January 13, 2014 | Read Time: 9 minutes
When she celebrated her bat mitzvah—a key step on the road to adulthood in Jewish tradition—Aileen Goldstein’s father told her she could support any charity she wanted. But she didn’t have the option of not giving.
Philanthropy, she says, was an expectation firmly rooted in her family’s religious identity.
Ms. Goldstein, now 35 and a high-school teacher in Maryland, has continued to donate regularly—supporting not only causes associated with her religious identity, like American Jewish World Service, but also the N Street Village, a Lutheran homeless shelter and health center for women in Washington.
Her giving, she says, is guided by “tikkun olam,” a Hebrew phrase that means “repair the world” but is often used to describe charitable giving. Fueled by that mission, Ms. Goldstein says she gives throughout the year and seeks programs that work hard to get input from beneficiaries on how charitable gifts will be used.
“It keeps me vigilant,” she says of her frequent contributions. “It keeps my eyes and ears open to things happening around the world. Sometimes I’ll give if I’m blown away by an organization’s mission.”
Demanding Donors
Donors like Ms. Goldstein, who have maintained close ties to their religious faith as young adults, are prized by fundraisers. Studies have long established that the faithful, particularly those who frequently attend religious services, are more inclined to give than other people.
But fundraisers are finding that young religious donors can be demanding.
They are less inclined than older donors to give to a place of worship and to make unrestricted gifts. And, like young secular donors, they prefer to support charities that help people in immediate, measurable ways.
There are also a lot fewer of them: Nearly two out of three American adults under 30 are affiliated with a faith tradition, compared with four out of five American adults over all, according to a 2012 Pew Research Center report.
Religious organizations in particular feel the impact of this trend: Nearly 60 percent of fundraisers at churches said an aging donor base was their second-biggest challenge, ranked just below effects of the struggling economy, according to an August survey by the Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability.
But many secular charities also seek the support of young donors who are driven by religious values.
To earn their support, some nonprofits are reshaping their missions, more explicitly showcasing the impact of gifts, updating their organizations’ image, and seeking out young religious adults where they congregate (not necessarily in houses of worship). Most of all, they’re seeking to forge stronger ties between donors and beneficiaries.
Social connections, rather than creeds and theologies, are at the heart of why religious people of all ages give, says David Campbell, a political-science professor at the University of Notre Dame and co-author of Amazing Grace: How Religion Divides Us and Unites Us.
“It’s not just sermons from the pulpit” that drive people to give, Mr. Campbell says. “It’s association with people.”
Personal Connections
One of Ms. Goldstein’s favorite charities, American Jewish World Service, recently made changes designed to win the support of younger people of faith. Personal connections are key to its new campaign.
Over the past year, the group focused its efforts on international advocacy for women and girls, and—in a perhaps unusual move for a religious charity—for gay rights.
Last summer, the charity invited Ms. Goldstein and other donors to meet Rosanna Flamer-Caldera, an American Jewish World Service grantee from Equal Ground, a Sri Lankan group that works to secure the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender people. Hearing directly from Ms. Flamer-Caldera about death threats members of her group faced inspired Ms. Goldstein to keep giving to the organization.
It is too soon to say exactly how well the campaign is doing, says Ruth Messinger, president of the American Jewish World Service, but she says the past year will be a record fundraising year for the group over all.
Ms. Messinger says the organization’s focus on international social-justice issues has drawn support from young donors, and advocacy for LGBT equality has struck a nerve among many Jews who see a similarity between the current treatment of gay people and mob assaults on European Jews beginning in the late 1800s.
“From a religious and ethical standpoint, we think this is a Jewish mandate,” she says. “The rabbis were right when they taught that we must constantly go beyond ourselves to help all of those in need.”
‘Pragmatic’ Giving
Like Ms. Goldstein, Hannah Notess has given regularly to charities since she was a teenager.
The 32-year-old says tithing is “ingrained” in her DNA. She and her husband set aside an amount—she wouldn’t say how much—to give to charity each month after they pay their expenses.
She supports a number of nonprofits, especially one tied to her religious faith, the Mennonite Central Committee, and a secular one, the Northwest Immigrant Rights Project, which is based in her hometown of Seattle.
