to the whole women in giving circles type of thing, I do think that women are more, and this is not fact-based.
00:22:37 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I don't have data to back this up.
00:22:38 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But as a woman, I feel like they are more community
00:22:45 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
you want a community.
00:22:46 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
You want, driven.
00:22:48 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And so it's more enticing.
00:22:51 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Renuka said, and I love this, and she's probably sick of hearing me say this, but Renuka said that she joined 100 Women Strong initially for the networking.
00:23:00 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I love that story because now she's co-chairing this network of women giving circles because she said almost immediately she realized it was way more than networking.
00:23:09 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So I love her honesty with that.
00:23:12 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Well, and the other thing is if you were going to engineer something, you couldn't engineer what 100 Women Strong is.
00:23:21 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So
00:23:22 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
vast diversity, age and cultural.
00:23:25 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So you have young women and old women, and you have people that are all together going after an issue that they think they can solve and putting systems and experts in their wake to get that done, which is a good thing.
00:23:40 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so at the end, you've got all the things we always talk about as being good community involvement.
00:23:46 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
but it happened because they want to be together to solve this problem, not because we hand-picked a bunch of people that are different and put them in a room together.
00:23:54 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, it's actually, we just had an event together and it's just a great community of women who all really want that end goal of making a lasting impact, a real impact on the community.
00:24:07 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And they're not contributors.
00:24:10 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And I'm saying that
00:24:12 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
as a positive, right?
00:24:13 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What do you mean they're not contributors?
00:24:14 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Well, look, donors are contributors.
00:24:16 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
They're helpers.
00:24:16 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
They're gatherers.
00:24:17 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
They're, you know, they love to get together and do one thing that seems good.
00:24:22 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
That's good.
00:24:23 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
That's what drives democracy in many ways.
00:24:26 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
But philanthropy is really your ability to not just contribute, but to invest in something and to be part of it.
00:24:34 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
As we always say, you have a head, a heart, and a wallet, and they need to all be engaged in this thing.
00:24:40 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
That actually brought me to this final point on this trend that, I think is important to note that this kind of philanthropy that we engage in, that we talk about, it's much more than just a donor type of relationship.
00:24:57 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
We talk about that people who invest in the community as community investors, where the ROI
00:25:04 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
the return on investment doesn't go to them, it goes to the community.
00:25:09 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And I think that that's an important thing to talk about.
00:25:13 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
They're doing way more than just writing a check.
00:25:15 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
They're actually investing in where we all live.
00:25:19 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, that's an outcome.
00:25:21 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
That's an outcome to bring it full circle.
00:25:23 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So, okay, so trend #2 is that collective giving is gaining momentum.
00:25:28 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And we will talk more about the 100 Women Strong structure and where they went with their grant this year in a later episode.
00:25:37 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So stay tuned for that.
00:25:39 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
That'll come out.
00:25:41 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And I will just say to cap this for you, that it really is about the women.
00:25:46 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Right.
00:25:47 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Because everyone looks at 100 women strong.
00:25:49 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
People say this to me all the time.
00:25:50 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Well, couldn't we get a bunch of guys together to do this?
00:25:52 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And I'm like, no.
00:25:54 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Why?
00:25:55 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Because they wouldn't do it that way.
00:25:59 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
There's a whole nother podcast episode I feel brewing from this.
00:26:04 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But yeah, I think that it might be a unique to women thing to make 100 women strong work in the way it's working.
00:26:12 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And it's working really well.
00:26:14 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
It's gaining momentum.
00:26:15 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Again,
00:26:16 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
They're at their pre-pandemic levels of membership at 101 as of today.
00:26:22 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I mean, it's, and their leadership is just growing stronger and stronger.
00:26:29 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Absolutely.
00:26:30 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Their leadership is realizing that to really make it work, you need to have succession planning and membership growth and to strengthen that grant-making strategy.
00:26:43 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And I would add to that, unlike most community
00:26:46 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
engagement exercises where everybody wants to get leaders to come and be part of it.
