A Young Collectors dinner at the Guggenheim. Exclusive events for young donors help museums cement ties with new benefactors. CreditKarsten Moran for The New York Times
Several hundred millennials mingled under the soaring atrium of the Guggenheim Museum on Fifth Avenue one recent frigid February night. Weaving around them were black-clad servers bearing silver trays piled high with doughnuts, while a pixieish D.J. spun Daft Punk remixes.
The occasion was the museum’s annual Young Collectors Party, and the increasingly tipsy crowd thronged in a space usually filled with visitors eager to see the 73-year-old institution’s priceless artworks. But on this night, the galleries displaying an exhibition of Italian Futurism were mostly cordoned off. Instead, youthful, glamorous and moneyed New Yorkers were the main attraction.
Many museums, including the Guggenheim, view events like this as central to their public programming. They get a new generation through the front door and keep potentially staid institutions relevant with a cultural landscape in flux.
But events like this are also, at some level, central to the future financial health of the museum. Before the Young Collectors Party, museum executives held an exclusive dinner for a select group of young donors already contributing at a high level. If all goes well, some of those in attendance will one day become trustees of the Guggenheim. Together, the dinner and the party took the museum one step closer to cementing relationships with these rising philanthropists and their friends.
The Young Collectors Party at the Guggenheim in Manhattan. Credit Karsten Moran for The New York Times
“You don’t just go on the board overnight,” said Catherine Dunn, the Guggenheim’s deputy director of advancement. “You engage people in the life of the museum so that they can ultimately join the board.”
Across the country, museums large and small are preparing for the eventual passing of the baton from the baby boom generation, which for decades has been the lifeblood not only of individual giving but of boardroom leadership. Yet it is far from clear whether the children of baby boomers are prepared to replicate the efforts of their parents.
While charitable giving in the United States has remained stable for the last 40 years, there is reason for concern. Boomers today control 70 percent of the nation’s disposable income, according to data compiled by the American Alliance of Museums. Millennials don’t yet have nearly as much cash on hand. And those who do, the alliance found, are increasingly drawn to social, rather than artistic, causes.
Now, as wealth becomes more concentrated, tax laws change and a younger generation develops new philanthropic priorities, museums — like other nonprofit organizations — are confronting what, if unaddressed, could become an existential crisis.
“The generational shift is something a lot of museums are talking about,” said Ford W. Bell, president of the American Alliance of Museums. “The traditional donors are either dying, stepping back or turning it over to their children or grandchildren.”
Generational change is always occurring as new blood takes the place of the old. But as the boomers’ children take over, there is concern among administrators and trustees that millennials are not poised to meet the financial and leadership demands of increasingly complex — and expensive — museums.
“We’re not just talking about replacing one generation with another generation,” said Kaywin Feldman, director of the Minneapolis Institute of Arts. “We’re talking about a new generation that behaves so differently than the last one.”
Two-thirds of millennials want specific information about how their dollars will “make a difference,” according to the 2011 Millennial Donors Report. That can pose a problem for museums, which rely on individual donations to support everyday operations and build endowments.
“Younger philanthropists and donors today are looking for measurable results,” Mr. Bell said. “It used to be you gave because it was the Metropolitan Museum of Art. But today younger donors have a lot of things they can give to. They ask what the impact is going to be and how you’re going to measure that impact. The Rockefellers gave, but they weren’t looking for specific metrics.”
Moreover, many are disinclined to contribute to long-term capital campaigns. “An older generation of philanthropists really understood the value of an endowment,” said Maureen Robinson, a member of the Museum Group, a consortium of senior museum professionals. “But endowments are looked at by younger people as dead money. They think, ‘I’m giving you a dollar to do something different.’ ”
What is more, there is a swelling debate about the merits of different types of charitable giving, with many arguing that arts institutions are less deserving than social and health causes. Writing in The New York Times last year, the philosopher Peter Singer said that “a donation to prevent trachoma offers at least 10 times the value of giving to the museum.”
This line of thinking is “a matter of some dismay to a generation that worked to build out community engagement in museums,” Ms. Robinson said. “All these things are great, but it’s as though museums appear to represent a lesser value and less moral use of time.”
And not only are 20- and 30-somethings today more interested in social causes like education, the environment and international aid than they are in the arts, but because of shifting demographics, there may simply be fewer wealthy young patrons to write checks.
“We’re seeing some significant changes in income distribution,” said Dan Monroe, director of the Peabody Essex Museum in Salem, Mass. “You’ve got a shrinking middle class. And there’s a huge amount of wealth and philanthropic capability that is centered in a smaller number of people than was previously the case.”
Already anticipating this generational changing of the guard, some museums are racing to pursue younger donors and trustees.
At the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis, 75 percent of the board membership has turned over in the last seven years. That has brought new life to the Walker, which focuses on modern and contemporary art. But it has also meant the loss of several stalwarts who could be relied on for big checks and sage advice.
“Most of the oldest generation has completely gone off,” said the Walker’s director, Olga Viso. In its place, Ms. Viso said, a group of trustees in their 50s and 60s has moved into senior leadership roles and begun giving at higher levels, while a younger group of trustees in their early 40s and even late 30s has joined the board.
Among the more youthful members Ms. Viso has recruited of late are John Christakos, founder of the furniture company Blu Dot, who is in his late 40s and serves as the Walker board’s treasurer, and Monica Nassif, the founder of the fragrance and cleaning companies Caldrea and Mrs. Meyers Clean Day.
As well as being proactive, another way to attract young donors and trustees is to be a cultural powerhouse. Many prominent art museums in major metropolitan areas, in particular, are so far navigating this transition with ease.
“The very big institutions are doing very well,” said Ms. Robinson of the Museum Group. “They have a gravitational field.”
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