Nonprofits hoping to tap into the generosity of their community should approach potential donors differently based on their age, suggests a new report from the GivingTuesday Data Commons.
According to “Rethinking Resilience: Insights From the Giving Ecosystem,” older and younger people have different views of charities. Older people expressed more trust in nonprofits and were more likely to donate, while younger folks doubted “the efficiency and reliability of charities” and gave more informally, which is described as direct giving to individuals or unregistered groups rather than to a registered nonprofit. The report notes that younger people over all are more generous globally, but formal giving to charities varies by age and country. Charities should explore those differences.
“In Canada, boomers give significantly more to registered charities than each of the three other generations, whereas in the USA, millennials give almost equally to boomers,” the report says. “This gap could be an opportunity for Canadian fundraisers to rethink how they engage millennials and for American fundraisers to do the same with Gen X.”
If we want to engage people more in charitable giving, then we need to have a broader understanding about what motivates somebody to give.
The report looks at trends in generosity across the globe and is based on information tracked by the GivingTuesday Data Commons, a research collaboration of 300 organizations and more than 50 global data labs. The report offers nonprofits a clue about what motivates generosity among different populations, based on their generation and country they live in, and how to tap into that.
“If we want to engage people more in charitable giving, then we need to have a broader understanding about what motivates somebody to give,” says Woodrow Rosenbaum, chief data officer for GivingTuesday. “We need to understand these things if we’re going to have approaches and interventions that are engaging and successful when we reach out for support, whether it’s financial donations or volunteering for nonprofits.”
The data in the report measures not only traditional giving to charities but also donor sentiment, contributing goods, and informal giving to people in need.
“Some of the data that we’re getting about generosity behavior is data that hasn’t been collected before,” Rosenbaum says. “We survey Americans every week about their previous week’s giving behavior, and we do that all year long. That gives us more of a high-fidelity look at the ways people bring their generosity to make change.”
Lessons for Nonprofits
The report recommends that charities broaden their outreach, meeting people where they are so they can give in the way they most prefer.
“This means that there’s an opportunity and a need to be less transactional and to give your supporters more ways to get involved in your mission,” Rosenbaum says. “That means not always asking for money is the best way to ensure that you’re getting the money.”
The report also highlights examples from other countries that U.S. nonprofits can learn from. Kenya, for example, has extremely high generosity, with 98 percent of Kenyans taking some action of generosity in the previous 12 months, compared with 75 percent of Americans. Rosenbaum says Kenyan nonprofits show how to galvanize community generosity through partnerships.
“Kenya is a good example because what we’re seeing in Africa is really a viewpoint, a philosophy in the nonprofit sector that is, in a lot of ways, ahead of other places,” he says. “Organizations are not thinking about people’s generosity in terms of, how do I get people to stop giving in their communities and start giving to me? Instead, they’re thinking, how does our sector partner with people in communities to make change?”
Another recommendation the report makes is to focus more on the everyday donor. Jane Wales, vice president of the Aspen Institute and co-chair of the Generosity Commission, says that everyday donors often don’t feel they can make a difference, and it’s crucial that nonprofits change that perception.
“We spent so much of our time and so much of our attention on the quadrupling of foundations, the ballooning DAFs by sixfold, and on ultra high net-worth individuals,” Wales says. “But the community organizations that are supported by the everyday givers and the actual volunteers — those that are serving on PTAs, that are coaching urban sports groups, that are mentoring struggling youth — build our capacity to solve problems. They need attention, too.”
Rosenbaum recognizes that the structure of charities, which are often severely understaffed, makes it hard to do some of the work that needs to be done to reach out to everyday donors. But he challenged organizations to really think about changes they can make to improve.
We don’t have to always just promote the best fundraiser to major gift officer.
“We don’t have to always just promote the best fundraiser to major gift officer,” Rosenbaum says. “Part of it is just about recognizing that we place equal value on different modes of engagement. Second, organizations that are less siloed are more effective.”
He recommends thinking through which departments should be more connected so efforts aren’t duplicated — like communications being aligned with the fundraising office.
Why Generosity Matters
The concept of generosity in many forms sounds lofty — but nonprofits need money to pay their bills. So why do other forms matter? Wales, of the Generosity Commission, says looking at overall generosity helps determine society’s desire to help.
“It tells us the degree to which there’s an infrastructure of caring in our communities,” she says. By collecting information on nontraditional giving, Wales says people can determine whether a downward spiral in dollar giving means those people aren’t giving at all, “meaning a net loss,” or whether they’re giving elsewhere.
The report indicates people are still generous — 83.6 percent of people worldwide donated to others globally in 2022 — but they are expressing that generosity in multiple ways. The report tracked four measures of giving: money, time, items, and advocacy. According to the report, people in the United States most often give items, followed by money, then time, and finally advocacy.
How people give globally was also highlighted in the new data, with significant portions of Americans giving online via an organization’s website (45 percent) and directly to the needy (41 percent). In four countries — Britain, Canada, India, and the United States — more than 40 percent of donors gave via the charity’s website, spotlighting the importance of having an easy-to-use donation page. Some countries had a preference for giving directly to the needy, with 72 percent in Kenya choosing that method, compared with only 26 percent in Britain.
The key takeaway for nonprofits, Rosenbaum says, is there is a lot of generosity out there and it’s crucial that nonprofits take steps to tap into it now.
“There’s no question we are seeing a continued downturn in both dollars and donors into the nonprofit sector,” he says. “What I want people to understand, though, is that generosity is still abundant. It is urgent that we take action. We can’t wait until November to start building a broader base of support and engaging people in more ways. It’s got to start now.”
