Diane Zall opened the Milwaukee Jewish Federation’s Community Campaign 2005 Opening Event on Tuesday, Sept. 21 with a story.
A pious man took a fast-paced walk, she said. Soon, “his chosen path became steep,” with stones rolling down the hill behind him. He heard a sound behind him and finally noticed his young son struggling to keep up.
Then the boy spoke: “Father, be careful where you walk because I am following in your footsteps,” Zall said to the some 200 people gathered at Congregation Emanu-El B’ne Jeshurun for the event.
“We are all leaders and we are all followers,” she added, noting that through her federation involvement, she is following in the footsteps of her parents and grandparents and it’s now her generation’s turn to continue the previous generation’s philanthropy.
Zall co-chaired the event with Shel Gendelman and Michael Sattell, members of three different generations. The event was themed, “How to be successful when generations collide.”
Before featured speaker David Stillman shared his solutions about bridging the generation gap, general campaign co-chairs Penny and Jim Deshur announced that though the campaign just began, “we’re doing just great.”
To date, the campaign has raised $1,903,914 which represents a 7 percent increase from the same time last year. “Keep up the good work,” Jim advised the group, reminding them of the campaign theme, “Live Generously: It Does a World of Good.”
Stillman, author of “When Generations Collide: Who They Are. Why They Clash. How to Solve the Generational Puzzle at Work,” began his talk by asking what impressions people have about Generation X, which includes people born between 1965-1981.
Audience answers included “spiky hair,” “crack cocaine,” “Republicans.”
“We’re so busy stereotyping,” that we feed the potential for conflict between the generations, said Stillman, who co-founded BridgeWorks, a company dedicated to speaking, writing and consulting on generational issues.
Stillman defines the four main generations as: the Traditionalists (born before 1946), the Baby Boomers (1946-1964), Generation X (1965-1981), and the Millenials (1982-2000).
According to Stillman, there are 75 million Traditionalists. Their influences include the Great Depression and World War II, and they’re patriotic, loyal, fiscally conservative and have faith in institutions.
“They learned that if we partner with large organizations, we can really do amazing things,” he said. However, according to a United Way survey, 80% of them give philanthropically. But only 31% volunteer. “They want to give back to their communities so we need to get them more involved.”
The 80 million Baby Boomers — who were shaped by economic prosperity, the expansion of suburbia, the war in Vietnam, and more — are idealistic, competitive and question authority.
Some 17,000 people of this generation turn 50 every day, he said. And at age 50, many of them are “stopping and taking a deep breath … looking around and starting to question” the impact of their efforts.
Organizations interested in targeting Baby Boomers need to tap into their innate desire to be idealistic, to make change, he said.
The 46 million GenXers, Stillman said, were shaped by influences such as the explosion of the media, a huge divorce rate and AIDS. They are resourceful, skeptical and “more likely to believe in a cause than an institution.”
They also want to see local impact before talking globally. Comfortable with change, this generation “won’t buy into doing things just because that’s the way they’ve always been done.”
Described as the “digital generation,” the 76 million Millennials are influenced by the expansion of the media and personal computers, violence close to home, drugs and gangs. They are media savvy and realistic.
This is the generation that ‘walks through metal detectors just to get to school” and they want “to cut through clutter.”
“They’re going to be such an awesome generation…. We have to realize that the lesson starts at home,” he said, reminding parents that their children listen to how they talk about community participation.
Understanding the differences between generations allows us to tailor our message appropriately, he said.
The key to appealing to all four generations and to get them involved, he said, “is to make sure we are not alienating people…. “We all want the same thing. Maybe we are pulled into that for different reasons — and that needs to be okay.”
“If we can understand that each one will bring different things to the table,” we’ll succeed, he said.
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