When It Comes to Appeals, Charities Need to Work on Filling the Generation Gap, a New Study Finds

Charities will need to adapt their mailings and focus on the many ways that younger people want to connect in order to appeal to the next generation of donors, says a study released last week by Convio and Sea Change Strategies.

Conducted by Edge Research, the online study polled more than 1,500 people who contributed to charity in the past year to learn how people of different ages discover nonprofit groups, interact with them, and support them.

The study found that direct mail remains the dominant way through which older people give, with 77 percent of donors born in 1945 or earlier saying they had given through the mail in the past two years.

But among members of Generation X—those born from 1965 to 1980—and Generation Y—those born from 1981 to 1991—no single way of giving dominated.

Forty-three percent of people in their 30s and 40s and 26 percent of those in their 20s said they had given through the mail in the past two years, while 35 percent of members of Generation X and 29 percent of Generation Y had used a charity’s Web site.

Retail Giving

For all of the generations, donating money at a supermarket or retail store was a primary way to give—52 percent of all those polled had given that way, a bigger share than any other technique. That approach was most popular among people in their 30s and 40s.

Cellphone donations were far less common, with 14 percent of those in their 20s and 13 percent of Generation X doing so. Still, that was far more than the older generation: Just 4 percent of baby boomers—people born from 1946 to 1964—used the technique and 2 percent of those 65 and older.

The appeal of so many giving techniques means fund raisers must not only offer numerous options to attract younger donors but also integrate their messages across the various platforms, according to Vinay Bhagat, chief strategy officer at Convio.

“We are living in a multichannel world,” he said. “The emphasis on focusing maniacally on mature donors from a marketing perspective has to change.”

The study found that while younger people are becoming an important source of philanthropy, they still give less and to fewer groups than their parents and grandparents.

Members of Generation Y gave an average of $341 to an average of 3.6 groups, while members of Generation X gave $796 to 4.2 organizations.

By contrast, baby boomers gave an average $901 to 5.2 groups and those born in 1945 or earlier gave an average $1,066 to 6.3 charities.

Assessing Results

In addition to diversifying how they promote their causes and reaching out to potential donors, charities need to change how they track interactions with donors, said Mr. Bhagat. He said it no longer makes sense for groups to emphasize measuring how much money came in through direct mail, how much online, and how much through an event.

All of those approaches are important ways to raise money, he said, but they work in concert: For example, a donor who contributed on a charity’s Web site might first have learned about the group on a friend’s Facebook page, then have been motivated to go back online after seeing an advertisement or receiving a mailing.

Through polling and focus groups with donors, the survey found that younger people enjoy giving as part of social events such as parties and athletic races.

They also put a priority on volunteering and tend to give just because they are asked and often without conducting much research.

Internet Activism

By comparison, older people think in advance about their giving and are more concerned about how much money goes to administrative costs.

Members of Generation Y, in particular, are also enthusiastic about using the Internet to encourage other people to support causes.

Thirty-six percent of those under 30 said they had forwarded a message about a charity to a friend in the past month.

In addition, 37 percent of people under 30 said they had joined an organization’s Facebook group, and 29 percent had shared articles, photographs, or other information about a nonprofit organization on their own Facebook page.

Mr. Bhagat said that charities can encourage such activism by providing people simple ways to ask their friends to give online in honor of sporting events, birthdays, and other occasions.

Text-Message Giving

The survey also signaled that text-message giving is gaining acceptance. Seventy-seven percent of people in the survey said they had heard about the opportunity to make a donation via their cellphones after the Haiti earthquake, and 36 percent said they would be willing to contribute via text after an emergency occurs.

Thirty-one percent of all donors in the survey said they would be willing to contribute via text to help a friend raise money, and 28 percent they would be willing to do so as part of a charity fund raiser.

• Thirty-five percent of people born in 1945 or before said they had first learned about their favorite nonprofit organization through the mail; 19 percent of boomers and 16 percent of members of Generation X said the same.
• Younger donors were more likely to say they would increase their giving this year than older people, the majority of whom said their giving would remain the same.
• Members of Generation Y were less likely than older people to say the economy had affected their giving, in large part because they had less money before the recession.
• People born before 1965 were most likely to keep up-to-date on charities from mailings, while younger people said Web sites were a more important source of information.

More about the study is available at http://www.convio.com/nextgen.