Going It Alone

Kathy Kinnear for BadRap

Susan Sachs Fleishman is the type of supporter many a nonprofit would love to draw into their ranks. In addition to her extensive volunteer work spanning nearly three decades, she donates about $8,000 annually, mostly to organizations in her native Baltimore, and has written into her will charitable bequests likely to total more than $1 million.

“It is a really important part of the life I have put together for myself,” the retired corporate-marketing communications director says.

Still, for all the friends and acquaintances Ms. Fleishman has made through her nonprofit work, occasionally she forgoes events for one reason: She is unmarried.

Long divorced, with one adult child and one grandchild, Ms. Fleishman, 73, says it can be socially daunting to navigate a gala or theater crowd solo. Once she voiced concern to her alma mater, McDaniel College in Maryland, ahead of a donor dinner and was assured she would be at a table with acquaintances. Not only was her seating assignment not as promised, but dinnergoers’ class years, written on name tags, were unreadable, making it trickier to introduce herself to others.

Ms. Fleishman left before the steak was served.

She is hardly unique among donors that nonprofits need to attract. About 110 million Americans at least 18 years old are unmarried, 45 percent of the adult population, according to U.S. Census Bureau data. Twenty-eight percent of American households — 35 million — now consist of one person, the biggest share of single households on record.

Of course, “unmarried” can mean never married, not yet married, divorced, or widowed. And that is what makes it complicated for fundraisers as they try to shape their strategies for persuading Americans to give.

Couples who live together but who never tied the knot make up 7.3 million households in the United States, including 433,539 same-sex households. Many have children, although unmarried people are more likely to be childless, and a boom in the number of people without children means a possible bonanza in bequests that could carry on for three decades.

Two-earner households are on average wealthier than single-headed households, but there is no shortage of unmarried donors who have given substantial sums. Tech entrepreneur Tim Gill, who has given more than $300 million, mostly to promote LGBT rights, is one example. Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, an eclectic donor who has spread $2.3 billion among many causes, including landmark efforts on brain science, is another.

Bella DePaulo, a social psychologist at the University of California at Santa Barbara who has researched and written for two decades about unmarried adults, says that demographic “has only been going in one direction, namely up, up, up.”

“The nonprofits who get there first in terms of taking single people seriously, trying to appeal to them and not condescend to them, they will get them early on and maybe keep them,” Ms. DePaulo says.

More Time to Commit

Much of the growth in unmarried adults is a result of the rising age at which Americans marry for the first time — currently, 27.4 years of age for women and 29.5 for men. Experts haven’t spent a lot of time analyzing what later marriages will do to giving rates, but looking at young, single people offers some encouraging signs. Most young singles don’t have a lot of money yet, but single women ages 20 to 54 give two-and-a-half times more money to charity than their older counterparts, according to a study of people who aren’t affiliated with a religion (as is the case with more and more young Americans).

Couples, especially two-earner households, tend to have more expansive social networks and generally have more resources than single-person households, says Una Osili, director of research at Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy, which conducted the study. As household structures shift, organizations have to adapt and provide different types of engagement opportunities.

Xanadu Bruggers, a 32-year-old Bay Area single, says she is attracted to charities offering a wide range of volunteer opportunities that allow her to use her skills — especially her social-media savvy and administrative experience. She likes it, too, when they host small social fundraising events that make it easy for people to meet one another.

“There’s a lot of single women coming to San Francisco to work at these amazing companies, but it’s hard to build a community, find friends,” says Ms. Bruggers, whose charity work includes helping secure corporate sponsorships for BadRap, a nonprofit pit-bull rescue group in Oakland, and serving as a board member of the Bravo! Club, the San Francisco Opera’s young professionals group, where all except two of the board members, ages 21 to 40, are unmarried.

Ms. Bruggers is also vice president of Spinsters of San Francisco, an organization that gathers never-married women ages 21 to 35 to raise money and volunteer for good causes. It got its start back in 1929 when a group of women coalesced after they were ostracized for not being married. The 200 members vote on a charity to support each year with proceeds from the group’s fundraising events. The past two years, they selected KEEN San Francisco, which helps promote exercise among kids with disabilities. Members volunteer with local nonprofits throughout the year, too.