Her contributions are largely driven not by the direct-mail appeals from charities that she receives by the fistful (and usually throws away) but by her fellow Mennonites, who share stories about the charities they support.
“I’m completely surrounded by do-gooders,” she says.
The Northwest Immigrant Rights Project has long given presentations in churches to seek support. Yet many nonprofits avoid making appeals to donors on the basis of their religious beliefs, either because they lack the capacity to identify potential supporters’ faith affiliation or because they don’t want to risk alienating other donors by appearing to favor a particular religious tradition.
For example, the educational and social-service mission of New York’s Harlem Children’s Zone would probably be easy to pitch at its neighborhood’s churches. But the group doesn’t try to seek donors there, according to Marty Lipp, a spokesman.
“We’re pretty persnickety about being nondenominational,” he says. “For us, it’s all about the work we do.”
The work a charity does, rather than its religious identity, is paramount to faith-oriented donors like Tim Sparapani, 39, a lobbyist for a technology association who once worked as a lawyer for the American Civil Liberties Union.
Mr. Sparapani, whose background is both Lutheran and Catholic, says the New Testament’s admonition to help those less fortunate guides his and his wife’s giving.
The Sparapanis support a range of charities, including the ACLU, the Innocence Project, and a number of local food banks in Washington. What the charities have in common, he says, is their ability to have a direct impact on people’s lives, and that’s what appeals to him and his wife: “We’re pragmatic, and we see a real need.”
Showing Results
Kristen Kidd, a 30-year-old social worker who lives outside of Philadelphia, was raised as an evangelical Christian. While she says faith is still important to her—and its values drive her giving—she no longer identifies with a particular denomination.
If she could afford it, she says, she’d love to support public radio and a local food pantry, secular groups that she believes do good work.
“That’s what I believe Christ was really about,” she says. “If a group’s sole purpose is to go out and tell people how awesome God is, I’m far less likely to donate.”
But for now, her key beneficiary is Compassion International, a Christian relief organization. She credits her long relationship with the group—she began giving at age 14, sponsoring a young boy from Uganda who has since graduated from the program—not so much to theology as to the charity’s emphasis on showing her the impact of her gifts.
Last Christmas she gave about $200 through Compassion’s donor catalog. The catalog, she says, allows her to feel connected to the people who will benefit by showing tangible results, such as a new water well and food for a mother and her baby for a month, projects she has supported.
Compassion International makes a conscious effort to emphasize the positive results of its mission, says Mark Hanlon, the charity’s U.S. chief, and to keep donors informed of their gifts’ impact with follow-up reports.
“We don’t succumb to the idea of pornography of poverty,” says Mr. Hanlon, referring to fund-raising appeals that show pictures of malnourished children in misery. “Utilizing those photos uses guilt. If donors are doing something out of guilt, that’s not going to last.”
The best results come when donors can see how their contributions can change someone’s life, he says. That was the case this summer when the group used Twitter to tell the story of Fatao, a young boy from Burkina Faso who had a heart irregularity and needed an operation. Within days of tweeting his story, Compassion International raised $23,000 and was able to fly Fatao to India for successful surgery.
No Hard Sell
The Zakat Foundation of America, a group focused on humanitarian relief whose donors are primarily Muslims, is also trying to stir the philanthropic impulse among young people.
For many years after its creation in 2001, the Chicago group relied on direct mail and giving presentations at local mosques. But those approaches turned off young donors, says Safaa Zarzour, Zakat’s chief operations officer: They see philanthropy as tied to their religious values but don’t necessarily respond to pitches in places of worship.
Last spring, the group tried something new: “Humanitea Time.”
The goal was to create a relaxed atmosphere in which people could sip tea and listen to a roster of speakers, poets, and performers talk about gun violence, food distribution, and the global water shortage. More than 400 people attended, according to Amal Ali, Zakat’s program manager. The group invited people to visit “action stations” other nonprofits had set up outside of the event and sign up on the spot to volunteer or donate.
The event, Ms. Ali says, wasn’t meant to raise money for Zakat. Rather, the charity wanted to connect with potential donors, create a sense of community, and pave the way for future gifts. An emphasis on poetry and the arts, including a performance by a nonprofit hip-hop group called Kuumba Lynx, helped make that connection without a hard sell.
Says Ms. Ali: “No PowerPoints are allowed at a Humanitea Time.”
