Survey of NGeners reveals need for collaboration

Independent Sector and American Express have released a new study that reveals the perspectives on leadership development, cross-sector collaboration and how to solve society’s most pressing problems of “NGeners” – Americans under forty years old representing the nonprofit, for-profit, and government sectors.

An online survey was distributed through a "snowball" sampling method. 12 NGen fellows distributed the survey link through emails to contacts, Facebook status updates and Twitter postings. Independent Sector and AmeriCorps also distributed the survey links through their listservs.

The survey asked respondents to share the survey link with a friend or colleague under the age of 40. After three weeks, the survey received 2,680 responses. After excluding respondents who identified their age as forty or older, did not complete the survey, or wrote nonsensical responses, 2,078 remained. 1,218 respondents identified themselves as part of the nonprofit sector, 268 as part of the corporate/for-profit sector, 276 as government and 320 as “Other”, including students.

The five key findings of the study were:

1) NGeners mostly agree on the top issues facing communities, the nation and the world.

2) NGeners feel collaboration across sectors is very important but do not know the people, the leaders or the methods to facilitate collaboration.

3) The Majority of NGeners could not identify a single leader under the age of 40 who is effectively solving a societal problem.

4) NGeners believe the nonprofit sector is best positioned to take the lead in engaging other sectors to solve problems.

5) NGeners believe they need more, organized leadership development opportunities

The authors of the study concluded that leadership training is needed and “the most important part of that training is skills to identify and foster leadership in others and collaboration among groups. We need training so that we see, appreciate, and emulate the skills in our colleagues in the other sectors. Only then, when we realize that it’s not always the ‘famous’ leader who should be involved in the collaboration, will we make the call to effective people in other sectors and invite them to collaborate with us. In order to solve society’s greatest challenges, we want (and need!) to break down the artificial barriers that separate the nonprofit, for-profit, and government spheres. The talent and passion to do so exists across sectors, and we believe that cultivating collaborative leadership among younger generations will ultimately unlock this potential.”

Click this link to see detailed explanations of the findings in the complete survey report: http://www.independentsector.org/uploads/NGen/ngen_fellows_09_report.pdf.