“We have pretty high levels of commitment to the charities, and that’s something that would possibly be different if we were married because you often have additional obligations,” says Eve Denton, the Spinsters’ president.

Like-Minded People

Unmarried millennial donors aren’t the only ones who say they are ideal partners for nonprofits. George Wilson joined Singles Available for Community Service in Kansas City four years ago after he retired and now serves as president. It has 100 dues-paying members ($15 annually) and coordinates eight volunteer opportunities a month. Once a quarter, members run their own internal fundraising effort for a local charity. In addition, the group plans four or five social events for its members each year, including an annual picnic and a holiday gathering.

The average age is mid-50s, although Mr. Wilson says the group would love to get an infusion of younger members. It’s a mix of working and retired people, some with children and grandchildren and some without.

The 60-year-old Mr. Wilson, who never married or had children, said he loves being exposed to an array of local nonprofits while working alongside like-minded people. He recommends that nonprofits looking to connect with people like him use the website Meetup, popular with unmarried individuals wanting to connect with and participate in activities with others. They should also look for a local newsletter tailored to singles, he says, such as the one in Kansas City that lists his organization’s events.

“I think there are lot of singles looking for things to do,” Mr. Wilson said.

Independent Decisions

While many fundraisers say they get smaller sums from divorced people — in part because the cost of parting ways is so high — that is hardly always the case. Sometimes couples give less because they argue enough over where to give.

Jackie Bechek, a 58-year-old divorced mother of three grown children, says she finds her philanthropy work as an unmarried person easier than when she was married.

“It’s a sense of empowerment. You have control over your own money,” Ms. Bechek says. “You don’t have to negotiate with anybody as to where your dollars are going.”

A former lawyer, Ms. Bechek says her lifetime giving totals tens of millions of dollars, and more is coming. Her philanthropy has spanned her 30-year marriage and her life afterward. Her extensive volunteer work has included heading the parents annual fund at the Boston prep school Milton Academy, serving as a mentor for new mothers at the nonprofit Center for Early Relationship Support, and interviewing applicants to Brown University, her alma mater, as part of its admissions process each fall.

A BMW enthusiast, Ms. Bechek has grown increasingly involved with the BMW Car Club of America. This year she was the first woman named to the board of trustees of the group’s foundation, whose mission she describes as twofold: preserving classic BMW automobiles and working to encourage safe driving among teenagers through hands-on instruction and financial support.

Travis Bell, for The Chronicle

She and her ex-husband were always charitable, she says, but decisions about giving involved negotiating. He was required to contribute to United Way as part of his partnership at a major consulting firm, so that was a big chunk right off the top. He enjoyed giving to his alma mater, MIT, while she loved contributing to Brown.

Ms. Bechek treasured a weekly newsletter from the university, something her ex-husband would tease her about. Still, that connection to the institution proved foundational as Ms. Bechek’s philanthropic ties to the institution grew even stronger to include things such as sitting on the women’s leadership council and helping to raise $1.2 million from classmates as part of their 35th reunion. Her giving to Brown now includes a bequest to endow a faculty chair in the Department of Neuroscience.

“I said, You know what? Brown makes me feel like I am part of [a] community,” Ms. Bechek says. “Especially when you’re single, being part of a community becomes even more important.”

She hasn’t detailed with her three children plans to give away her money, Ms. Bechek says, but she is not worried. They are forging careers in professional fields and can expect to be beneficiaries of their father’s estate.

In her case, she says, she boosted her philanthropy after becoming single.

“Like now I can really give not just $10,000 to Brown, but I can give $1 million to Brown now, ’cause he [her ex-husband] never would have allowed me to give $1 million. He would have said, ‘That is ridiculous. We’ve got a million other charities.’ But I can give to the organizations for whom I have passion. That makes a big difference.”

Events for Couples

Where Brown University succeeded with Ms. Bechek, many other nonprofits are falling down on the job. Most are not giving enough thought to how to appeal to individuals moving through life solo, says Ms. DePaulo, the UC Santa Barbara social psychologist. As an example, she recalls an invitation she received last year from her alma mater, Vassar College, to attend a political lecture in California. It stipulated that guests be limited to a spouse, partner, or fellow alumnus.

