Find Your Encore Career, Work That Makes a Difference in the World

Win Craft had managed an electronics company in Rhode Island. After successful years as a businessman, he asked himself, "Ok, I sold 10,000 widgets today. What am I going to do tomorrow, sell 15,000 widget?... I was starting to feel very empty."

That vignette was quoted in Marc Freedman's landmark book, Encore: Finding Work That Matters in the Second Half of Life. If you share Craft's disillusionment about the work you've been doing and have a yearning to do something socially meaningful, read on.

Freedman, a social innovator, cares very much about the future of our society. Ahead of his time, he recognizes that the next generation of people entering their "3rd Age" are a huge capital resource of energy, expertise, and experience to remake institutions into vehicles for social betterment.

Rather than glide into the Golden Years with a martini in one hand and a golf club in the other, many of these soon-to-be-retireds don't want to retire at all, if it means not contributing for 2-3 decades. Instead, many are yearning for encore careers, work that matters, even if they get paid much less than they did before.

Freedman wrote that a new stage is being invented, "Between traditional mid-life careers and true retirement and old age." It's so new that there are no words yet to describe it. "Lurching forward, they head down a path poorly labeled, with only rudimentary road maps, an array of pitfalls and few rites of passage."

More people are looking for meaning and purpose -- often in the form of work, but the route is not yet paved for these pilgrims. Employers and HR people arent' yet convinced of the value of hiring an over-50 person. Rather they fear they'll utilize expensive medical insurance and not fit in with the 30-something computer-literates. They have neglected to keep up with the energy, vitality, computer savvy of this new generation. Neither have enough of them thought ahead to the brain drain that will occur as more of the baby boomers leave corporations and institutions for other more suitable 3rd age careers.

But, many people over 50 are remaking themselves, creating their own journey and destination...using programs like Troops to Teachers, Experience Corps, or going through the Catholic church (see the Sacred Heart School of Theology in Wisconsin). 

Freedman concludes with a comprehensive list of resources for people who want to begin new work in areas like health care, education, social service, government service, the aging service industry and social entrepreneurship.