Connect across generations and, more often than not, the bonds you create will bridge not only age, but race, culture and other identities – glimmers of hope in our age-segregated and hyper-polarized times.

At CoGenerate, we’re bringing intergenerational connection and collaboration to the pillars of our daily lives – the places where we live, learn, work for change, and gather – to solve big problems, bridge divides, and co-create the future.

2025 has been a busy year across all pillars. Below, PBS NewsHour’s Brief But Spectacular crew filmed a CoGenerate gathering that captured the year’s tone. Our goal: to bring generations together to reimagine the future of collaboration.

Too many older people are isolated; too many younger people are lonely. We created a community of practice, uniting more than 150 organizations that bring older and younger people together to form real relationships built on shared purpose and mutual support.

These organizations – and hundreds, perhaps thousands more local programs across the country – don’t just offer companionship; they create ways for people to matter to one another.

Our report – Can Intergenerational Connection Heal Us? – shines a light on these organizations, outlines key findings from conversations with 41 experts and participants, and concludes with five recommended changes to support this nascent and promising field.

→ READ Can Intergenerational Connection Heal Us?

→ LISTEN How to Age Up Together, an Atlantic podcast featuring Co-CEO Eunice Lin Nichols on age segregation and age-gap friendships

We’re putting foundational pieces in place to show that college campuses can become today’s intergenerational town square. In partnership with Campus Compact, we launched Campus CoGenerate, a community of practice (aka Affinity Network), a student ambassador program, and a steering committee of cogen champions.

In the coming months, we’ll announce the winners of our Big Ideas Challenge to Reimagine Higher Education, all visionary models that bring generations together to foster economic opportunity, lifelong learning, and institutional sustainability.

→ WATCH Three College Presidents on Cogeneration, Innovation and Higher Ed’s Bottom Line, a CoGenerate webinar hosted by CoGen Impact Fellow Simon Chan

→ LEARN about the Campus CoGenerate affinity network, student ambassador program and steering committee

Every day, four and five generations try to figure out how to bridge age divides to get things done. To make it easier, we interviewed more than 80 leaders – teens, young adults and people over 50 – all dedicated to working across generations and eager to share their thoughts on what helps and hinders intergenerational collaboration.

Our three reports cover what teen leaders (ages 12-19) and young leaders (ages 17-31) want from older allies and what older leaders (ages 51-77) want from younger allies. They spoke about issues including respect, relevance, ambition, productive conflict, power sharing, authenticity, and cogenerational leadership.

→ READ What Young Leaders Want — And Don’t Want — from Older Allies

→ READ What Older Leaders Want — And Don’t Want — from Younger Allies

→ READ What Teen Leaders Want – And Don’t Want – From Older Allies

This year, we focused on faith spaces. We started with a representative survey of 1,500 adults conducted by YouGov. We found that intergenerational collaboration remains a powerful source of meaning and renewal for faith communities. In fact, nearly half of religiously engaged Americans (45%) say they are more likely to participate in religious activities if offered the chance to build relationships across generations.

To dig deeper, we interviewed 42 faith leaders. They told us that bridging the age divide can revitalize faith communities, but only when leaders reckon honestly with power dynamics, embrace constructive conflict, and cultivate relationships that can weather difficulty and grow stronger through it.

Our report, Honest Conversations: Faith Leaders on the Real Work of Intergenerational Collaboration, includes more than 100 quotes, four key insights, practices, case studies, and a conversation guide.

→ READ Honest Conversations: Faith Leaders on the Real Work of Intergenerational Collaboration

→ LISTEN Say More, the influential podcast hosted by New Profit’s Tulaine Montgomery, hosted Co-CEO Marc Freedman on “the lost art of connecting across the generations.”

This year, our work has been covered by dozens of outlets, including The Atlantic, NPR, the Wall Street Journal, PBS NewsHour, Marketplace, Vox, Forbes and Teen Vogue.

In addition:

• We presented more than 60 times – at organizations from AARP to the YMCA, the Civic Collaboratory to Youth250; on campuses including NYU, Yale, Stanford, Wesleyan, the University of Colorado, and the Modern Elder Academy; and at companies from Dyson to Indeed.
• We represented generational issues at a meeting of the American Academy of Arts & Sciences on democracy and the economy and an American Press Institute Local News Summit on civic discourse across generations.
• And our groundbreaking survey on attitudes about cogeneration, conducted by NORC at the University of Chicago, was featured in the first Oxford Handbook of Intergenenerational Connections.

Check out our discussion guides on:

• Social isolation and loneliness
• What teen leaders want
• What young leaders want
• What older leaders want
• Faith and cogeneration

In 2026, we’ll continue to shift the cultural narrative and tell a new story about cogenerational action; support innovators bringing generations together for mutual benefit and social impact; and build an ecosystem of people, organizations and funders to scale this work and sustain it.

We will:

• Deepen our focus on the youngest members of Gen Z – teens. We’ll launch a new community of practice for youth-centered organizations eager to advance cogeneration in civic life, and announce a new fellowship for older and younger leaders who want to develop their public voices together.
• Build a CoGen CoLab, a high-leverage, cost-effective talent accelerator for building a portfolio of audacious, cogenerational solutions with the potential to change the social norm from generations apart to generations together. A growing group of CoGen Impact Fellows – a diverse, intergenerational roster of compelling thought leaders, changemakers, innovators and creatives – will advance this work.

• Make it easier for people to cogenerate. What’s the biggest challenge for folks who want to cogenerate? They can’t find opportunities to work across generations, don’t often come in contact with those older or younger than themselves, and don’t know where or how to get started. We’ll work with strong partners to help the cogen-curious and the cogen-committed move beyond the DIY stage. Together, we’ll build the social infrastructure needed to put cogen opportunities within easy reach.

Thank you for all you do to bring generations together. And thank you for making a donation to help support this work.

We’re grateful to be doing this critical work together. It’s the only way forward.