Philanthropy, Power, and the Rising Generation
Mark Greer
Transforming Wealth Into Justice
Mark Greer is a philanthropic advisor and legacy strategist who helps ultra-high-net-wealth families, next-generation leaders, and family offices align wealth with purpose. At Phīla Engaged Giving, he guides clients through deeply personal philanthropic journeys, crafting giving strategies that honor family values, build intergenerational legacy, and reflect a commitment to impact with integrity.
With a background in community organizing, Mark brings a justice-informed lens to philanthropy while meeting families where they are. He is known for designing thoughtful, high-touch engagements-from family learning journeys and foundation planning to global giving strategies and bespoke advisory for next-gen inheritors.
Mark has held leadership and grantmaking roles at JPMorgan Chase Foundation, The Kresge Foundation, and the PwC Charitable Foundation. He previously served as Co-Executive Director of the Transforming Power Fund, a Detroit-based collaborative fund supporting community-led change.
Mark holds a B.A. in Political Science and Afro-American & African Studies from the University of Michigan and an M.B.A. from Wayne State University’s Mike Ilitch School of Business. He is a Chartered Advisor in Philanthropy (CAP) a 21/64 Certified Advisor in Multigenerational Philanthropy, and serves as a faculty member for Daylight Advisor’s Impact Philanthropy Advisor Certificate program.
A native Detroiter, Mark serves on the boards of the Detroit Sound Conservancy and the Black Male Educators Alliance. He is a member of Phi Beta Sigma Fraternity, Inc., and enjoys traveling, live music, and exploring parks with his wife Jamesa and their daughter Nia.
Kirby Rosplock
Welcome to the Tamarind Learning podcast. I'm your host, Dr. Kirby Rosplock. I'm really excited today. We have Mark Greer from Phyla Engaged Giving. It's so excited to have you here today, Mark, because today we're talking about transactional to transformational giving and how philanthropy can create connection, compassion, and positive change. And Mark has just got an incredible background. He is a philanthropic advisor at Phyla, and he has so many wonderful things behind his name. I mean, you're a former community organizer. You've got so many incredible foundations you've worked for, including the J. P. Morgan Chase Foundation, the Krezky Foundation, the PWC Charitable Foundation. You've done things like grant making, impact investing. You've held operational roles. Most recently, you served as a co-executive director at the Transforming Power Fund. Now, that's in Detroit, right? In Detroit, yes. Tell us a little bit more. That's focused on social justice and collaboration, and that's a fund, right?
Mark Greer
Yes. It was a participatory grant-making fund in Detroit, a fund and community organizing. So it was really a full circle moment for me. My role was to raise funds from some of the larger foundations and then put that into a community fund where people who were directly impacted by the issues that we were funding actually were the grant makers. So we did a lot of education with them, but they ultimately held the decision-making problem.
Kirby Rosplock
That's so cool. You're a Michigan guy. So you went to the University of Michigan, and you've even studied. You've done the chartered advisory, that designation in philanthropy. You've done some certifications at 2164 in multigenerational philanthropy. You even got this new impact in philanthropy certification at DaylightAdvisor. I mean, tell me how you came to just be so committed, so passionate around the charitable space, and what What drew you to just say, This is what I want to commit my life to?
Mark Greer
Yeah, absolutely. I'm really excited to be on this podcast and get a chance to have a conversation with you. I've dedicated my personal professional career to social impact. I grew up in Detroit, working class family. My parents and grandparents really invested a lot in my development and really emphasized education. To this day, I'm a lifelong learner, just love taking in knowledge. But growing up in the city, just seeing the opportunities, but also the disadvantages that we had, particularly compared to our suburban peers, once I gained that awareness of particularly educational disparities that really bothered me, irved me. And I took that into my college experience where I focused on political science and African-American and African studies with the goal of how do we bridge some of these gaps? How do we make sure that people have access to opportunity across the world? And limiting those disparities. That's all in my personal life as well as professionally. And the opportunity to work as a community organizer was really about thinking about economic justice, particularly in Detroit. Environmental justice, where we have the automotive industry here, which has provided jobs, but also from a plant standpoint, has polluted a lot of our areas.