00:26:52 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
100 Women Strong is actually manufacturing leaders, right?
00:26:56 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
People come through 100 Women Strong, go off and lead other things as you just identified.
00:27:00 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, Renuka is a great example of that, absolutely.
00:27:04 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay, so we're going to move on to our third trend, our final trend, but this is kind of a little bit, it's less timely.
00:27:11 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
It is timely, but it's not like a point in time.
00:27:14 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
It's over years because we're talking about generational giving shifts.
00:27:18 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So
00:27:20 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I guess I'll start with a statistic.
00:27:22 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So over the last 10 years, Central Florida will see a transfer of about $150 billion in wealth from one generation to next.
00:27:31 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And that is probably boomers to millennials.
00:27:34 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Mostly.
00:27:34 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Mostly.
00:27:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Waiting for my dollars to come in.
00:27:37 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Just kidding.
00:27:40 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But we have this big, huge transfer of wealth, and that's partially because of 1 generation giving to the other.
00:27:47 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But boomers did well in life, is what I'm hearing.
00:27:50 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Well, boomers did well, but I'm always careful in these statistics to remind people that the wealth being transferred is all of our wealth.
00:28:00 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
It's not just rich people.
00:28:02 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Right.
00:28:03 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So the example I always use is if you're a school teacher and you're earning, $40,000 a year and you have a house and you have a car and you have a checking account, that's wealth.
00:28:13 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And you're going to pass that to your sons and or daughters when the time comes.
00:28:18 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so if we're all transferring wealth, then that's a pool of capital that's available to make investments in the community in the future and may in fact be bigger than what you gave during life.
00:28:31 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, absolutely.
00:28:32 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I mean, we've done, at the foundation, we really enjoy collecting data to better understand what's going on around us.
00:28:40 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And we had a transfer fault study done a couple of years ago.
00:28:44 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And the amount of potential for philanthropic investment is staggering.
00:28:51 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I mean, to look at the numbers.
00:28:53 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And generally speaking,
00:28:56 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Just to kind of piggyback off of what you just said, Mark, if everyone considered 5% of their estate, not a dollar amount, because that's going to vary from person to person, don't worry about the dollar amount.
00:29:08 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
We're talking 5%, and that really could create millions upon millions, yes, with an M.
00:29:16 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
No, a B.
00:29:16 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
If it's endowed, it's a B.
00:29:18 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah.
00:29:19 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
If it's endowed over time, it's a B.
00:29:21 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
We're.
00:29:21 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Talking about $8.6 billion in grants over 20 years if it's endowed.
00:29:27 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah.
00:29:27 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
It's crazy.
00:29:28 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I mean, if, and you know, honestly, I never thought of it like that.
00:29:32 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I always thought of it as, you know,
00:29:34 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
what's my money going to do because we're not wealthy?
00:29:39 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
I say that to people all the time.
00:29:41 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
They go, well, I don't have any money.
00:29:43 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And I go, well, yeah, you do.
00:29:44 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
You have an estate.
00:29:45 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Everyone, almost everyone has an estate, has something.
00:29:48 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
You have something.
00:29:49 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So, okay, so let's talk about some generational behavior because as millennials and Gen.
00:29:54 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Z come into their own
00:29:57 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
millennials are not young anymore.
00:29:59 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I identify as a, I'm a proud millennial.
00:30:03 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay, fine.
00:30:04 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But millennials are in their 30s and 40s now.
00:30:08 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Gen.
00:30:08 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Z are late teenager to 20s now, right?
00:30:14 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I have a Gen.
00:30:15 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Alpha at home.
00:30:16 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
He's not working yet.
00:30:17 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
He is still 10, but he will someday.
00:30:19 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But right now we're really focused on Gen.
00:30:21 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Zs and millennials and how they view giving.
00:30:24 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And I would just toss in just to squirrel with your mind a bit.
00:30:29 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
2025 is the beginning of Gen.
00:30:32 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Beta.
00:30:33 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Not ready.
00:30:34 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Not ready.
00:30:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I've heard, for anyone who has children out there, Mark, have you ever heard of someone saying 6, 7?
