When Ella Traina considers her future, the 19-year-old Indiana University sophomore is not fixated on becoming a chief executive or amassing a fortune. Her goal is to figure out how to make the world a little better.

That might sound like a lofty ambition, but Traina is pursuing it in decidedly practical fashion: she is studying philanthropy at Indiana University's Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, the first school of its kind in the world.

She is part of a rapidly expanding cohort. Over the past decade, enrollment at the school has grown more than 300%, from about 50 students to roughly 230, as young people explore careers across nonprofits, foundations, corporations, and government. According to the school, every graduate has landed a job for the past three years—a 100% placement rate that exceeds even the university's business school students.

The growth reflects a generation searching for careers that offer something beyond a paycheck and a chance to make a tangible difference. It also mirrors an economy in which wealth is increasingly concentrated among the richest Americans, making philanthropy a central part of the conversation about how money and resources can be put to work for the public good.

Meanwhile, the $124 trillion Great Wealth Transfer—the passing down of baby boomer fortunes to younger generations—raises the question of what philanthropy will look like in the future. Will millennials and Gen Z carry on the traditions attached to their family fortunes, or will they chart their own path? Those are precisely the kinds of questions a philanthropy education can explore, along with how the wealthy are filling the void left by a federal government that has pulled back funding for nonprofits and higher education institutions.

Gen Z wants to make a difference and make a living—and philanthropy can offer both

Indiana University's roots in philanthropy education stretch back decades. The university formally organized its fundraising teaching and research into an academic center in 1987, and a quarter-century later, in 2012, elevated it into an official philanthropy-focused school—the first institution in the world dedicated exclusively to the study and teaching of the subject. Today, it remains one of the few places where students can earn a bachelor's degree, master's degree, or Ph.D. specifically focused on philanthropy.

The school's development has been supported since 1988 by the Lilly Endowment, which was established in 1937 by the family of pharmaceutical executive Eli Lilly. The endowment views philanthropy and the nonprofit sector as important complements to government and business in promoting the public good.

"We hope that as these students prepare for careers in philanthropy, they are also discovering what it means for them to live lives of meaning and purpose and how they can help others do so as well," an endowment spokesperson told Fortune.

That philosophy carries into the classroom. Traina's coursework ranges from the history of philanthropy to storytelling for social change. In one course, she and six classmates decided how to distribute a real $10,000 grant.

"When I wake up every day and I want to help achieve impact… I want to keep moving that needle to where there are less people suffering and without basic human needs," Traina said.

After graduation, she hopes to work in impact evaluation, helping nonprofits measure whether their programs are actually making a difference. Her ambitions reflect a broader sentiment among her generation. A survey released this summer by the Walton Family Foundation, established by Walmart founders Sam Walton and his wife Helen, found that 79% of Gen Z hope to find a future job primarily focused on helping others or making a positive difference in people's lives.

That desire is shaping not only what young people study but also where they work—and where they do not. According to a 2025 Deloitte survey, 44% of Gen Z respondents said they had left a job they felt lacked purpose, while roughly 40% had rejected a potential employer for similar reasons.

Opportunities to pursue that purpose are plentiful. Nonprofits employed about 12.8 million workers in 2022, accounting for nearly 10% of all private-sector jobs, according to an analysis by the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics.

Still, Amir Pasic, dean of IU's Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, said the sector faces a persistent misbelief: that meaningful work comes at the expense of a viable career.

"There's still this misconception that if you go into philanthropy or the nonprofit sector that you are going to be offering to work for free, basically… 'Aren't you sweet to have such a warm heart?'" Pasic said.

The reality is more complicated. Nearly two-thirds of nonprofit workers earn more than $75,000 a year—about 15% more than the average U.S. salary—and philanthropy-related roles at some Fortune 500 companies can reach well into six figures. Walmart, for instance, has advertised a grant manager role in Arkansas paying up to $180,000, while Microsoft has offered compensation of up to $275,000 for a recent community affairs role. For a field still shaking off the "work for free" stereotype Pasic describes, those pay figures—and the school's three-year run of 100% placement—frame philanthropy less as a calling that demands sacrifice and more as a credentialed profession with its own degrees, employers, and career ladder.

For Traina, the potential payoff of her studies goes beyond a paycheck. "If you regret the degree, the worst you're gonna have is you're gonna know how to help people and how to impact society and create change," she said.

Philanthropy as a career switch

Patrick Lindenmeyer took a less traditional route into the field. He spent nearly 17 years in financial services helping clients grow and structure their wealth, and many of them wanted to be generous with their money, he told Fortune. Then the pandemic hit. It pushed him to rethink what he wanted from the second half of his career—and the part of his job he had always enjoyed most was helping clients direct their money toward causes they cared about.

"The financial services career really gave me the technical ability [of asking] how, like how do we best structure assets? How do we best leverage impact?" Lindenmeyer said. "But the school of philanthropy really helped me with the why behind why individuals want to make this impact, and what does that look like."

He enrolled in the school's online master's program in philanthropic studies, taking one course per semester while working full time. Midway through the program, he landed what he called his dream job: gift planning officer at the University of Notre Dame, where he helps families build giving into their estate plans through tools like donor-advised funds and charitable remainder trusts. Several of his Notre Dame colleagues have also completed the IU degree or are working on it, he said.

Lindenmeyer is now also pursuing a master's in nonprofit administration at Notre Dame, which he expects to finish in 2028. Plenty of universities teach the business side of running a nonprofit, he noted, but IU's program focuses on what drives donors to give. Overall, he encourages others at any point in their careers to explore studying philanthropy.

"People that are looking for true, meaningful work, work that creates an impact and something that they can truly see, I think that this is something worth exploring," he said. "That certainly wasn't on my radar … 25 years ago when I entered college as an undergrad."

Continued wealth growth could exponentially expand philanthropy's reach

From a wealth and giving standpoint, philanthropy could be on the cusp of a major expansion.

In 2025, billionaire wealth surged more than 16%—three times faster than its average growth over the previous five years—and reached a record $18.3 trillion, according to Oxfam. Charitable giving also reached a record $617.2 billion in 2025, but rose just 3% after adjusting for inflation, according to Giving USA.

The gap between the wealth billionaires have grown and what they are giving away has fueled criticism that the ultrawealthy are donating too slowly. MacKenzie Scott remains a notable exception: she has given away more than $26 billion and alone accounted for one-third of America's megagifts last year.

Since then, the fortunes of many of the world's wealthiest people have continued to grow, fueled in part by soaring tech stocks and optimism around AI. Take Jensen Huang, for example. The billionaire Nvidia CEO donated $75 million to Vanderbilt University.

For Pasic, that presents an opportunity for Indiana University students to help shape how such wealth is put to work, particularly as younger heirs push their families to give away more money, sooner.

"The anticipated large windfalls that will come through the AI industry," Pasic said. "There's this problem of money on the sidelines, to which more is going to be added pretty soon."

And while the $124 trillion Great Wealth Transfer has the power to change philanthropy as we know it, that handoff is not completely solidified. Wealthy Americans are growing less confident their heirs will carry on their family's charitable giving, according to a 2026 Bank of America Private Bank study. But perhaps that is where philanthropic education will play a larger role: its graduates are entering the workforce just as those families face the very question of whether—and how—their giving traditions should continue.

Lindenmeyer sees firsthand how aging baby boomers are deciding where their wealth goes next.

"We had always talked about the great wealth transfer," he said. "First it was … the retirement boom for the baby boomers and what that was going to look like, and then now as they're aging and passing away, what does this transfer of wealth look like?"

This story was originally featured on Fortune.com.