Mark Greer
And so thinking about what does that look like in a meaningful way. And public safety, I was thinking about that connection to everyone deserves to feel safe in their communities, in their homes. And how do you solve those type of issues at a systemic level? Did that work for a few years and went back to get my MBA so I could understand the political, social, and now the economic side of things. And that jumped me into the world of philanthropy. I had an internship with JPMorgan Chase in there. At that time, the second year, there was a $100 million commitment to the city of Detroit. And so it was an opportunity for me to, one, bring my lived experience to the company, but also my new found understanding of the business and how that intersects with the ways, the opportunities that companies have to invest in communities in real meaningful ways. And the rest of the history, I've been in philanthropy for about 10 years now.
Kirby Rosplock
Wow. Well, you don't look at... I mean, you look like you just graduated from college, no offense. But I mean, that's a compliment, obviously. Yeah, I appreciate it. We all want to think that we just graduated, right? At least I do. When we think about this giver and receiver dynamic, why does the impact of the gift or the grant sometimes miss the mark? Where do you see the disconnect?
Mark Greer
I think that gap between giver and receiver often arises because of philanthropy has been approached from this charity mindset as opposed to a partnership. And what I mean by that is that the giver versus receiver, the beneficiary, those type of language takes away the power from us, the power and agency that communities have. Oftentimes, I would say that, again, growing up in my community, we know the solutions. We know the solutions to a lot of our problems. We just don't have access to capital to solve it. We don't have a lot of times, the political power even to address it. And from a donor's perspective, there's this perception that they don't know what they're doing. And myself, my family who has access to money, we have all the answers. And that's not always the case. Sometimes you have capital, but you don't have real connection to community through no fault of your own. I think this is the way that philanthropy has been set up over the past decades, as opposed to taking the opportunity to really be rooted in community, asking the right questions being able to not just this transactional relationship, but more of a transformational opportunity to co-create solutions as those with access to wealth and those without who have the access to proximity to the solutions.
Kirby Rosplock
I'm just curious. I mean, growing up and having the firsthand experience and the knowledge, and then obviously with your studies, bringing it into the corporate world, seeing it firsthand on the other side of the equation, I mean, how did you bring that? How did you bring that knowledge from where you came from, what you studied, and then that corporate overlay from that foundation mindset? How did you merge that? How did you help them understand, Hey, it's just not the political bureaucracy of the corporate mindset, but how do you bring them into the real grassroots side?
Mark Greer
Absolutely. Absolutely. And So much of it is... I talk about myself as a bridge builder, a translator in a lot of ways. And so for me, it's about building trust, particularly with companies, particularly with ultra high never folk families, is being able to, one, Of course, knowing what I'm talking about from a professional lens and being able to dot my eyes, cross my teeth, understand the business purpose and that wealth purpose. And then also saying, also my lived experience, the ways that I approach is not mutually exclusive. Leading with trust, but also leading with a way that empathy. I think in society, it's us versus them piece in the way that I approach... The way that I approach the work, the way we approach the work at Phyla is we're taking people on a learning journey. You don't know what you don't know. There are things that I don't know and that we can learn together. And by being transparent, being bringing our full selves to the extent that's reasonable allows that long-term stewardship, that long-term relationship cultivation, so that when I say, Hey, Black communities disproportionately are impacted by environmental injustices, you're not taking that as a personal attack on you or your business.
Mark Greer
I'm telling you from a data-driven perspective as well as the story perspective, so that there's a way that we can together solve these issues together. And also, here's the business case. I can also... The MBA really helped me shift my mind to be able to say, Here's the reasons we should do this from a business standpoint, but also a broader societal, what is the world that we want to live in collectively. And most of the time, when we get to that perspective, the world doesn't include the levels of inequality that we have.
