Susanna Penfield knew her family was comfortable when she was growing up in Strafford — the same rural hometown as singer-songwriter Noah Kahan — but she didn’t think of herself as wealthy. Her mom ran a small business and her childhood had all the trappings of a quintessential Vermont upbringing: a public school education, a rich sense of community and, of course, an appreciation for stick season.
But when Penfield turned 23 in 2021, she found out she had inherited $1 million. An email from the family office of her late grandfather, a Boston real estate mogul, revealed that he had left trust funds for his 10 grandchildren.
Penfield had just graduated from Colorado College with a degree in gender studies and was working on development and housing efforts in low-income communities at a national nonprofit.
“It was super jarring,” Penfield said. “I was very steeped in understanding systems of privilege, but I was on the side of advocating against them.”
Penfield decided she would give all the money away. Her mother pleaded with her to reconsider, arguing that Penfield would want the money later in life.
Looking for guidance, Penfield discovered Resource Generation — a national nonprofit with a chapter in Burlington — that helps wealthy young people give away their money to progressive causes. Through mentoring and guided discussion groups, Penfield gained the skills, and the confidence, to make decisions about the money she had inherited.
“I recognized that this money is not who I am. It’s not my identity,” Penfield said. “It’s actually a tool that I can leverage towards the things I care about.”
As baby boomers grow older, retire and die, they’re expected to pass on an estimated $84 trillion to their children and grandchildren — what’s known as the “great wealth transfer.” But there is a left-leaning contingent of young people who are morally opposed to their sudden surge in status and are refusing to participate in what some of them derisively describe as “wealth hoarding.” Some, like Penfield, are turning to Resource Generation to help them navigate the emotional and logistical challenges of using their newfound wealth to benefit causes they believe in.
“These young people have won the lottery at birth,” said Chuck Collins, the Brattleboro-based author of the book The Wealth Hoarders: How Billionaires Pay Millions to Hide Trillions. He’s also director of the Program on Inequality and the Common Good at the Institute for Policy Studies, a Washington, D.C., think tank. By giving away their money, Collins said, these young people are proclaiming: “‘It’s in all our interests to not live in such a polarized society.'”
Collins has firsthand experience. He’s the great-grandson of Oscar Mayer, who founded the multibillion-dollar food corporation. But Collins considers himself a “class traitor” who denounces his status. He made news in the 1980s when, at age 26, he gave away $500,000 of his inheritance.
Resource Generation didn’t exist back then. It was founded in 1998, specifically for people between the ages of 18 and 35, the time at which young adults generally get access to the trust funds set up in their names. Those accounts have strict rules about when and how the money can be spent. In fact, irrevocable trust funds — which are designed to be legally binding — can only be dissolved by court order.
Resource Generation saw an uptick in interest following the 2016 election of President Donald Trump, according to its website. The New York-based organization ended 2022 with 1,033 members, who pledged to contribute almost $100 million to social justice movements that year, its annual report says.
Aside from providing financial tools, Resource Generation encourages its members to contribute to progressive causes, including its national partners, the Movement for Black Lives and Popular Democracy. The nonprofit counts 24 full-time staff and reported $3.9 million in revenue in 2023, generated primarily through annual membership fees and donations from its members. Resource Generation holds an annual conference called “Making Money Make Change,” where participants explore questions of identity and are encouraged to give “boldly.”
“We hold the liberation of Black and Indigenous people as central to the liberation of all people,” the group’s website says. “We know that attempted genocide and chattel slavery created the initial foundation for massive wealth disparity in the U.S. and that the continued exploitation and criminalization of those communities upholds the racial wealth divide.”
A Vermont chapter of Resource Generation was started in 2014 and now counts about 30 members across the state. The chapter hosts meetings, donor circles, collective actions and workshops and raises funds for its partner organizations, the Root Social Justice Center in Brattleboro and the Vermont Workers’ Center.
Members pay dues and are asked to contribute 5 to 10 percent of their overall giving to the organization each year.
“Wealthy people should be funding their own organizing,” said Addie Herbert of Burlington, who volunteers her time to help lead the local chapter.
Now 33, Herbert found out as a young teen that she’d eventually inherit $2 million from a family member who helped start the Wall Street Journal. She felt confused and conflicted about this unexpected windfall, which bestowed upon her a status that was at odds with her beliefs.
In her twenties, Herbert became an environmental activist. She made headlines in 2016 for spending two weeks living in a tree in Monkton to protest a Vermont Gas pipeline project. She was surrounded by other young activists “talking down the rich.”