00:30:43 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Have you?
00:30:43 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yes, I have.
00:30:44 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay, wow.
00:30:45 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
It's transcending generations.
00:30:46 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
It is.
00:30:47 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Anyways, so actually, let's back up and talk about
00:30:51 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
baby boomer, which they are going to be in their 60s and 70s.
00:30:57 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yep.
00:30:57 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Right now?
00:30:57 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay.
00:30:58 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So how do they typically give?
00:31:00 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
How did they, or do they, sorry, not past tense, how do they currently interact with philanthropy?
00:31:07 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, so boomers are more institutional in the way they give.
00:31:11 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
They also were the last generation of cultivatable donors.
00:31:18 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What does that mean?
00:31:19 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So the entire nonprofit sector learned and knew early on that if you could engage a baby boomer to get a gift, and then you could cultivate that person over time, so eventually he or she will make a bigger gift, and then they'll join your board, and then they'll chair some event, and then constantly cultivating for larger and larger gifts over time.
00:31:45 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
That was actually the last generation of the cohorts that has data-specific evidence of being able to do that, because next was Gen.
00:31:55 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
X.
00:31:55 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Gen.
00:31:56 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
X is very independent, and even today is difficult to cultivate because they believe that whatever they don't like should be changed, and whatever they do like, they only like it for as long as they like it, right?
00:32:10 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Then they have other things on their mind.
00:32:12 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And millennials were a peer generation,
00:32:15 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So they basically got involved internationally in big things to give to.
00:32:21 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And there was a time when if you wore red, it meant something to a millennial because there was an international fundraising campaign that you gave to that would give you clothing.
00:32:33 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So you would be part of the team.
00:32:35 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Millennials are a peer generation.
00:32:37 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So they like their peers and they follow their peers.
00:32:41 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So if you and I are in the same millennial generation and you like something and you tell me about it, I'll probably try it.
00:32:47 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Or I might give to it if you give to it.
00:32:50 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And then as soon as you tell me you don't like something, then I won't like it either.
00:32:54 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Wow, harsh, very harsh hearing how us millennials act.
00:32:59 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Well, I don't think you act like that now.
00:33:01 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
But in the time period, you have to remember with generations, wherever you were between the ages of 10 and 20 is when you're kind of, that's when it happened, right?
00:33:11 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And some of that stuff never changes.
00:33:13 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
The music you like to listen to, products that you buy tend to be the same.
00:33:19 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I would love to have a podcast episode just on that.
00:33:22 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
It would have nothing to do with philanthropy, but it's true.
00:33:25 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah.
00:33:25 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And so also the decline in religious giving, I think is something that happens.
00:33:32 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Millennials.
00:33:33 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Millennials.
00:33:34 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay.
00:33:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And, you know, I was looking at data before this episode and it's not like no one's giving to religion anymore.
00:33:42 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
It's still a healthy and thriving way to give.
00:33:46 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But there is a dip because there is a dip in my
00:33:48 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
generation millennials and Gen.
00:33:50 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Z and going to institutional religious or belonging to those.
00:33:55 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And it's basically the exercise of tithing.
00:33:59 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Right.
00:33:59 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So Gen.
00:34:00 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
X was the last generation that was in a tithing environment and even they declined over time.
00:34:07 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So if you go to church, synagogue, mosque, whatever you go to, if you go every week and every week they pass a plate around, you put money into it, you grow up learning
00:34:17 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
that part of your role and mission in life is to give back.
00:34:21 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And whether it's a little or a lot, that's what you're doing.
00:34:24 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
When you don't practice any kind of institutional religion, there's no tithing.
00:34:29 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
There's no tithing, so you don't have that kind of built into...
00:34:31 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah.
00:34:31 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And then also,
00:34:36 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Millennials and Gen.
00:34:37 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Z are kind of leaning into that collective giving piece.
00:34:40 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
They are, very much, very much.
00:34:42 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Gen.
00:34:42 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Z is especially, they like the collective piece because they kind of have the same characteristics of the greatest generation, which are people now who are all over 100.