Kirby Rosplock
That's awesome. Now, let's shift gears for a minute and think about the family foundation side versus the corporate foundation side. Do you see it translating differently, this transactional versus transformational giving approach? And if so, what does that look like? Our family is taking a different approach to trying to make a difference in terms of positive change than you see on the corporate foundation side, or is it a yes and? No, they're both leaning in. It's just they both want to make an impact, and they're both trying to do it, but maybe differently. I don't know.
Mark Greer
Yeah. No, absolutely. I think that's a great question. From the corporate side, particularly in the past couple of years, there's been almost an emotional roller coaster. How do we want to show up? Where do we want to step up on particular issues? Where are we receiving the political backlash and the economic backlash in a lot of times for decisions that we make? I won't go into specific companies, but there are boycott that are happening now. There are boycott that were happening before. Work on these particular issues. And so I think that the companies right now are really in a, almost an identity crisis. I think the larger companies, I would say, are in an identity crisis. Family businesses, and I say in the families, the more themselves have a lot more flexibility, and the private companies can really prioritize, face up and align with their values and lead in a way that I think is a lot more flexible. I think the families that we advise at Fiverr thrive when they feel that they can embrace collaboration. They want the community involvement. Once they make that decision, oftentimes, some of that, I would say, opportunity, some of that pressure comes from their rising generation family members who want to see more, they want to embrace more community-based solutions, want to be fully engaged partners, as opposed to distant funders.
Mark Greer
And so I do see a lot more engagement, a lot more engagement, a lot more opportunity with the family businesses that weren't engaged.
Kirby Rosplock
That's so interesting. So you really see the rising gen as maybe that catalyst or that spark plug. Why do you think that is?
Mark Greer
I think that they, I consider myself from a peer standpoint in a sense, grew up in a world that was, of course, more connected through technology, through social media. They're more exposed, just as a generalization, more exposed to the world, to other cultures, to with different types of thinking, even within their own social circles than previous generation. That can be said of every generation at their time when they were the rising gen. We just constantly evolving, constantly thinking about Frankly, how do we do things? Maybe a little different than our parents and grandparents. I think the assumption sometimes is that, Oh, they want to blow everything up and start over. In some cases, that may be the case. That may be the answer. In other cases, with clients that we have, next Gen clients that we advise, they want to honor the past legacy of their families while also saying, How do we evolve this to be something that is relevant to today and again, more connected? So I think there's just the messaging that we give rising Gen, seizing the day, taking opportunities as they see them, like they've grown up with this mindset that they can do anything.
Mark Greer
So that, of course, applies to the way that they want to give and the way that they to engage in society.
Kirby Rosplock
So I'm almost hearing you say that the philanthropic opportunities become almost like the antidote or like the connection point, maybe to reengage, reignite, connection back, maybe to the family enterprise, maybe to the family itself, maybe to the family's legacy. If that next Gen or rising Gen is saying, I don't see myself in the family office. I don't see myself in the family business. But maybe this is how they identify as part of the connection to who this family is. Is that what you're saying?
Mark Greer
Yeah. I think there's a huge opportunity. I'm not someone that overseals all. Philanthropy is a great way to be an education, please. But what I am saying is that there's a strong opportunity for, and there's research to back this up, that the way that millennials, Gen Z, starting to see more Gen Alpha engages in society, they don't separate their family's wealth from their identity, or they want to, but it's so hard to get away from it that sometimes the guilt comes in. Sometimes they want to separate as opposed to, I think the opportunity is saying, Well, hey, if you want to change the world, we have the access, we have the wealth, we have the power, we have the connections to do so. This is a leadership development opportunity. This is an opportunity for us to really hear your ideas and let's walk alongside each other as a multi-generational family to solve, of course, the business solutions, but also the societal opportunity. So I say, Absolutely. There's a lot of opportunity to use philanthropy as that way to be engaged or engaged for the first time, the rising chain.
