Philanthropy This Week

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Good morning.

This week brought bright news about the future of giving: Millennials are stepping up their giving big time.

In 2022, millennial households gave 40 percent more, on average, to charity than they did in 2016, Emily Haynes reports.

One reason may be that millennials are returning to religion — and faith is widely considered to be a key trigger for increased giving. More than two-thirds of millennials are now attending religious services, compared with half in 2016.

Even though the growth in millennial giving is the big headline in the new report, one thing hasn’t changed — boomers are still giving bigger sums than people of any other generation, according to the new study from Giving USA and the fundraising firm Dunham+Company. Millennials were the second-most generous, and Gen X households ranked third.

The study did yield one other big surprise: the rising support for domestic health charities from younger donors. Domestic health nonprofits were popular with Gen X and Gen Z donors, while millennials’ third-most-popular cause was the nonprofit hospital — a type of charity that didn’t rank high among these donors in 2016.

Religious groups — including international aid groups like Compassion International and World Vision — were among the top three causes with people in all generations except for Generation Z (people who are teenagers and in their early 20s). The environment was favored by those donors.

Here’s what else you need to know:

Jeenah Moon, REUTERS, Alamy

Tyre Nichols’s violent death at the hands of police in Memphis has prompted 28 foundation leaders to post an open letter to their peers urging a long-term commitment to support Black racial-justice groups.

The letter, signed by the California Endowment, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, and others, noted the spike in giving that usually occurs after a shocking event but said those gifts are narrow and short-lived, writes Alex Daniels.

“Then, when the urgency of the moment recedes,” the letter goes on, “new momentum to build lasting, organized power in Black communities is lost, and resources to build multiracial coalitions disappear.”

Also: In cities across the country where gun violence has soared, Black faith groups that have been fighting neighborhood violence for decades are finally getting recognition and support — and seeing some progress, writes Sono Motoyama. With funds from the Biden administration, the Ford and Robert Wood Johnson foundations, and others, they’re helping reduce homicides in cities like Indianapolis and Birmingham, Ala.

Using former gang members as outreach workers, they’re offering intense coaching to likely shooters. Working with doctors, they’ve set up programs in hospitals to stop victims from retaliating. Working with youths, they’re mobilizing voters.

Still, the challenges are daunting. As Jeffrey Brown of Boston TenPoint Coalition told Sono: “You can always bring people together to reduce violence or stop a wave of violence, but if you don’t deal with the ground that is tilled around violence” — failed housing policies, unemployment and chronic underemployment, poor health care, subpar schools — “then you will see it pop up again and again.”

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Even with in-person events picking up, some donors continue to prefer online gatherings, so fundraisers still need to know how to work a Zoom room to make them feel comfortable and know they’re being heard.

Because you can’t scan the room, mingle, and slip from one cluster of guests to another online like you can in person, you need to make a point of bringing everyone into the conversation, writes Rasheeda Childress. Dividing a large gathering into smaller breakout groups can help and can facilitate people getting to know each other. Having staff in the Zoom room to manage note taking and monitor the chat window can let the host stay focused on the conversation.

As Erik Daubert, a management consultant who works with nonprofits, told Rasheeda: “Zoom has become a really powerful tool in fundraising work. Once you have them in the room, you want them to feel like this was a good use of their time.”

We’re here to help you with fundraising events of all kinds: For tips on planning fundraising events— keeping people safe from illness, entertained, and inspired while staying within the budget — join us for a webinar on Thursday at 2 p.m. Eastern. Register now.

Izzeddin Kasim, Anadolu Agency, Getty Images

Displaced people living in the United States — and nonprofits that are run by them — are too often disenfranchised in America (opinion).

“Organizations that said they would protect and empower forcibly displaced persons like me treated us as voiceless victims,” writes Sana Mustafa, who was displaced from Syria 10 years ago and is now the CEO of Asylum Access.

Many refugee-rights nonprofits are reluctant to hire displaced people because of the biased view that it would be a conflict of interest, and displaced people are often left out of conferences on refugees.

“Historically, the most successful movements have been led by the oppressed groups themselves,” writes Mustafa, yet nonprofits led by refugees receive less than 1 percent of the nearly $31 billion flowing through the humanitarian system each year.

The situation is slowly improving. A coalition called Resourcing Refugee Leadership Initiative is helping grant makers like the Open Society Foundations and others navigate the challenges of giving to groups with no bank accounts and other issues, and big donors are beginning to recognize the need to fund refugee-led groups.

RRLI is now supporting 50 refugee-led organizations in 10 countries, writes Mustafa, to help ensure that “refugee-led groups have the resources to address needs in their communities and to shape policies that affect their lives.”

Gil Vaknin, Sesame Workshop

The Legacy of a Remarkable Leader

If you have time to read just one article this weekend, make it Lee Mitgang’s tribute to Lloyd Morrisett, who died last month.

You might have already read about his major contributions — after all, he was the co-creator of Sesame Street, as the headlines on his obituaries all duly noted. But Morrisett made just as much of a mark in his leadership of the Markle Foundation, where he oversaw advocacy efforts and other work that charted a path for the entire field of communications and mass media.

Morrisett was getting ready to retire in 1997 and approached Mitgang to write a critical history of the foundation.

Mitgang said he would take on the assignment only if he had unfettered access to everyone and everything connected to the fund.

Morrisett’s “acceptance of those terms without hesitation was my first inkling of what grantees I interviewed would repeatedly tell me about Lloyd’s leadership style: his integrity, his reverence for the value of objective research, his willingness to take extraordinary risk to achieve his goals, and his unwavering backing of Markle’s grantees.”

We hope you have plenty of time to recharge over the weekend and get ready for the week ahead.

— Marilyn Dickey and Stacy Palmer

WHAT WE’RE READING ELSEWHERE

Sean Penn’s disaster-relief charity enjoyed spectacular success during the early days of the pandemic, but now it stands accused of poor management, sloppy bookkeeping, and overstating its achievements. (Bloomberg Businessweek)

Out of the blue, the San Diego Foundation has received a huge bequest from a donor it had never cultivated. (San Diego Union-Tribune)

With energy bills skyrocketing, museums are rethinking the strict climate controls they use to protect artworks. (New York Times)

Twelve years after surviving a gunshot to the head, Gabrielle Giffords is recovering slowly, as the gun-safety nonprofit she started makes incremental progress. ” (New York Times)

One of the country’s premier biological research labs is recovering from a scandal that left one of its stars adrift and scared away a major backer. (Boston Globe)

NEW GRANT OPPORTUNITIES

Your Chronicle subscription includes free access to GrantStation’s database of grant opportunities.

Learning disabilities. Oak Foundation supports groups whose work centers on social-emotional learning or mental health and includes a focus on students with learning differences who are furthest from opportunity due to racism and poverty. Grants will range from $250,000 to $750,000 over two to three years. Applicants are encouraged to fill out an intent to respond form, due February 13. Full proposals must be submitted by February 27.

Homelessness and behavioral health. The Department of Health and Human Services supports behavioral health outreach, treatment, and recovery-oriented services; coordination of housing and services to support the implementation or enhance long-term sustainability of integrated community systems; and efforts to engage and connect individuals with substance-use disorders and co-occurring disorders who are experiencing homelessness to resources for health insurance, Medicaid, and mainstream benefits programs. The application deadline is March 21.