Connecting With Generation Y

Sensing a big opportunity, many charities look for ways to entice the newest wave of potential donors

A smart-alecky youth with 57 clothespins clipped to his face is helping World Vision, in Federal Way, Wash., attract teenagers to its cause. The picture of the teenager, included in brochures that the antipoverty group hands out at Christian rock concerts, carries the caption “Saved No One,” and is juxtaposed with an image of a smiling young woman who did without food for 30 hours and “Helped Save an Entire Village.”

With bold graphics and edgy images, World Vision has attracted hundreds of thousands of young people to its “30 Hour Famine,” and they have raised millions by signing up sponsors for the fast and a related community-service project. “Because they are altruistic, they are seeking out things that will not only improve their own lives but will also improve the lives of people around them,” says Miyon Kautz, who directs marketing efforts for the fast. The “in-your-face humor” of World Vision’s materials — in the clothespins case, spoofing the meaninglessness of the contests kids encounter today — help make the fast hip enough to pursue, she says.

And when young people choose to get involved, World Vision’s fund-raising efforts receive a secondary boost: Adults become ignited by the enthusiasm they see, officials at the group note.

Buying Power

World Vision’s appeals are among the ideas being tested by fund raisers to entice the newest generation of potential donors, people born mainly in the 1980s and 1990s. Known as Generation Y (because it comes after Generation X), Generation Net Kids (because of the huge influence of the Internet), and the Millennial Generation (because many people who study this population say it starts with the graduating high-school class of 2000), the group is considered by some demographers to contain anyone born between 1977 and 2002. That would make them as old as 26, although other analysts set the cutoff at 21.

While many nonprofit organizations discount Generation Y as being too young to make a dent in their coffers, others see a big opportunity. More than 70 million Americans fall into that age group, and Generation Y is bigger than Generation X and comparable in size to the baby-boom generation.

Already, Generation Y has buying power. Teenagers alone spent $170-billion of their own and their parents’ money last year on clothing, entertainment, food, and other items, according to Teenage Research Unlimited, a marketing-research company in Northbrook, Ill., which sampled 2,000 people around the nation.

Young adults view money radically differently from their grandparents and even some of their parents. Most young people, except for those from low-income families, do not worry as much as previous generations about covering their basic needs, experts say.

“Their families are doing it,” says Judith E. Nichols, a Portland, Ore., fund-raising consultant. “That leaves more money free for discretionary purposes, and certainly that is what charitable giving is.” The evidence of how differently young people view spending, she says, is apparent even in everyday purchases: “If you stop at Starbucks and buy a $3 cup of coffee, you are in a totally different mind-set from someone who thinks about coffee costing a nickel.”

The Internet Effect

More than any other defining characteristic, this group, which has always taken the desktop computer for granted, is a product of the Internet — and of the rapid-fire communication that the Internet and the World Wide Web facilitate.

“They are used to being tremendously bombarded with information,” says Roger N. Casey, dean of the faculty at Rollins College, in Winter Park, Fla., who studies generational differences. “If they don’t get information, then they move on to something else.”

As a result, many charities are redesigning their Web sites to make them more appealing to young people by adding Web pages specifically for teenagers and young adults. They include games and projects with a youthful sensibility, pithy content — with an opportunity to delve deeper if desired — and playful graphics, and they sometimes allow for an online conversation between the reader and the organization or the organization’s young supporters.

“It’s important to remember that this is a very interactive group, and the kinds of Web sites most of us have are Web sites we are comfortable with, which really are no more than letters on the Internet,” says Ms. Nichols. “This doesn’t necessarily work for people who grew up playing Sims and Grand Theft Auto.”

Naral Pro-Choice America, an abortion-rights group in Washington, for example, started a Generation Pro-Choice section on its Web site this winter to recruit young women as activists and donors. Since its new fiscal year began in April, the group has raised around $20,000 from “Gennys,” as it calls people ages 18 to 24, compared with $5,000 in the first quarter of last year.

The Web site invites readers to learn more about reproductive issues, “take a walk in the shoes of three real women who faced obstacles to reproductive choices,” obtain information on campus organizing, and buy “Pro-Choice Gifts and Gear.”

The group also sends an electronic newsletter to young subscribers’ e-mail accounts after they sign up on the organization’s Web site. It is advertised online — on Web sites frequented by Generation Y members and in Internet newsletters popular with young people. It includes materials written by young Naral staff members from an array of ethnic and racial backgrounds to whom readers might relate.