Kirby Rosplock
So it sounds like you're saying it can also be this teaching tool, maybe to also impart values, maybe connect to the spirit of the family and the culture of the family, too, if that hasn't been already imparted through some other part. Again, if a family member hasn't worked in a family business, you may not directly experience experience, right? That integrity is a big part of how the family business operates. Well, maybe you get that now through how you're demonstrating the charitable aspects, right?
Mark Greer
I don't know. Absolutely. No. Yeah. I mean, a specific example. We work with a few multi-generational families that, again, the assumption was that, okay, the next generation doesn't want to be bothered. Maybe they want to spend down the foundation, and we'll just dissipate, even though our principal, our founder, really wanted the philanthropy to keep everyone together. And that's a whole another conversation, whether or not it actually does keep the family together or does it force people to work together. But in the cases that we you've seen, when you actually do the interviews and you talk to the kids, the grandkids, the great grandkids, a lot of times, one, they are interested. It's been some time since they've heard the voice or the legacy conversation about why the original founder created this foundation. Not just keeping them together, but what are the values that initiated this entity? What were they People, Oh, they give to museums, they give to schools. Well, no, there is a value system behind it that may seem old school, but once you really break it down, those values still exist, whether they've been communicated throughout the family or not, they've been passed down.
Mark Greer
I think the opportunity to engage is almost a reminder of that legacy conversation. And also I talk about my family a lot. My grandparents talk about myself and my siblings as a part of their legacy. And they don't just want us to do things the way that they did it. They want us to continue and pass on to now my daughter, she has opportunities and visions that I want to cultivate to take forward. Just really thinking about ways that those values and ideas can be passed through.
Kirby Rosplock
That's so inspiring. What do you say to those individuals, though, that are like, legacy is not a word that we connect to in our family. It's one that we rebuff, and it gives us a feeling of like, Oh, that's old school or whatever. How do you also see these families connecting and maybe moving forward from hierarchical type structures to more collaborative structures? I mean, talk to us, too, about what you see transformationally happening around giving, and what does that look like?
Mark Greer
Yeah, Yeah. I think, in my mind, mutually exclusive concepts. We've taken because, again, as a translator, I think, particularly when you're dealing with the multi-generational one generation, it feels like legacy. The next generation is like, We want to move forward. With the move forward conversation, sometimes the barriers that people come to is like, We're not changing anything. Grandmother wanted this way, and so we're going to do it this way. And you get people who disengage. And so on one hand, you have to acknowledge the past in order to move forward into the future. And the way that we talk about at FILA is really about, right now is the opportunity to modernize your philanthropy. And you have concepts like trust-based philanthropy. You have trust-based philanthropy, you have participatory grant-making. You have all of these things that are emerged that might turn people off who are a little more risk-averse. But when you think about modernizing, you do want your philanthropy to be relevant. And so we We think about how do you take some of these principles, whether you call them that or not, there are best practices for 21st century philanthropy, including, again, being more connected to community and opportunities where you can, even as a family, where you're doing site business, it's not onerous on the nonprofit, but you think about how do you be in a partnership?
Mark Greer
How are you paying people for their time even beyond the grant? How are you making connections to your peers? Or so who may also be able to feel funding gaps? There are so many ways to step up the way that we do, the way that we are doing philanthropy that is more community-centric, that is thinking about transforming that power into something that is sustainable for a community, sustainable for the organizations that you care about, to be able to even go beyond your giving.
Kirby Rosplock
And when you think about back to that sustainability and really meeting communities where they are and making change happen, what do you think are some of the keys to that successful endeavor? And why do you think sometimes families, again, miss the mark or just aren't actually as successful or as satisfied with the success rate of what they're doing on a charitable endeavor?
