Are You Ready for Generation Z?

Braeden Quinn Mannering wanted the antihunger charity he founded to reach more people. And a nonprofit technology conference sounded like exactly what he needed. “It would have helped me learn what other nonprofits are doing,” he says of a meeting last year.

But ultimately, he couldn’t attend. For starters, he lived in Delaware, and the event was in San Francisco.

But more problematic: It was being held on a school day, and Braeden was only 10 years old.

The year before, he had founded the charity 3B, which stands for Brae’s Brown Bags. Thus far he’s raised more than $46,000 while delivering more than 2,500 bag lunches to the needy.

Braeden, now 11, was disappointed he couldn’t attend the conference. But he’s already a pretty savvy social-media user, with more than 700 followers on Twitter. Next month, he’s co-hosting a regional antihunger conference closer to home.

His precocious altruism is common in his generation. Consider this: Twenty percent of

Christy Mannering

children and teenagers say they want to start a charity in their lifetimes, according to new data by the marketing firm Deep Focus.

“I call them the PhilanthroKids,” says Beth Kanter, an author and social-media consultant, of young people who are wasting no time putting their technical and social-media skills to use for charitable causes. “They grew up without knowing what it was like to not have a mobile phone or Facebook. They feel very in control and intend to change the world.”

Ms. Kanter experienced Braeden’s determination firsthand: When she, a panelist at the tech conference last year that he hoped to attend, had offered a free registration to anyone who could submit the best reason why he or she should win, he submitted what she calls an impressive entry.

Leila de Bruyne, executive director of Flying Kites, a charity that runs a home and a school for orphaned children in Kenya, echoes that assessment.

“This young generation is pretty remarkable, and their energy and passion is just unparalleled,” says Ms. de Bruyne, 30. “We had a 13-year-old American girl raise $30,000 for our orphanage. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Beyond the Millennials

For years, much of the charity world has been focused on how to attract millennials — people in their 20s and early 30s — as supporters, volunteers, and employees. Now more consultants and charity leaders are stressing the importance of focusing younger still, to those born around 1995 or later and dubbed Generation Z.

Both socially aware and socially connected, kids and teenagers possess skills and positive outlooks that might lead them to have a significant impact on philanthropy now and in the future.

“Gen Z appears even more charitable than the millennials,” says Aria Finger, chief operating officer of DoSomething.org, which connects young people with charities, and head of its marketing and research firm, TMI. “When you talk to them both about what they care about and their future career aspirations, they track even higher than millennials in wanting to make sure there is purpose in their future and wanting to make sure their lives are about giving back in some capacity.”

Nearly 70 percent of people under 20 have volunteered, with nearly half doing so at least once a month, according to the latest Cassandra Report, a survey of more than 900 kids ages 7 to 17 conducted by Deep Focus. More than a third of those surveyed had donated their own money to a cause, while more than one in four had helped raise money.

“I think kids today are increasingly optimistic and generous,” says Ms. de Bruyne. “Maybe kids are always optimistic — I’m sure our parents were at 15. But now they can capitalize on it with technology.”

Growing Up With Google

Millennials are often described as “digital natives” because they had cellphones and used social media since their teenage years, but many in Gen Z are even more tech-literate because they’ve had such technology in their hands practically since the crib. Ms. Kanter calls them the “Qwerty Kids” for their penchant for texting.

Observers of the generation say that growing up with Google at their fingertips has engendered self-reliance and lessened a dependence on parents, other adults, or individual institutions for information and guidance.

“With their ready access to information, they can form their own opinions,” says Jamie Gutfreund, chief marketing officer at Deep Focus. “This means when it comes to philanthropy, kids of this generation want brands and institutions to talk to them directly. They want a seat at the table as independent thinkers with their own perspectives. They are more sophisticated in that way than earlier generations.”

This also means organizational transparency has never been more important.

“On a charity’s website, it needs to be very easy to find out what their financials are, what their impact is, what a contribution will do,” says writer Susan Price, author of Generous Genes: Raising Caring Kids in a Digital Age and former vice president of the National Center for Family Philanthropy.

“This is what nonprofits have to do to appeal to this younger generation. They want things to be concrete regarding the difference their contribution is going to make.”

