Episode 78: Sharna Goldseker

Join Lori and her guest, Sharna Goldseker, as they talk about being a steward of your resources. Sharna is the founder of 21/64, which helps people drive their sense of philanthropic identity.

Here are the things to expect in this episode:

●     Having a culture of philanthropy in the family.

●     Living up to the incredible philanthropists ahead of you.

●     Helping people conceive their philanthropic identities.

●     How different generations differ in terms of their philanthropic activities.

●     And much more!

21/64: https://2164.net/
Goldseker Foundation: https://goldsekerfoundation.org/
LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/company/2164philanthropy/ 
Generation Impact: https://2164.net/generation-impact/

Connect with Lori Kranczer!

Website: https://www.linkphilanthropic.com 

LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/lorikranczer/

Episode Transcript

You're listening to the positive impact philanthropy podcast where we share the journeys of everyday philanthropists as they incorporate philanthropy into their lives. Philanthropy is a personal journey through the stories we will share here we hope that it sparks something in you and how you can make your own philanthropic impact in the world. I'm your host, Lori Kranczer attorney, philanthropic advisor and legacy giving strategist. Today we're going to explore what it looks like to be an everyday philanthropist and make a positive impact in the world. Before we get started, make sure to subscribe to the podcast so you never miss a new episode posted every Wednesday and I'm really excited to introduce our guest for today. Her name is Sharna Goldseker and she's the founder of 21/64. And I can even share from personal and professional experience that I have taken part in her trainings, and I've known of Sharna for many, many years. I've been doing legacy giving for over 20 years. And I'm just so excited that she's joining us today. So welcome Sharna,

thanks so much for having me.

Well, it's great to have you here and so we're gonna just start off with why don't you tell everyone more about you?

Well, I appreciate all the listeners on the other end, it's a joy to be able to be in conversation with someone who's also passionate about philanthropy. I come to this work wearing two hats, a personal one and a professional one. Personally, I'm from Baltimore, Maryland. If you've ever taken that Amtrak train down the Northeast Corridor and looked out the window at all the row houses, which are our quintessential architecture in Baltimore, my great uncle when he was 14, followed by my grandfather when he turned 14 left the little town they were from what is now known as the Ukraine, and really fled from financial insecurity from anti semitism fled maybe to a better life. And my great uncle started to buy those row houses when he arrived in Baltimore. And my grandfather opened a little grocery store and all the years later, let's just say the real estate business was doing a little bit better. So everyone in the family including my grandpa, and my father, my cousins moved into my great uncle's real estate business. When he passed he had never married he didn't have children of his own. He discovered when the will was read, which I don't recommend as the best way for multi generational conversations around giving a discovered he was to leave his estate to a charitable foundation. So that is really the Genesis story of philanthropy and my family and I grew up the foundation and I are both turning 49 this year just to be transparent It was founded as I was born, and and so I went on this journey observing my father who became the chairman of the foundation. Learn how to be a philanthropist. So for all the folks listening to the podcasts who might not see themselves as a quote unquote, philanthropist we certainly came from those roots ourselves. And I remember early lessons, my dad was like, How do I how do I know how to do this? Right? I was working walking the streets and working on rowhouses renting them to people who wanted homeownership. He said, You know, we are meant to steward these resources to move the dollars out the door. And so rather than hiding and feeling uncomfortable as a funder, we're going to set up an office. We're going to, you remember Lori when used to have the yellow pages, we're going to put an ad in the Yellow Pages. We're going to tell people how to reach us and ask what they need. And that was always a very powerful message to me that this is a role we have a responsibility to steward these resources, but also not one to be afraid. Of one to feel in partnership with the community. And the second message I always learned from him was no matter how many resources you have, you can make change on your own. And so the foundation was an early supporter of the Community Foundation in Baltimore, the regional Association and many other coalition's and collaborations of funders. So I feel like some of those early messages really left an imprint on me. And yet I have the same last name as the foundation. So imagine being 12 years old, I have two middle schoolers of my own and you remember the feelings of anxiety your body's changing your pimples breaking out you're trying to navigate your friends, let alone do your homework. Someone tapped me on the shoulder and said Ms. Goldseker I’d like to ask you for grants to my nonprofit and I kind of done looked around and thought are you looking for my mom like I don't understand. And I realized a very young age that I had to come to terms with what the identity meant and being associated with a philanthropic foundation. And so went on a journey to explore that.

That's so interesting. So you're there's so much in there that I wanted to talk about many people that come on to this show, we talk about that first moment of inspiration that they wanted to give back the wolf, what was that moment, a defining moment or person that really inspired them to give in whatever way. But you're born into it. It became it was part of the culture of your family. Um, so how did I mean from it started when you were born to the time that you're 12 years old? What What was that transition? What When did you your family bring you into and give you some of this responsibility to steward these funds?

