Photo of Gabriel Hament, Kameron Hodgens and Phil King

A fundraiser to benefit a Sarasota social services complex also represents an intergenerational recruitment strategy to get younger generations involved in philanthropy. Those involved with the coming event to support The Glasser/Schoenbaum Human Services Center hope the approach brings more Generation X and Millennial donors into the giving fold while building on a national model for nonprofits around the country to emulate. “This kind of reinventing our supporters is very important,” says Dr. Kameron Hodgens, CEO of the Glasser/Schoenbaum center. “We can’t sustain ourselves on aging databases.”

The Miracles on 17th Street gala, to be held Nov. 19 at the Glasser/Schoenbaum campus, will be chaired by Phil King, a former CEO for the center, and Gabriel Hament, a 25-year-old Cumberland Advisors financial advisor. The center for the past 27 years has provided operating space to 18 nonprofits serving the region in a 14-building complex on 17th Street, and this event will be the first such event hosted on the campus itself.

To 70-year-old King, it’s important in many ways to have a Baby Boomer and a Millennial organizing the event. “In Sarasota, philanthropy is an industry,” King says. “We’ve been fortunate to have wealth in this town, but a lot of the old money is going away or it has already been committed.” Add the fact that grant money doesn’t flow like to social service entities like it used to and the significance of intergenerational giving seems all the more critical.

Hament says the involvement of more young people in giving represents, in a way, an expansion of the growing multi-generational approach to dispensing social services, referencing how many foundations have looked at ways to connect services for parents to offerings aimed at children in the same populations. “[King] took the ‘2Gen’ approach of delivering social services being adopted by every nonprofit in the country and adapted it to the front end equation of gathering support and financial services,” Hament says.

And Hodgens, herself a 39-year-old Generation Xer working in the independent sector, says this will be critical to ensure the legacy of institutions outlast their founders. The Glasser/Schoenbaum center itself was co-founded by Kay Glasser, who passed away in 2010. The gala will also honor the center’s other co-founder, 100-year-old Betty Schoenbaum. The chance to elevate the contributions of four generations of supporters further accentuates the intergenerational approach, Hodgens says.

Photo of Gabriel Hament, Kameron Hodgens and Phil King