Mark Greer
Yeah, absolutely. A big part of that success, that being happy with your success is being clear on what are the outcomes that you're seeking. I think the difference between transactional giving and transformational was the transactional was really, Hey, I want my name on this building. This is a tax write-off. This is something I care about. It's education, so I'll do it for the kids. But then there's not that long-term interaction versus, I think now, what the opportunities that families have is, one, if you have a current giving portfolio, just doing a deep analysis on where are we giving? Why do we give to this? What is the real rooted purpose in this? If an organization doesn't really fit your family's vision anymore, you don't have to put that them off tomorrow. You can step them down. You can provide that multi-year support. Or another opportunity is to listen to, Hey, we've been giving to this organization for X amount of years. What are you doing now? What are your needs now? We care the great work that you are doing. What are your needs and how can we better meet them? Or are there other partners that you rely on as a nonprofit or that you see are doing great work that we should also be supporting?
Mark Greer
And that gets to the organization that you're supporting also have a network of great communities, great ideas that can support and, again, are more relevant.
Kirby Rosplock
So, Mark, maybe we can just shift gears for a little bit here. And maybe you can give an example about how, for example, a family foundation might want to get involved supporting an initiative in a local community and be more actionable, like boots on the ground. Do you have an example or a story about how a family foundation has just really jumped in and solved for an issue?
Mark Greer
Oh, yeah. Yeah, absolutely. We engaged a client in another once a generational family in the Midwest that had just historically been an education and health funder. In their funding, when they went back and they looked at their portfolio, the historic portfolio, where they've been funding, one of the gap areas that they identified was, how do you think about the intersection between violence prevention, public safety, and health? And just thinking about what that looks like. And so we took them to a learning journey. What are the organizations that are out there, what they're already doing, connected them from a site visit, virtual site visits, to talk to those organizations and the people the organizations are serving, on what the needs are, how do you get into that space. And what came out of those conversations was like, Listen, as a family foundation, we have a small staff, and they, nor we, are the experts in something like public safety and Violence Prevention. One of the things that is emerging right now is the opportunity to maybe put together a participatory grantmaking fund inside of that the family supports that they can give to a separate... To be hosted by a nonprofit organization that is doing that work that can be participatory, has people who are impacted by violence, who are specialists in a provider vision, violence prevention field, academic you name it.
Mark Greer
And instead of that decision making, power of living within the family foundation, they'll cut the check, give it to that organization, and they make that fun. But it's not just cutting the check and leaving. They also will be at that table learning from the community. And so it removes this divide between donor and grantee. It's we're at the table, we're learning, we're contributing, we're asking questions as silly as they might feel. And what that does, that builds one trust between the family foundation and the community that you're not just here to fly by night. You're actually invested in the solutions, and you're actually listening and seeing people in the community as the experts that they are. That's still a work in progress, but we're seeing even just the immediate benefits of families feeling good about the work that they're doing moving forward.
Kirby Rosplock
That's really cool. How young? Just so curious, when is it too young to start? And how young do you see family members just jumping into the charitable process? Are they as young as, say, high school, middle school, grade school, or do you see more young adult typically getting involved?
Mark Greer
For me, it's never too early to introduce the younger generations to philanthropy. You can start small, including volunteering locally. You can take something in your portfolio that's accessible. We often hear elementary and middle school. It's really interested in animal rights or the environment. Great. Here's a learning opportunity. Again, not putting the burden on the nonprofit to figure something out for your family members, but I think really volunteering and those education, giving them book assignments. I had a family matriarch who they had their grandkids. Pick an issue, pick a nonprofit, write almost like a book report on why they care about it, what they want to do. After they do it, here's $5,000 that you can give to something that you care about. Just that small buy-in, that's, again, personal professional development for those kids. But over time, it's instilled in them. We as a family value giving. We value the things that are really relevant to point where when they go into... The assignments get a little more complicated once you get into high school and college and even what we're seeing. The college age is tricky because they care about a lot of things they want to have.