Well, even before I understood or appreciated, there was a larger philanthropic entity, my parents always seated lessons of giving back so whether it was you know, giving what they called caring to me like our meet weekly sadaqa weekly charity contribution at Hebrew school to you know, when I was 10 years old, I remember jumping on the couch when labor day when we were watching the muscular dystrophy telethon. And my father said to me, if you give some money from your allowance, I will match you. I mean, most kids are getting rollerskates and whatnot at 10 years old. I was being offered matching grants. So I'm gonna think from an early age, my parents really tried to see that culture of giving in our household. And then it wasn't really until I was 29. And there are a lot of learning moments in between those years of preparation to join as a member of the Board of Directors of the gold Secor Foundation. And so I've been serving for, I don't know some 15 years now. Along the way, I met a lot of other next gen who approached me and said, My My colleague Kristen Kessler puts up beautifully I feel paralyzed by predecessor. How will I live up to all these people who will enlarge in my life who were so successful or were incredible philanthropists, how will I ever become that effective some of us feel paralyzed by privilege? How come I have so much and others don't? And even if you kind of harness you know, get the butterflies to fly in formation, if you will, and move forward as a funder. How do I not be paralyzed by possibility? There's so many nonprofits out there, how do I make a difference? And we know from Sheena Iyengar’s work on the Art of Choosing which is a TED talk, I recommend if folks haven't seen it, the more choice you have, the more paralyzing it is. And so my work professionally at 21/64 for the last two decades has really been to help donors whether they're inheritors or earners people who feel like they have some extra resources to give were, are motivated by tithing or other religious reasons to get back, to not feel paralyzed, but to feel like from their sense of purpose, from their sense of philanthropic identity, they can move resources to social change.

Yeah, that's really interesting. I want to get to that moment. When did you consider starting 21/64? Why next gen. Why did you want to do that and how has next gen evolved in the past two decades?

 So I had a unique situation where I was actually working as a Program Officer for a group of family foundations and sort of learning my craft and listening to nonprofits hearing what the needs were appreciating how to develop strategies for donors who wanted to fund in different areas, and I was approached by someone from the Andrea and Charles Bronfman philanthropies, the Bronfmans have been funding next gen issues for decades, and in their elder years, appreciated that the next gen probably had different views than they did and said, Why are we in our 70s and 80s, making all these decisions for the next generation where the next generation of funders, and so I was recruited To work for them to really cultivate galvanize encouraging the next generation of funders. And to be honest, I resisted the opportunity for a year I thought, wait a minute, I'm funding all kinds of social change issues myself, this is where I should be. And then I just realized what a unique opportunity would be to me to mobilize my peers if I could do that to affect social change. And so I worked within their operating foundation. It's the type of foundation where they can make grants but also fund their own projects. And so we operated a project called 21/64 within their foundation for a number of years before they sunset, their foundation they spent out and we incubated 21/64 out to be its own independent consulting practice. And we really continued our work over the last few decades to provide donor education to help people conceive of their values vision and mission so they could not be paralyzed and make a difference with their giving, helping families to integrate the next generation and multi generations to work together and then ultimately added a training component which you mentioned earlier, Lori, to help professionals who are also working with families and really extend the reach beyond who we were touching, by helping other professionals to do the same work of engaging multi generational families in philanthropy and social change.

And have you seen any difference between when you started your work two decades ago to the generation that you're working with now?

Yeah, it's a great question. When I started the work, the wealth transfer research had just come out. So if listeners aren't familiar with this, or maybe kind of cursorily heard about it, it's Posner vision. John havens research from the Boston Center for wealth and philanthropy. Who came up with the original wealth transfer research that said $59 trillion would be transferred to the next generation over 50 years and that number has been increased from inflation, etc. But about half of that is supposed to go philanthropically. It's a significant amount of wealth. And when I started, people really like my great uncle made their philanthropic plans in the privacy of their trust in a state attorney's office. You found out after their death, maybe that they were leaving requests or setting up private foundations and now this research sort of broke open this conversation of, wow, wealth is coming down the generations and we need to prepare for those imminent responsibilities to know what we're doing and how to do it and be effective. And so that's been the biggest shift is this more public conversation about it being okay to be a funder with his role to steward these resources and to have a desire to make a difference? Not just a private one. And I would say the thing that 21/64 has really tried to contribute in the last two decades, is that the business of philanthropy doesn't have to just be owned By elders, or people who look like Gilded Age philanthropists, typically white older men, that really everyone that in America and many countries around the world, we have five generations above the age of 21 in the same philanthropic space now, the rather the and then assuming we're waiting till this sunset of our lives, to retire into philanthropic leisure and sort of give money away. At that stage, young people, people of all ages are seeing that the needs are great. And we have resources now with which we can make a difference. And so 21/64/s contribution is to try and help the field, learn how to communicate with folks across five generations and communicate with one another within those generations. 

