We started The Generation Project with two goals in mind: First, as former Bronx schoolteachers, we wanted to give low-income students a diverse array of formative experiences. Second, as young professionals, we hoped to engage a new generation in philanthropic giving. To these ends, we conceived of a new kind of charity, where individuals draw on their own passions to design gifts for low-income students.

We started working on The Generation Project in May 2008. Those were heady times: The Dow Jones was over 12,000, Lehman Brothers maintained a viable existence, and nobody could conceive of a world in which Michigan’s football team would not be playing in a bowl game. The Generation Project got off to a roaring start. In August, we were voted the best new business idea on ideablob.com—winning with a record number of votes. On September 17, ideablob presented us with a $10,000 grant at a ceremony in Ann Arbor. But by that time, conditions had changed: On the very day we received our ideablob grant, the Federal Reserve loaned AIG $85 billion in an attempt to forestall a global economic collapse. More...