“It intimidated me,” Herbert said of her fellow activists’ critiques of the wealthy. “I started wondering: How do I even fit into this work?”
“I just felt outside and isolated, and it made the whole thing worse,” she added.
Herbert, too, eventually found Resource Generation. She participated twice in what’s known as a “praxis group,” a small gathering of members meant to “build community, talk openly and honestly about wealth and class privilege, and set personal and collective goals around wealth redistribution,” according to the organization’s website.
The work was difficult but a relief to Herbert, who realized that when she was honest about her wealth and commitment to giving it away, she felt less at odds with her identity and more involved in her community. This year, Herbert is planning to redistribute about 16 percent of her inheritance and plans to give most of it away eventually. Last year, she donated a total of nearly $300,000 to several mutual-aid networks and a mix of local and national nonprofits, including Migrant Justice, Popular Democracy, HouseUS and the Trans Asylum Seeker Support Network.
“I am actively wrestling with the question of: How much is enough? What kind of powerful change can happen with the money I move?” Herbert said.
Her emotional and logistical challenges are not unique among wealthy young people, according to Jo Lum, founder of Outstanding Returns, a Brattleboro-based business that coaches people, including Herbert, who want to redistribute their money.
Lum started the company to help clients plan their giving. Quickly, though, Lum learned that there was a greater need to “support them in the emotional work that is necessary in order to feel prepared and capable to make bold choices.”
Lum knows about those difficulties, having inherited money and been a member of Resource Generation before aging out. Lum distributes about $40,000 a year to local organizations and individuals.
Doing so “is the pathway from guilt to action,” Lum said. “Giving money can become really joyful and liberating.”
Lum hosts a series of “class privilege caucuses” — an affinity group for wealthy people to speak openly about their experiences and strategies. Lum knows that in mixed company, discussing wealth can be “a really unsympathetic position.”
And yet Penfield, Herbert and Lum all believe their relationships with others only deepened once they started being more transparent about their wealth.
In fact, several members of Resource Generation signed a letter last year calling on the legislature to raise taxes on wealthy Vermonters. Collins, the Brattleboro author, helped organize the effort. He was disappointed in how many wealthy older Vermonters said they supported the letter but didn’t want to sign it and be outed as well-off.
“These young people were willing to publicly be out there,” Collins said. “I think it does help change the conversation.”
Moving through the shame of having wealth is just the first challenge, though. Many of Lum’s clients lack basic financial literacy, a problem one might not assume for 1 percenters. But young, wealthy people often inherit trust funds managed by family offices and revenue-driven financial advisers who have a vested interest in using that money to make more.
Collins refers to those financial advisers and attorneys as “the wealth defense industry,” which he believes “has three cardinal rules: Make the pile bigger, minimize taxes and pass as much wealth down the blood generation line as possible.”
Redistributing wealth is a totally different philosophy. Penfield said she found herself embroiled in a legal battle when she asked the family office managing her inheritance to dissolve her trust fund. At first, they refused.
Eventually, though, she was able to unlock her money and started giving, primarily to Vermont-based organizations. “It feels like my responsibility to expand access to what the state has to offer,” she said.
After years of deliberation, Penfield has decided to strike a balance in her giving: “It doesn’t mean you have to deprive yourself,” she said. “But I also think there’s a certain level of accumulation where you start to cut yourself off from your community.”
She has ongoing pledges of $5,000 per year to the Vermont Workers’ Center and the Root Social Justice Center. At the national level, she gives $5,000 each year to the Movement for Black Lives and Seventh Generation Fund for Indigenous Peoples, among other organizations.
Penfield has multiyear commitments to dozens of other Vermont-based organizations, including SUSU CommUNITY Farm in Newfane and Out in the Open, an LGBTQ+ organization in Brattleboro. She reserves a pool of about $15,000 to give directly to mutual aid efforts each year.
Now 28, Penfield has made a career out of what she has learned about managing wealth. She works remotely for Chosen Family Office, a team of financial planners, money coaches and organizers based in Oakland, Calif., that helps wealthy individuals redistribute their money.
So far, she has given away about a third of her inheritance. She’s putting the remainder in community loan funds that pool capital for small businesses in New England.
“The heart of this movement is about returning to community,” Penfield said.
After years of hard conversations, Penfield has finally convinced her family that she’s making the right choice. She’s even persuaded her mother to give away more of her own money.