CALGARY -- More than $3-trillion in wealth is shifting from the thrifty Second World War generation to their baby-boomer children, but charities will have to change their ways if they hope to benefit from that bonanza, a weekend conference was told.

"There is an avalanche of opportunity out there," Jim Freeman of the Calgary Foundation said at the annual conference of the Community Foundations of Canada.

"What we have to figure out is how to tap into the money that is being transferred. . . . We have to figure out what philanthropy means to the next generation," he said.

Mr. Freeman said the starting point should be to abandon long-held assumptions about giving and fund raising. "The reins have to be loosened. Younger people have to experience the joys of giving to things they care about."

Mike Heffring of Environics West said the key to charitable fund raising today is understanding the values of Canadians, and those values are changing dramatically from one generation to the next.

While much traditional giving was motivated by a sense of duty, and sometimes guilt, the younger generation gives (or doesn't give) based on a more complex set of reasons, he said.

Mr. Heffring said there are at least four groups within the younger generations, including:

Disengaged Darwinists, who are worried about keeping up and placing their faith in institutions to protect them. This group has a lottery mentality, meaning members are unlikely to give unless they foresee a big payoff for themselves.

Anxious communitarians, keen on protecting their own communities. They are big givers to local groups and active volunteers.

Autonomous rebels, who see themselves as "masters of the universe." They view giving as an entrepreneurship opportunity. Members of this group can be extremely generous if they are taken with a cause, but are also quite demanding.

The live-for-today group, which has a New Age outlook. They, too, are interested in causes -- environmental and spiritual ones. The way to reach out to them is with technology, such as the Internet.

"To appeal to donors today, you have to combine the rational with the emotional," Mr. Heffring said. "And you have to be prepared to deal with different givers differently."

Bill Hawley of PPI Planning Services, a Calgary-based estate-planning company, said that potential donors have to be told of a dramatic evolution of the Canadian tax system in recent years that makes philanthropy more attractive.

"Don't allow your donors to think in traditional terms, that making a donation will deprive their heirs of money," he told conference delegates. Recent tax changes mean that donors can minimize the taxes they pay, particularly estate taxes.

Tax changes include credits for donations of up to 75 per cent of your income to a registered charity (and 100 per cent in the year of death), up from only 20 per cent, and the ability to avoid capital gains taxes on donations of securities.

Both these measures have been a windfall for community foundations, endowment funds that depend largely on gifts from estates. Community Foundations of Canada dedicated a key portion of its conference program to the question of youth philanthropy, and how to get more young people involved.

"If we don't engage our young people in these processes, we are missing out on our biggest social investment for the future," Janice Gross Stein, professor of conflict management and negotiation at the University of Toronto, said in her keynote address.

At a time of great upheaval in the voluntary sector, "we're not doing a good enough job at getting young people involved," and that bodes poorly for the future, she said.

The conference heard that many community foundations are addressing the issue by establishing youth advisory committees with separate budgets and power to award grants based on their own criteria.

"Teaching commitment across generations is truly a challenge to our culture, said Sam Aylesworth, executive director of the Calgary Foundation. "But this is one way that's working."

There is currently youth philanthropy in three Canadian provinces and 20 U.S. states. Young people from Alberta, B.C. and Michigan who attended the conference spoke glowingly of the experience.

On the weekend, for example, members of the youth advisory committee of the Calgary foundation announced a series of grants that they were awarding, including $1,000 to a high-school program that helps with the integration of immigrants, and $500 to a Hispanic youth centre.

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