Georgia Brothers, 11, who started the charity Change for Cancer two years ago in suburban Pittsburgh, says nonprofit organizations should “simply show my generation the effects of giving.”

Her own project — inspired by her grandfather, who died of cancer before she was born, and a classmate with the disease who lost her hair to chemotherapy — is focused on real-world impact. Georgia has raised more than $5,000 online and through youth-oriented charitable events, using the money to help local cancer patients and their families pay bills related to their care.

Her greatest accomplishment, she says, has been directly helping her inspirational classmate. “Their family vehicle broke down, which was the vehicle the family used to get her to and from her treatments,” Georgia says. “I was able to pay for the car repairs out of the money that was fundraised.”

Young Supporters on the Loose

While the kids of Gen Z want firm explanations of how their giving will help a cause, they also want to work with charities that offer their support with a light touch and give supporters flexibility in how they can help raise money, experts say.

It’s a lesson that Unicef USA, which for some 60 years has leaned on children to help it raise money, has taken to heart.

“The biggest change I’ve seen in the past eight years at Unicef in terms of youth engagement is that we are letting them loose more,” says Caryl Stern, the charity’s president. “We are trying to give them enough information about what’s going on around the world and enough opportunities to motivate them to engage with us. But we’re also leaving space for them to tell us how they want to be engaged.”

The iconic orange Unicef box children have long used to collect coins for the group on Halloween remains part of the charity’s fundraising. However, Ms. Stern adds, “we are no longer just saying, ‘Here’s the box, now go door to door with it.’ "

Instead, she says, Unicef has pointed young supporters to other ways to attract donations: “You can trick-or-treat virtually now, raising money online. We also have tried to take advantage of young people’s willingness to use platforms like Crowdrise and place some of our projects on them.”

The charity has also long encouraged the creation of Unicef clubs at high schools and colleges to raise awareness and support for child-poverty issues and advised how those clubs should be structured.

Ms. Stern, however, says she was recently contacted by a high-school student who had formed his own self-styled antipoverty organization at his school. “And we said, ‘Great. Here are all our materials, but you don’t have to fit our mold,” she says. “Our thinking now is, How do we adapt us to them instead of them to us? And his group ended up donating a significant amount of money to us last year.”

Getting Creative

At DoSomething.org, Ms. Finger has also noticed that Gen Z volunteers embrace creative freedom. “They like putting their own voices into things and don’t want just something that someone else has made for them, where they feel just a cog in the wheel,” she says.

As an example, she points out the Love Letters campaign that DoSomething runs with the AARP Foundation to fight social isolation and depression among homebound elderly people. For two years, the drive has asked young people to create Valentine’s Day cards for elderly Meals on Wheels clients.

“It fits perfectly into a teenager schedule, and they can do it with their friends whenever they want,” Ms. Finger says. “It also lets them show their creativity while also giving them a template about what to do.”

Do-It-Yourself Charities

But how much freedom might be too much? Some people are delighted that 20 percent of young people want to start their own charities.

“I’ve met a lot of young leaders, and it’s really cool — we’re not afraid,” says Braeden, the 11-year-old nonprofit founder. “Lots of kids get inspired and want to lead, and I tell them to dream big and follow their passions.”

On the other hand, for a nonprofit world already groaning under the weight of so many charities, many with similar missions — and so many groups scrambling for finite donations — the notion of more people aiming to start new organizations can seem ominous.

The issue, some who work with young people conclude, is how to allow for Gen Z’s autonomous streak and desire for creativity while convincing them that existing charities can be efficient and effective — and that if they really want to change the world, they need not start from scratch.

“Kids who get a really great idea, especially teenagers, might not stop and ask, Who else is doing this and who might I partner with?” says Ms. Price. “But the fact is that a lot of nonprofits aren’t particularly open to serving as umbrella organizations embracing and incubating a project that kids might want to do.

“We all have to think about how we can better support kids who want to do something unique so that we don’t have to start a lot more nonprofits. This will require adults having to trust kids more.”

Braeden urges charities to extend that trust: “They just need to listen to us, because we have good ideas.”