So just to the point of the five generations. I'm curious if you have seen a difference in how these generation give where they're giving to the issue areas and then I want to talk about the foundation.

So the hardest part about your question is, I don't know if we have enough time, hours covering this topic. It's one of my favorites. I'm long with my colleague, Michael Moody, who holds the first endowed chair of family philanthropy in the country at Grand Valley State University's Dorothy Johnson Center for philanthropy, Michael and I researched and wrote a book called Generation Impact. How really the next generation baby boomers post baby boomer generations Gen X and millennials are revolutionising giving. And so we delve deeply to survey interview and understand and appreciate how multiple generations both earning wealth and inheriting that wealth transfer. This urgency and we called a generation impact because we found they were obsessed with making an impact. I mean, all donors if you ask want to make an impact, right? But the prioritization, the core focus, the driver of impact is really what we're lifting up in, in these younger generations. So there's much to be said. But what I want to acknowledge is, I think each generation has a unique historic, social, economic, environmental set of factors or conditions in which they are raised and those generational personalities do shape how each generation of donors wants to address their giving. But what we learn from generation impact research, is it's not so much what the next generation is giving to that's different. It's how it's this central focus of impact as opposed to let's say, maybe giving out of a sense of obligation or duty or quid pro quo to their friends or their community or because there's doing it for tax deduction, right? It's true prioritization at an early age of impact, it's a willingness to innovate, to take risks, to put in all their time, talent and treasure to align their values with their giving all to make a difference because as one donor Daniel Lurie, founder of tipping point, who we interviewed said, can't keep doing the same thing and expect different results. And the world needs different results. Now.

I would love if you could share a story if I'm sure you have so many stories, but if there's one that comes to mind that you can share a story of impact. So our listeners can understand how they can make an impact.

Sure, they're saying yes, there are so many things that was so fun about writing generation impact, that we asked a baker's dozen 13 of our interviewees if they would actually write a first person essay about what philanthropy means to them. And so you can read all of these stories in each chapter generation impact. And when we were invited to do a second edition, we actually added a whole section in the back with more stories and more tips and suggestions of how to move to action from what we had learned. So I recommend that too, if you want more, but I think about well, can I tell two stories chorus Okay, so I think about Victoria Rogers, who grew up in Chicago and on the north side, and she went to school on the south side and her father at a young age encouraged her to volunteer and she said it started at 12 She went to the zoo Duncan Children's Center and found there were lots of tutors for English and math and reading but no one was offering art classes. And so she started to volunteer weekly offering art classes. She said Little did I know art would become my passion and the encouragement for volunteerism from our father led her to join creative time, which does public art displays as an intern. She later went to join the board she worked at Kickstarter and curated all the art program, she joined the Brooklyn Museum of Arts Board, like the young age of 20, something she founded the black trustees museum Alliance during the pandemic to elevate those voices, was that just an extraordinary career all catalyzed she would say, by volunteerism. Well, Victoria is remarkable. We went back to the data to look at what other next gen donors were saying about volunteerism and in fact 90% of the donors we interviewed were engaged in philanthropy had started to volunteer before the age of 21 75% of them before the age of 15. So I would say volunteerism for one is a huge building block to catalyzing engagement and giving. We look to people who are also using other kinds of tools beyond their check writing. Like Justin Rockefeller we interviewed talked about how he and his sister and the Investment Committee of their foundation, who made their wealth through oil and gas, that's where the Rockefeller money comes from, divested from oil and gas, because they were making environmental grants on the one hand, but investing still in oil and gas with 95% of their Foundation assets. And so over time, they work to divest to not undermine the contributions they were making philanthropically. So while I don't think everyone needs to have the scale, Rockefeller assets and an endowed Foundation, we can still really think about how are we investing our money to be in alignment with our values? So those are two stories and Daniel Lurie, who I mentioned, just to finish that piece. He started the tipping point community in the Bay Area where he’s from because he noticed that there were basic needs homelessness issues, hunger issues, right and how do they focus on a set number of grantees provide operating support, which is often the not sexy contribution, right? There's no name going on a building or an innovative program, if you will. It's just understanding what the core needs were. Took a baseline survey, watched how they implemented their strategies, so all it was working and double down where it was effective. So just really that focus on impact on basic needs, on general operating support, and then galvanizing peers to help leverage those core investments That they found that we're working really are three stories, Victoria on volunteers and Justin on impact investing and Daniel on that kind of impact focus grantmaking really stay with me.