“I paid the same amount of money to go to Vassar as anyone else,” she says. “And yet because I’m single and don’t have a sex partner, I can’t bring someone to a lecture? Why can’t I bring a friend? Or a sibling?”

She called to complain, reaching Vassar’s interim president, who was cordial and referred her to another administrator, who never responded.

She recommends that nonprofits allow guests to invite whomever they want, she says.

And then there is the matter of images and language used in marketing materials, which often skew toward couples, she and others say.

Several years ago, Kevin Pickett, then head of planned giving at MD Anderson Cancer Center in Texas got some valuable, albeit embarrassing, feedback on the organization’s marketing materials. He and colleagues had begun studying nontraditional donor households as part of an internal review of its planned giving efforts in 2011.

During a meeting, an older, unmarried woman donor pointed to a marketing piece that Mr. Pickett had designed with one picture of a graying heterosexual couple poking their heads out of a motor home and another image of a couple walking down the street.

“She said, ‘I look at those, and they make me want to cry,’ " he recounted.

It was just one takeaway. Mr. Pickett and his colleagues were also struck, for example, by how little attention same-sex partners were getting from nonprofits, even though many were childless and therefore prime targets for soliciting planned gifts.

Slow on the Uptake

The typical donor profile — heterosexual couple, with the husband making most of the financial decisions — is shifting fast, driven by factors including women earning and building their own wealth, he says. But nonprofits have been slow on the uptake.

Following their internal review, Mr. Pickett and his colleagues began adjusting marketing materials to include fewer images of heterosexual couples and more depicting single individuals or small groups of people in counts of three or five. They also began retraining staff to talk with potential donors not in traditional heterosexual marriages about things including special legal considerations regarding their estates.

“Every organization needs to be questioning how this is going to play out and how you are going to be involved,” says Mr. Pickett, who is now working as a personal financial planner.

Categories of ‘Single’

Robert Sharpe, a planned-giving consultant, said that when it comes to determining a donor’s family or household structure, colleges and local groups such as religious organizations have an advantage over big, national charities because they know their constituents more intimately. But that doesn’t mean there aren’t ways for larger groups to determine the potential to give big.

One way to do that, he says, is to call small, longtime donors and recognize them for their total lifetime giving.

“Then, at the end of the conversation, they will say something like, “Oh, are there any other people in your family we can send information to?’ " Mr. Sharpe says.

Raising Money From the 21st Century Family

Increasingly complex family structures and nontraditional households pose new challenges for nonprofit fundraising.

• LGBTQ Groups Adjust to More Married Donors
• No Kids, Big Bequests
• Nonprofits See Big Planned-Gift Potential as Childless Boomers Age

If the person responds with, “Oh, no, it’s just me,” that is “ding, ding, ding” for nonprofit fundraisers, he says.

He describes the household structures of U.S. donors as increasingly complex. When it comes to unmarried people, “it’s important for fundraisers to realize that there are a lot of subcategories of single people,” Mr. Sharpe says. “The fundraisers need to pay a lot more attention to the family structure of their donors.”

For her part, the philanthropist Susan Sachs Fleishman says she loves being the master of her time and money. Since the early 1990s she has volunteered with and donated to nonprofits including the Everyman Theatre and South Baltimore Learning Center, an adult-literacy group. She is part of the women’s giving circle at the Baltimore Community Foundation, where she also maintains a fund from which she does a portion of her giving.

Her experience at the McDaniel College dinner was unusual. At most events, she walks out the door marveling at what a great time she had.

“I like smaller events,” she says. “It is easier to talk to people. Like an event at somebody’s nice home. Or just a smaller venue. It is easier for me. It’s just easier to go around and talk to people.”

She describes the work she has put in as a donor and a volunteer as the second half of her education.

“It continues to be a learning, growing process that keeps me engaged, and I love it. To me, my volunteer activity is my work, and I treat it as such.”

Maria Di Mento contributed to this article.