Mark Greer
People want to have voice, but they also are starting their own lives and getting things that they care about. And so, again, figuring out what those dynamics based off of their time was, but not assuming that they don't have time, but really asking and engaging. I don't see that there's not a minimum age, but I do think there's some critical ages, high school and college age and post-graduation, where you can make sure that their voice feels included and valued in the film topic discussion Well, I'm hearing you say then, actually, the opportunity is to start early and continue to cultivate it so that it's a yes and, that you can really cultivate active givers and a giving mindset, a charitable mindset.
Kirby Rosplock
But then you can also demonstrate that this is a value maybe in your family, if it is, if you have this in your family. And then this also creates an ethos, a giving mindset in your child so that that awareness is there early. I think it's hard when individuals grow up older or if they become aware of wealth later in their life, and then they feel guilty. But with a giving mindset earlier on, I think it helps counterbalance that inheritance where they're like, I can do something. I might inherit, but I know I have that channel. I have that ability to do something if I want to do that or if I know more about that and how that works. So I love that.
Mark Greer
Yeah. I mean, it's empowering to, one, be able to understand your family's wealth early on and that we're doing things with it. We have, of course, our financial success, our business success, and just, again, the social nature and exposure that the next gen has. I I feel like you're right. It's like, how do you alleviate that guilt by understanding that this is nothing to be ashamed of, this is nothing to be guilty of because we are actively involved in the society around us and not just in our own bubble and not doing anything with it.
Kirby Rosplock
I had another guest on not too long ago, and she made a really good valid point that it's sometimes not even necessarily about writing the check. It might even be using our presence, our name, our political channels and influences to also lean in, and that we all have the ability to use our hands and use our own time and treasure to get in there and spend a day at the food bank or go help out at that community shelter or do whatever if you feel so compelled. Because even us, our body is our ability to commit our time is a really powerful tool, and it's a big statement just as much as sometimes writing the check or the act of the monetary gift.
Mark Greer
Absolutely. There's a yes and, almost a head hands, heart. How can you use your intellectual capital, use your fiscal ability to make things happen? And of course, the financial, but the connections even are really valuable, again, for that sustainability of those organizations.
Kirby Rosplock
So I would almost say at the younger ages, the hands and the heart is probably more impactful than the check writing. Absolutely. Because they're going to remember what it felt like to be doing doing the physical work and the active work versus the financial plan that's going to impact the multi-year gifting strategy for XYZ organization, which they're going to be like, I didn't know. I don't have any clue what that was looking like. But I remembered what it felt like to put lunches and stuff in the backpack, or I remembered what it was like to help organize boxes of aid that was going somewhere overseas to some country. So I definitely agree with you that the active involvement can feel so rewarding sometimes to those younger constituents. Oh, my gosh, Mark, we could talk, I think, all day and night because there's so many rich conversations that can spin out of this. I just am so grateful. If there were one or two additional things that you wanted to leave our listeners and viewers with today on the Tamarind Learning podcast, what comes to mind?
Mark Greer
Yeah. Yeah. I think I just would like to leave everyone with the concept of philanthropy is both about personal and collective growth. I think at its best, philanthropy offers a profound personal and collective experience that invites families to align those deeper values and actions that both visibly and positively shape communities and societies. Just really we like everyone think about your relationship with giving, think about your family's relationship, and consider ways that you can authentically think about those values that drive your giving, what that could look like for your family, how do you engage, and how can you take the next steps towards more transformational giving?
Kirby Rosplock
That's really powerful. Mark Greer, Phila Engaged Giving We're so grateful to have you on the Tamarind Learning podcast. If you liked our podcast today, please like, please subscribe. We have some wonderful leave behinds, so we're going to give you all the contact information so you can get in touch with Mark and his associates at Phila Engaged Giving. Mark is also graciously written a wonderful piece, Transforming Wealth into Justice: A Call to High Net-Worth Wealth Changemakers. If you are out there and you're a changemaker, you better read this paper. It's really Really wonderful. And there's a lot more wonderful resources on the Phyla website. So please feel free to connect to it through the Tamarind Learning website. And again, thank you, Mark, so much for being here today with us.
Mark Greer
Thank you for having me.
