Charities Must Focus on Multiple Ways to Reach Young Donors, Generation Study Finds

Excerpted from article by Caroline Preston

Conducted by Edge Research, the study polled more than 1,500 people who contributed to nonprofit groups in the past year.

The survey found that members of Generation Y, who were born from 1981 to 1991, and the group that preceded it—Generation X (those born from 1965 to 1980)—now make up more than half of the pool of potential donors.

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 group 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.

Read full article on the Chronicle for Philanthropy