June 27, 2008 | Read Time: 1 minute
Why are many nonprofit organizations coping with a drop in the number of people who make gifts in response to direct mail and other appeals to recruit new donors?
Writing today in the The Agitator, the direct-marketing experts Roger Craver and Tom Belford say they have the answer: gloom and pessimism among baby boomers about their financial outlook.
At first, Mr. Craver and Mr. Belford were mystified when they learned in a forthcoming survey that boomers, aged 44 to 62, gave less ($1,081) in the past 12 months than both younger people ($1,205) and older donors ($1,542). The same survey three years ago found that boomers gave the most, leading the two men to conclude that baby boomers had finally replaced their parents’ generation and “climbed to the top of the donor heap.”
But then Mr. Craver and Mr. Belford got hold of a new study released this week by the Pew Research Center.
Among more than 2,400 adults surveyed early this year as the economy began to sour, the Pew study found that boomers have the least optimistic outlook of any generation about their current and future financial prospects, and they are the most worried that they will have to cut household spending in coming months because money is tight.
“That adds up to a pretty gloomy head trip!” Mr. Craver and Mr. Belford write. “Might it cause a more conservative approach to donating—even a retrenchment? In our opinion…absolutely.”