The writers, whose photographs are included with the newsletters, are described as an aspiring rock star, a softball player, someone who enjoys dinner out, and another who hasn’t accepted that he is not in college anymore. The goal of their newsletter pieces is to reach out to people who “are very interested in their own rights and their own choices,” but don’t necessarily think of themselves as part of a feminist movement the way their mothers do, says Jennifer J. Donahue, the group’s online fund-raising director.

The first issue of the newsletter, sent earlier this month, includes an “Ask Genny” column with information on contraception that can be taken after unprotected sex, and gives young women the opportunity to send policy makers a letter demanding easier access to such contraception.

Gen Y Traits

Beyond computerized appeals, charities are focusing on other characteristics of young adults, including their:

Close ties to parents. Unlike many people born in the boom after World War II, who viewed their parents more as authority figures than friends, and Generation Xers, who were purportedly too cynical or alienated to bond with older people in authoritative roles, members of Generation Y and their parents like to do things together, says Neil Howe, co-author of Millennials Rising: The Next Great Generation (Vintage Books, 2000). On civic matters, he says, parents often defer to their kids.

Nonprofit groups that promote family activities may benefit from this closeness. The Susan G. Komen Breast Cancer Foundation, in Dallas, encourages people to raise money and honor mothers, aunts, and other loved ones who have had breast cancer, in its Race for the Cure, which attracted 72,463 people ages 11 to 29 last year and brought in $89.4-million from all ages combined. “Our race offers a great opportunity for them to connect with their family,” says Kristy Hensel, director of the organization’s fund-raising programs.

Multicultural interests. Millennials are better-traveled than young people from previous generations, and have been exposed to the values and traditions of a larger array of cultures in school and college and on the Web. Groups that work internationally will benefit, predicts Ms. Nichols, who has written about the impact of demographic trends on giving.

One such group that already boasts a high response from Generation Y donors is USA for UNHCR, which tries to build support for the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees. Interest among young people has escalated since the actress Angelina Jolie became the charity’s goodwill ambassador in 2001, UNHCR officials say.

Ms. Jolie, who portrays the action heroine Lara Croft in the Tomb Raider movies, travels around the world to bring attention to the plight of refugees, sponsors an annual poster contest for kids, publishes her travel journals on the group’s Web site, and writes letters to children exhorting them to get involved.

Partly as a result of the 28-year-old actress’s commitment, the group has become extremely popular with schoolteachers, says Joung-ah Ghedini, who coordinates the charity’s Education Project. The group now sends teaching materials to 4,000 schoolteachers.

Competitiveness “Millennials believe they are all going to go somewhere, which puts more pressure on Millennials to keep up with their peers,” says Mr. Howe, a founding partner of LifeCourse Associates, in Great Falls, Va. With that in mind, some groups are building competition into their appeals.

Pennsylvania State University, for example, organized the Big Ten Gold Challenge in 2001 to motivate people who graduated from the Big Ten universities’ undergraduate colleges in the last decade to give to their alma maters online. The Web site for the challenge, http://bigtenchallenge.org, is updated regularly with the latest participation rates for each institution, presented as a graph.

Brand loyalty. Members of Generation Y identify with brands of products or services, particularly when the goods are marketed as emblematic of a way of life, much in the way automobiles are today, observers of the young generation say.

Nonprofit organizations need to follow the example of Nike and promote themselves “as a particular type of consumerable good,” says Mr. Casey of Rollins College. They might try to team up more with corporations that advance the image they want to communicate, he says, so long as corporate interests do not supersede charitable goals. The Komen breast-cancer group already has joined forces with some youth-oriented names, like New Balance Athletic Shoe and Zeta Tau Alpha fraternity, which sponsor the group’s Race for the Cure and help promote it.

Bob Brock, president of the Educational Marketing Group, in Aurora, Colo., says charities should build into their materials messages that “establish giving as an essential element of the kind of lifestyle that you, as a Gen Y person, want to stand for.”

Increasingly busy lives. Nonprofit work is but a fraction of the opportunities young people are barraged with daily. Their time is consumed by more and more music lessons, sports teams, and after-school clubs, consultants and charity officials say.

“It involves more on our part to try to understand their motivation, why they would want to do this, because of course we are competing for their free time,” says Mary Moreillon, director for volunteer administration and youth at the Huntsville, Ala., chapter of the American Red Cross.