00:34:54 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And there's a big number of those in America.
00:34:57 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
But Gen.
00:34:57 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Z thinks of itself as the next great generation, and they're going to have to solve all the problems that we all created for them.
00:35:06 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so they have a really a more inspirational way of looking at things.
00:35:11 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Like, they're not complaining about it.
00:35:12 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
It's just like, this has got to be solved, and we're the ones that are going to have to solve it.
00:35:17 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
That's interesting.
00:35:19 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
You know, on a side note, I just got to say about millennials, we are not entitled.
00:35:24 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I just have to get on a soapbox for a second, because we were
00:35:30 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
We were the underdogs for years.
00:35:33 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I just want to see Gen.
00:35:34 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Z be an underdog for a second.
00:35:36 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
That's all I want.
00:35:37 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Gen.
00:35:38 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Alpha, they're obsessed with 6-7.
00:35:40 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
They're never going to make it.
00:35:42 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I don't know.
00:35:43 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But millennials, we're finally old enough to
00:35:48 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
purchase a home maybe, and start thinking about how we can give back.
00:35:52 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I think we went through, like you just said, those formative years.
00:35:55 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
A lot of us graduated in an economic downturn.
00:36:01 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Absolutely.
00:36:02 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay, not making excuses, but it's just...
00:36:05 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
the truth.
00:36:06 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So look, I'm an old guy, so I would tell you that when you were young, none of us thought your generation was going to make it, right?
00:36:14 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Because that's where you get the entitled label, which wasn't true, that it actually, that's part of the personality that makes millennials successful is that they have expectations that they can do things and should be offered the opportunity to do them.
00:36:30 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah.
00:36:32 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Feel good about my cohort.
00:36:33 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Feel good about it.
00:36:34 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay.
00:36:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So with that being said, given the fact that millennials and Gen.
00:36:41 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Zs are interested in collective giving, they are also
00:36:46 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Gen.
00:36:47 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Z, you don't think is a peer cohort, right?
00:36:49 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So millennials.
00:36:50 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Not as much as the millennials were, but I mean, they're a peer cohort in that they're all of a certain age at a certain time.
00:36:57 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Part of what made the boomer cohort the boomer cohort is that you had 70 million people who literally grew up together, right?
00:37:04 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
They
00:37:05 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
bought cars, they got their first bikes, their first cars, their first houses.
00:37:09 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
They did this all at the same time.
00:37:11 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so he had this huge peer group.
00:37:14 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And what it did was it set American economics and markets in America to believe that that's the way it's supposed to work.
00:37:21 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And it doesn't work that way anymore because millennials didn't do that.
00:37:25 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Gen.
00:37:26 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Zs didn't do that and won't do that.
00:37:29 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And the two below it, the alpha and betas, they're going to be who they are.
00:37:33 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
What I always say to people is,
00:37:35 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
You shouldn't really spend a lot of time comparing the cohorts because each cohort is big enough.
00:37:41 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Millennials, 73 million.
00:37:44 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Gen.
00:37:45 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Z at this point in time, 71 million.
00:37:48 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So when 71 million people come into the economy, they're pretty much going to do what they want to do.
00:37:54 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And you can't, it's really hard to think that somehow they need to be taught how to do it the way we did it.
00:38:01 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
You know, what I find interesting is when I think about
00:38:04 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
the baby boomers and whatever, what was like before the baby boomers?
00:38:09 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Silent generation.
00:38:10 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Oh, so that was, there was nothing in between.
00:38:11 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Okay.
00:38:12 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So we think about philanthropy, you know, philanthropy is often painted historically as older, wealthy, white culture, right?
00:38:23 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And so I wonder, as we look to the future, as millennials come into their own, as Gen.
00:38:28 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Z are going through, you know, teens and 20s,
00:38:32 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What does that mean for philanthropy?
00:38:34 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What do you expect to see?
00:38:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Do you think that narrative will shift in 20 to 30 years?
00:38:40 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Oh yeah, I think it will.
00:38:42 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And so remember that Gen.
00:38:44 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Z is technically the last majority non-Hispanic white generational cohort at about 51%.