Thank you for sharing this and and thank you for the three stories because it is what we share here on podcast all the different ways that people can make an impact and give back and it looks so different for everybody but everyone is doing their part. I did say I want to get back to talk about the foundation because you are making an impact the foundations they need huge impact and I would love for you to share what it's doing.

I appreciate the question. You know, I've been thinking a lot about donors of all shapes and sizes. And so just want to also say that, I think about my giving with a portfolio approach by that I mean, my husband and I give what resources we can from our earned income. We give collaboratively with other donors to leverage our gifts. We set up a donor advised fund of our own at a community foundation which we respect and we have the benefit of me serving on the private foundation which has greater resources to allocate. So yes, I also want to say even if you don't have access to being on the board of directors of a private foundation, we all have different pockets of resources that we can utilize and collectively make a difference. 

Absolutely. 

Yeah. And the gold Tiger foundation is really focused on improving the lives of Baltimoreans. It's a place based foundation and supports low income communities, those in need. So every so often we reevaluate the strategies of what those needs are. So they have evolved over time, but we have a community development area education and also one of the program areas which I'm most proud of is nonprofit capacity building leadership development. So organizations that might be a small grant to hire a board development consultant. You know, need to retool some system and some non sexy you know, organizational capacity kind of grant can apply to the foundation for that need as well and we will provide a match to what their their board and their own stakeholders would be raising to that end. So I have moved back to Baltimore, and I'm thrilled to be in the community in which I'm funding.

It's wonderful. And just so people have an idea if they haven't been the Baltimore area, are you open to all issue areas? I know you're it's the foundation supporting that particular geographic location, but

who is in-

Community development, education and nonprofit capacity building are three primary areas but we're always happy to understand who else is in is in the same community as we're in so you know, welcome conversations with other funders or other nonprofits, to see how we might either be helpful or refer to people who are doing similar work.

Fantastic. So with that, Sharna, I'd love to know what you consider your legacy today.

So 21/64 produces tools to help donors answer the questions like the ones you just asked Lori and I always find the question of legacy, an aspirational one, right, something that we're working towards, and in particular, we use a tool called Picture your legacy, which is a deck of 52 beautiful photographs that we sourced to help inspire donors to think about the kind of change they want to make over time and I always end up choosing one that our group of parachuters jumping from a plane and I can't tell you that I've ever personally leapt from a plane myself. But I'm always in awe of a scene of looking down at the whole landscape of understanding the needs of a whole community. And I always appreciate the risk taking nature of that exercise. I always feel like I want to take risks. That lead to change because we can't keep doing the same thing and expect different results as Daniel Lurie would say and so I want to feel like I've had the courage to take risks where necessary. And I always imagined that sometimes jumping out of the plane first is important because you need to lead others for change and I yet it's always good to jump with a parachute and, and other team members. And so you know, that early lesson I learned from my parents about change not being possible on one zone but really in collaboration with other people feels important to me. So if I could you know, to work with those four principles in mind, I'd be I'd be a happy person. I hope I can convey some of those legacy to my own children.

That's wonderful. I'm trying to think of which card I picked. I can't even remember. Had to go look at the deck again. But that's just a beautiful vision for your legacy. So thank you for sharing that. And then where can people find out more information about you 21/64, The Foundation.

Thank you so much for asking. Check us out at 2164.net 2164.net to learn about our donor education, our individual and family consulting, and our professional training. If you're interested in nonprofits in Baltimore, I encourage you to look at the Goldseker Foundation's website which is goldsekerfoundation.org, that’s goldsekerfoundation.org. And if the stories of next gen donors are inspiring, please look at generation impact which is available on 21/64’s website. So I appreciate the opportunity to share those resources with you.

Absolutely. And for everyone listening please check out all the resources there's something for everybody. So definitely check it out. So again, thank you for joining us. We hope we provided some insights and inspiration for all our listeners that they can make for their own philanthropic journey. Thank you Sharna.

Thanks for having me, Lori.

Thank you for joining us hope we provided some insights and inspiration that you can use for your own philanthropic journey. You can tune in every week on Wednesdays when new episodes are dropped. We'd love to hear your feedback. So leave comment and a rating about what you like and what you'd like to hear more about. And if you liked the episode today make sure to share it to raise awareness about the story to inspire other women to take action. I'm Lori Kranczer And until next time, you can make a positive impact through philanthropy every day. Thanks for listening.