Don Causey was beginning to plan his retirement, selling off his profitable sporting newsletters when his life took a horrific turn. While on a safari on a long anticipated trip to Africa, a tree tumbled onto him, breaking his back. The process of getting a medical transport to take him from a remote village back to Miami proved arduous and costly.

Today Causey’s back is healed and at 70 he finds himself in a post retirement career — consulting for a company that sells travel memberships that include medical evacuation benefits. It’s a profitable part-time gig that Causey believes is an important service to travelers. Plus, he says, “It keeps my mind alive and keeps me connected with a community I care about, just in a different way.”

Like Causey, most Americans are crafting their own version of meaningful work in their later stages of life. It’s a direction that brings balance and an ability to be impactful in a whole new way.

“More and more people — sometimes by necessity, sometimes by choice — are forgoing traditional retirement and investing a new state of life and work,” says Marci Alboher, with and author of The Encore Career Handbook.

Alboher is part of a movement that has named this later-in-life stage “encore careers,” paid or volunteer work that has a social impact. An encore career can last from a few years to 20 or more. While 9 million Baby Boomers already have entered their encore phase, another 31 million will soon make the leap in that direction, according to Encore.org, a nonprofit organization that promotes second acts for the greater good.

The concept of an encore career is being buoyed by a convergence of trends: financial realities, layoffs, long life spans and the desire for a more purposeful existence during the aging process. “It’s a way to leave a mark that makes things better for future generations,” explains Alboher. “But usually it’s not quick or easy. It’s a slow metamorphosis involving baby steps, detours, persistence, creativity and a do-it-yourself spirit.”

An encore career job might be a nurse or health aide. It could be a teacher, tutor or fundraiser, founder of a nonprofit, or even an entrepreneur that solves a social problem. For many, it has become the answer to “now what?” and “what will be my legacy?”

Knowing what’s ahead, some people plan their encore career for years, beginning as early as their 50s. They use travel time to build alliances or weekends to take a community college course.

Though he’s far from retirement age, my 50-year-old husband surely will need an encore career. Even now, he can’t sit still on days off from work, filling his days with house projects and coming up with new ones once the current list is exhausted. Yet he regularly talks about how he looks forward to retirement — a disaster-in-the-making for a man without a mission.

The reignite-rather-than-retire movement has been recent, but it may already have played a role in curbing the high rate of suicide for older males. David Cohen, author of Out of the Blue, and a professor of psychology at University of Texas had previously discovered a high rate of suicide for males in the 65-to-74 year old age group, observing that this set was susceptible because of its preoccupation with lost status and higher risk of apathy and isolation. That high rate has lowered in recent years.