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Key Takeaways
- Traditional philanthropy is dying. Gen Z sees the old model of billionaires giving away fortunes later in life as opaque, slow and ineffective at solving problems.
- When it comes to global challenges, we need enterprises that integrate impact into their business models from day one.
- The goal for Gen Z is to build solutions that make traditional philanthropy unnecessary.
As someone who worked at a non-profit for years, I’ve come to understand a difficult truth: Traditional philanthropy is dying, and Gen Z is going to kill it. Not because we’re selfish, but because we’ve watched it fail time and time again.
Even the most celebrated philanthropists are viewed with skepticism today. Bill Gates has devoted much of his fortune to giving, yet much of his legacy is met with doubt rather than admiration on social media.
That’s because the model itself is broken: Build vast wealth, pick a cause often unrelated to your business and then funnel millions through opaque, slow-moving foundations.
Gen Z’s perspective
I’m a Gen Z entrepreneur who has built significant material wealth, but I believe my generation won’t wait until our twilight years to give it away. We won’t create endowments, sign big checks or start foundations. That’s because we don’t see solving the world’s urgent crises as a post-retirement option.
Instead, we’re going to render “billionaire philanthropy” obsolete by building profitable, scalable solutions now.
Our generation has witnessed the limits of giving alone, and we know too well that decades upon decades of philanthropic efforts have done little to halt the accelerating crises around us. Every year, billions of dollars are spent giving away food in Africa, yet the food crisis persists. On the other hand, companies like Unto, which provides 30-cent meal packs for vulnerable children and families in areas near famine zones, are solving the same problem at a genuine scale.
The fact that philanthropy has poured billions into housing over decades, yet homelessness in U.S. cities has surged, is another clear sign that something has to change. Charitable dollars can provide beds for a night or fund temporary relief, but they rarely address the structural drivers that keep people on the streets, like skyrocketing rents, stagnant wages and restrictive zoning.
When it comes to global challenges like mass extinction, we desperately need something more durable: enterprises that integrate impact into their business models from day one.
Just a few examples: Elon Musk built Tesla and pushed EVs into the mainstream, creating hundreds of billions in value instead of just donating to climate charities. SpaceX slashed launch costs and forced an entire industry to evolve. Naveen Jain’s Viome aims to prevent sickness before it starts by leveraging AI to analyze an individual’s gut microbiome and gene expression at home. Colossal Biosciences isn’t a grant-seeking nonprofit but a venture-backed company aiming to make species restoration economically viable.
The new model
This is the model Gen Z understands: Build companies that make solving problems profitable, not foundations that make giving away money feel meaningful.
Policy lags. Nonprofits move slowly through grant cycles and donor review boards. Every moment spent on applications is a moment lost while species go extinct and communities collapse, and my generation can’t afford to wait for liquidity events or for our own golden years to address accelerating crises.
What if philanthropy weren’t what you gave away, but what you built? What if wealth creation and crisis-solving were two faces of the same coin?
My current company, Flashpass, helps thousands of people displaced by automation find work. We’re not a non-profit — instead, we have a sustainable business model that treats AI unemployment as a market problem requiring market solutions.
The “older philanthropists” model was often about control, not just impact, and Gen Z sees right through it. Today’s foundations and charitable organizations are mired in tax incentives, opaque financial disclosures and shady political contributions.
What my generation wants instead is entrepreneurs solving problems, systems that scale and companies where impact is foundational rather than an afterthought.
The goal shouldn’t be another generation of legacy-building, but rather a new class of philanthropist: the entrepreneur who builds companies where the double or triple bottom line is the default.
The world doesn’t need another foundation or tax write-off. It needs more entrepreneurs building solutions that make traditional philanthropy unnecessary.
If Gen Z succeeds, we won’t be remembered as philanthropists at all — but as the generation that solved problems before they became relegated to the obscurity of non-profit work.
Key Takeaways
- Traditional philanthropy is dying. Gen Z sees the old model of billionaires giving away fortunes later in life as opaque, slow and ineffective at solving problems.
- When it comes to global challenges, we need enterprises that integrate impact into their business models from day one.
- The goal for Gen Z is to build solutions that make traditional philanthropy unnecessary.
As someone who worked at a non-profit for years, I’ve come to understand a difficult truth: Traditional philanthropy is dying, and Gen Z is going to kill it. Not because we’re selfish, but because we’ve watched it fail time and time again.
Even the most celebrated philanthropists are viewed with skepticism today. Bill Gates has devoted much of his fortune to giving, yet much of his legacy is met with doubt rather than admiration on social media.
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