THE MILLENNIAL GENERATION

Recently, Joel Stein of Time wrote an article about "why Millennials will save us all." Stein states "I am about to do what old people have done throughout history: call those younger than me lazy, entitled, selfish and shallow. But I have studies! I have statistics! I have quotes from respected academics! Unlike my parents, my grandparents and my great-grandparents, I have proof. Here's the cold, hard data: The incidence of narcissistic personality disorder is nearly three times as high for people in their 20s as for the generation that's now 65 or older, according to ... National Institutes of Health ..."

Stein goes on to say "[m]illennials consist, depending on whom you ask, of people born from 1980 to 2000. To put it more simply for them, since they grew up not having to do a lot of math in their heads, thanks to computers, the group is made up mostly of teens and 20-somethings. At 80 million strong, they are the biggest age grouping in American history. Each country's millennials are different, but because of globalization, social media, the exporting of Western culture and the speed of change, millennials worldwide are more similar to one another than to older generations within their nations. Even in China, where family history is more important than any individual, the Internet, urbanization and the one-child policy have created a generation as overconfident and self-involved as the Western one. And these aren't just rich-kid problems: poor millennials have even higher rates of narcissism, materialism and technology addiction in their ghetto-fabulous lives."

Stein's warning is "[t]hey are the most threatening and exciting generation since the baby boomers brought about social revolution, not because they're trying to take over the Establishment but because they're growing up without one. The Industrial Revolution made individuals far more powerful--they could move to a city, start a business, read and form organizations. The information revolution has further empowered individuals by handing them the technology to compete against huge organizations: hackers vs. corporations, bloggers vs. newspapers, terrorists vs. nation-states, YouTube directors vs. studios, app-makers vs. entire industries. Millennials don't need us. That's why we're scared of them."

So, what do Millenials mean for the NPO sector? Baby Boomers established the most recent crop of nonprofit entities in the 1960s, 70s and 80s (youth centers, advocacy groups, family service providers, job programs, and sundry other establishments). Are Millenials destined to expand the sector? Are they destined to enhance the sector? Are they destined to better the sector? Or (forgive me for even thinking this) are Millienials going to destroy the sector? According to Stein, they don't need the ESTABLISHMENT (a Baby Boomer phrase — and remember, Baby Boomers wanted to destroy it also).

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