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How to Position Your Nonprofit for the Future with Social Forecaster Jay Gary
By chris | October 24, 2007
Recently, we caught up with Jay Gary, author, futurist and now assistant professor at Regent University in their School of Global Leadership & Entrepreneurship. For years Gary has conducted “Future Proof Your Ministry” workshops. We were curious to what he had to say.
1. What trends are you tracking now, that faith-based nonprofits need to deal with?
I have been tracking the impact on non-profits of the retirement of 46 million college-educated baby boomers by 2025. Non-profit executives have been talking about our aging donor demographics for years. For some, entire ministries will retire as their donor base does. We have been slow to realize that these workforce changes will totally redefine non-profit work in America. The U.S. labor force may have doubled over the past 50 years with the addition of women, but it will only grow at one-third of previous rates over the next four decades.
This means government social services and non-profits will be saddled with enormous burdens. Census figures show that by 2030 there will be only three working adults to support every elderly person in the U.S., compared to seven back in 1950. Baby-boomers on fixed incomes will drop from non-profit donor roles and at the same time demand more mental and health care services. America will face a retirement avalanche, leaving the workforce with serious labor shortages.
There will be a dearth of skilled employees in tech, science and other innovation areas, which outsourcing will likely fill. The newer entrants to the workforce by 2020, particularly women and Hispanic Americans, will not have the discretionary time or income to support the non-profit community. If you couple this with Barna’s projection of 20 million revolutionaries stepping outside the church to embrace self-managed spiritualities, then America’s faith-based non-profits, who serve the needy and the marginalized, are in for some lean decades–unless we rethink our service paradigms.
Topics: MinistryCOM |