00:38:52 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So it's not that big.
00:38:55 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
So each generation going forward will be more diverse
00:38:59 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
and have an entirely different personality, whatever happens between 10 and 20.
00:39:05 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
They're going to be different in what they do.
00:39:06 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And I think you'll see giving become more of an investment thought process for them.
00:39:15 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
It won't be, who can I give to help?
00:39:17 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
It'll be, what can I do to make a difference?
00:39:19 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
What can I do to change something?
00:39:21 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Which really involves the head heart wallet.
00:39:23 Speaker 2
That we talk about, right?
00:39:25 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
It does.
00:39:25 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And Gen.
00:39:26 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Z is all over that.
00:39:27 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
They're doing that really well right now.
00:39:30 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Although I know that most of the people in my generation look at them and think, oh, I have no idea what's going to happen with these people.
00:39:37 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
The world will end.
00:39:38 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, right.
00:39:38 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Well, these people are about to be bigger than the three generations preceding them, and they will.
00:39:45 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
change the markets, change the world, and they'll create whatever philanthropy is going forward.
00:39:50 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
I have great confidence that philanthropy is going to do well.
00:39:54 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, I agree.
00:39:55 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I think the future to take from some of your presentations, the future is bright.
00:40:01 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I think that
00:40:03 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
philanthropy looks different in the generations, but it's there no matter what.
00:40:06 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
It's always there.
00:40:07 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
And there's no right or wrong way to do it, right?
00:40:10 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Yeah, no, there isn't.
00:40:12 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And we just discussed it a few different ways that philanthropy happens.
00:40:15 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So absolutely.
00:40:18 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Well, we did it, Mark.
00:40:19 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Well, I can't believe it.
00:40:20 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I can't believe it, but we finished our first episode back.
00:40:25 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
And any final parting words you want to share?
00:40:30 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
It was the best of times and the worst of times.
00:40:33 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
What's really fun, really quickly?
00:40:34 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I'm currently reading, I don't know why, but I'm currently reading Pride and Prejudice.
00:40:39 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Good for you.
00:40:39 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Thank you.
00:40:41 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I, you know.
00:40:42 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
It's only been made into a movie 71 times.
00:40:44 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I haven't watched the movie yet.
00:40:46 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Good for you.
00:40:47 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I planned to, but I had never read the book.
00:40:50 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I missed that lesson in
00:40:53 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
literature class in high school or whatever.
00:40:55 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But the whole premise is that the girls can't inherit the estate.
00:41:00 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Right.
00:41:00 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
That's right.
00:41:02 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
So Mr.
00:41:04 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Bennett, Mr.
00:41:05 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Bennett, his 5%
00:41:09 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
could have gone to philanthropy, and then the other is going to go to Mr.
00:41:13 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Collins.
00:41:14 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I just feel like it's a missed opportunity for Mr.
00:41:18 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Bennett.
00:41:18 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
He could have done something there.
00:41:20 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
But I didn't realize that in England in the 1800s, you're out of luck if you're only girls.
00:41:26 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
That's it.
00:41:28 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Wow.
00:41:28 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Well, here we are in 2025.
00:41:30 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Times have changed.
00:41:32 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
They have.
00:41:32 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
They have.
00:41:34 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
All right.
00:41:34 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
Thanks, Mark.
00:41:35 Laurie Crocker, Central Florida Foundation
I appreciate you being here, and I'm excited to talk more about philanthropy in the future.
00:41:41 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
I appreciate it.
00:41:42 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Thanks, Lori.
00:41:44 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Thank you for listening to the podcast, First You Talk.
00:41:48 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
As an engaged listener of this show, we encourage you to check out our podcast website at cffound.org slash podcast to learn more about the complex issue.
00:42:01 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
There you'll find more context to the voices that you've heard today, links to any supporting materials mentioned during the episode, and resources to help you explore additional perspectives to draw a fuller picture of the issue at hand.
00:42:15 Mark Brewer, Central Florida Foundation
Through curiosity and collaboration, we can all make our community an even better place to call home.