This is an alert for those rare and very adept boards, CEOs and fundraisers who seriously plan beyond the next 36 months.

You’re in BIG TROUBLE.

Why? Student loans.

The smoke alarm hasn’t yet gone off. And it probably won’t for some time. But for those fundraisers who genuinely care about the long-term future, as opposed to those hopping to their next job, there’s a BIG problem coming.

Currently you ‘ask’ for $15, $18 or $29 a month or whatever. Works today, but my belief is they won’t be so quick to respond tomorrow. ‘Tomorrow’ meaning 5 or 10 years from now in the U.S.

How will the average, educated American (historically the typical American donor), saddled with at least $30,000 in student loan debt and hounded by the government, respond? My guess is less well than if he/she didn’t have that financial monkey on their back.

While it was publicly OK that the U.S. government spent nearly a trillion dollars on bailing out the banks and insurance companies, I doubt it will do the same for student loans. [As opposed to Wall Street and the big banks, there is no student loan lobby that makes large campaign contributions.]

The historic rip-off of students by the banks (with the complicity of the U.S. Government’s guarantee behind them), requiring them to pay high interest rates to the protected banks that failed, is sickening. The banks received a trillion $ bailout. The students got stuck. And nonprofits will eventually pay big time.

The consequence from the 2007/2008 ‘recession’ through today is that the financial ability to attend college in the U.S. has dropped from 1^st place in the world to 12^th today.

There’s good reason to believe the effect of this removal of financial and educational capacity from the middle class will be disastrous when it comes to future fundraising where this generation is concerned.

What to do?

Considering the Big Bank $1 trillion bailout of 2008, wouldn’t it be a better investment by the U.S. government to forgive or reduce student loans? The result, among other healthy benefits to the economy, would be to stimulate and ensure giving for our next generation of donors?

Without some such dramatic intervention the future for US fundraisers counting on the next generation may be quite bleak.

The answer seems so simple. But, the political complexity, given the greed and campaign contributions of the banking lobbyists and the short-term thinking of politicians who pocket their contributions, is so great you need to be alert and take appropriate steps to plan for this disaster.

What are your thoughts?

Roger

P.S. When Wall Street talks and threatens bankruptcy, everyone listens and comes to their aid. When the nonprofit sector talks — silence. Why?