Images That Grab

To get good results, fund raisers and consultants say, messages to young adults need to be direct, with strong colors and graphics that have unexpected, offbeat images that can compete with a popular culture that emphasizes fast pacing and high-technology special effects. When appealing to a group that prefers brief advertising messages to lengthy explanations, any fund-raising pitch must use few words to explain why a small contribution — in the $10 to $25 range — can make a big difference, those sources say.

The University of Oregon, for example, had success reaching its youngest alumni — people who graduated between 1996 and 2001 — with a large postcard that showed a comical up-close shot of a duck, the university’s mascot. While the college’s standard mailings usually attract just a handful of young donors, the duck campaign drew almost 500 new Generation Y donors and contributions totaling $40,000.

Before asking for money, the university sent two letters explaining that state funds and tuition alone don’t pay for the offerings at Oregon, and that small gifts are vital. Carlyn Schreck, associate director of annual giving, says the university realized it had to counter the view held by many young people that only very big donations matter. “These people feel that if it’s not a million dollars, it’s not worth anything,” she says. “That’s what they hear in the news — these megaphilanthropists who have been able to contribute giant gifts.”

Macalester College, in St. Paul, has had similar success with a series of mailings aimed at its most recent graduates, including one that reads: “A bunch of dead rich guys are no way to fund a college.” Thirty-nine percent of people who graduated since 1990 contributed to the college’s direct-mail campaign this year, up from 24 percent before the new mailings went out, giving $130,726.

But for organizations that do not have a captive audience like alumni, printed materials are not the answer with Generation Y, nonprofit officials agree. Even magazines, including one tried and quickly retired by the National Wildlife Federation, in Reston, Va., are of little interest to that group. The environmental group tested its magazine several years ago with members of Generation Y in focus groups and through direct mail, but “it didn’t have any legs,” says Tom McGuire, vice president of membership programs. “The role of magazines is filled by television and to a lesser extent the Internet.”

Making a Difference

Many fund raisers believe the growth in community-service programs in schools will aid their efforts to attract young people to their causes. Whereas the reputation of Generation X — personified by Kurt Cobain, the lead singer of Nirvana who killed himself in 1994 — was of a dour and underachieving group, the next generation is widely viewed as upbeat about its ability to have a positive impact on the world.

“The current generation is very committed to making a difference in the lives of their communities,” says Steve Messinetti, director of campus chapters and youth programs at Habitat for Humanity International, in Americus, Ga. Habitat’s 700-some chapters at high schools and colleges around the country raise money to build houses for low-income families, and then help with construction. “Any time they are raising money from their peers, they are also giving them the opportunity to be involved.”

Last year, a national telephone survey sponsored by the Pew Charitable Trusts, in Philadelphia, found that 44 percent of 15-to-25-year-olds had participated in a community-service or volunteer activity within the past 12 months, compared with 35 percent of 26-to-37-year-olds.

The Pew study also found that many young people are already active in raising money. Sixteen percent of Millennials said they had walked, run, or bicycled for a charity in the past year — the same number as for their Generation X counterparts — and 28 percent had done other things to help raise money for a charitable cause, just slightly under the percentage for their older counterparts.

“Young people today already match most of their elders in overall rates of working to raise money for causes that are important to them,” says Krista Jenkins, a visiting assistant professor at the Eagleton Institute of Politics at Rutgers University at New Brunswick and the project’s manager. “Today’s youth may become good donors in the future.”

Kari Pardoe, a 22-year-old program associate at the Council of Michigan Foundations, says she gives more than $500 a year to charity because of her experience in high school with the Michigan Community Foundations’ Youth Project. The program, started in 1990, gives high-school students an opportunity to make local grants on behalf of needy children, and it has served as a model for efforts in several other cities. “When I did something that made a difference in somebody else’s life, I could see what kind of an impact I could have,” says Ms. Pardoe.

Still unknown, however, is what impact the 2001 terrorist attacks and the battles that have followed will have on Generation Y — and the groups that may depend on its generosity.

“They had this wonderful, idyllic childhood,” shaped in part by a markedly strong economy, “and they get to college and the world falls apart,” says Mr. Casey of Rollins College. “They have been programmed to see optimism and opportunity, and now they are looking at a world that seems very bleak, very dark.”