he Purpose Prize embodies a pretty radical notion,” says Marc Freedman, “which is that the period after 
the middle years might actually be the most satisfying and fulfilling time of life.” Freedman, founder and president of Civic Ventures, administers the Prize in conjunction with the Templeton Foundation and Atlantic Philanthropies. Since 2006, ten awards of $100,000 have been made annually (five in 2006, again in 2007) to individuals over 60 years of age whom the judges have identified as significant social innovators.
“We’re off to a very good start,” reports Freedman, assessing the progress of the Benefits of Purpose in Retirement Prize Program. He cites “the profusion of nominations we’ve been getting for the Prize, the quality, the unprecedented degree of coverage in the media.” That includes a full-page profile of Purpose Prize winners in the Wall Street Journal.
How does he define purpose? “We define purpose as the refocusing of the expertise and talent of a lifetime on finding solutions to challenges in our communities, our country, and the world.” He offers as an example Gary Maxworthy, a 2007 winner. In his youth, he was unable to fulfil his ambition to join the Peace Corps because of family obligations. So he became a successful food distributor in California for 30 years.
But after the death of his wife, he re-evaluated the focus of his life, joined the VISTA anti-poverty program and used his insider knowledge of how food fit for consumption was often discarded by the industry to reclaim it and distribute it to food banks for the poor across California—an estimated 34 million pounds of fresh food this year. “What I like so much about the Gary Maxworthy story,” observes Freedman, “is it just shows the value of experience… he could never have done something on this scale when he was in his 20s.”
Along with Conchy Bretos, a winner from 2006, Freedman believes those who have already won the Prize are well-qualified to select the best contenders. Other new judges are Suzanne Braun Levine, former editor of Ms Magazine; John Pepper, chairman of the Walt Disney Company; Mitchell Fromstein, former CEO and chair, Manpower Inc; and Mihalyi Csikszentmihalyi, C.S. and D.J. Davidson Professor of Psychology at the Peter F. Drucker Graduate School of Management.
The Innovation Summits organized within the program have facilitated networking among winners. “We added a category of Purpose Prize Fellows,” explains Freedman, “another 50 people a year, who don’t actually receive prize money, but they come to the Summit.” Another indication of the expanding scope of the Prize is that this year, for the first time, it is open to people working outside the United States. The Purpose Prize website is now fully developed, profiling winners and Fellows and providing contact with them. There is also a Civic Ventures website called encore.org hosting the Purpose Prize Innovation Network.
The Purpose Prize is about a lot more than channeling some senior citizens into socially, useful activity. It reflects a new, contrarian philosophy based on a fresh insight into radically changing human conditions. Freedman sees this “Third Age,” the product of increased longevity, between the end of people’s mid-life careers and true retirement being stretched to ten, even 20 years. “I think this period is going to become a new phase of life.” He believes the big question that needs to be asked is: Will the aging of America be a burden or an opportunity?
“And there’s a big question about what kind of work people will do in that period and our hope is to encourage people to work in areas like education and the non-profit NGO sector, and to use their talent and experience to help alleviate some of the big problems facing the nation and the world today.” At the same time, the private sector is increasingly becoming involved, with rising numbers of applications from people in the for-profit area, creating social enterprises.
The social revolution of which the Purpose Prize is both a symptom and an agent means that the mid-60s may soon no longer be seen as a significant watershed. “In the United States, the idea of 65 as a retirement age was an arbitrary distinction,” insists Freedman. “It was actually based on the eligibility age of the Prussian military pension in the latter part of the 19th century.”
Freedman believes the “Third Age” might also be the time when people make the contribution of which they will feel most proud and for which they will be remembered. Purpose Prize winners will tell you the best is yet to come. “I think,” he says, “that has been for me the most inspiring insight to emerge from the Prize.”
