The Lost Generation?

New study finds a big drop in the percentage of baby boomers who are donors to national advocacy groups

Civil-rights groups, environmental organizations, and other national advocacy groups that expected a boom in donations from the baby-boom generation may be in for bitter disappointment.

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Generational Differences Among Donors

A new study of donors to such organizations has found that people who grew up during the ‘60s and ‘70s — a time when many advocacy groups burgeoned — are not giving in large numbers to national social-change organizations. In the poll of more than 700 donors, 17 per cent were ages 30 to 49; the rest were 50 or older. That is a sharp drop from 1990, when a similar survey found that 46 per cent of contributors were in their 30s and 40s.

Debbie Klingender, who helped conduct the study by a Washington polling company, says an “alarm bell” should go off for big advocacy groups and similar organizations because they “are probably not reaching baby boomers in the numbers they need to replace their parents’ generation of donors.”

The survey, conducted by Peter D. Hart Research Associates, found that one problem facing such charities may be that baby boomers tend to place more faith in smaller, local groups than in large, national organizations. That is a sharp contrast to their parents’ generation. Forty-six per cent of the donors under age 50 said they believed that local organizations would be the most able to bring about social change in the next decade, compared to 29 per cent of the older donors. Much smaller percentages of the younger donors said that national organizations, government, religious groups, and business leaders are the most likely to bring about change.

“Small, local groups are very important to these younger donors,” says Ms. Klingender, who interviewed donors in face-to-face meetings. “There is an underdog phenomenon,” she says, “a perception that struggling groups need money more, and they’re able to do more with a dollar than big groups.”

Another problem may be the techniques that national organizations have used to reach the baby boomers. Of the seven organizations that provided donor names to the polling company, all have relied heavily on direct mail to build up their coffers and become household names. But many young donors appear to be more reluctant to respond to mail appeals than are people of older generations.

That has been the case for Amnesty International, a human-rights group whose donors were included in the survey. It has seen the proportion of direct-mail donors in their 30s and 40s slip from 35 per cent in 1995 to 25 per cent today.

Amnesty officials say they don’t know for sure why the drop occurred, but they don’t believe it is rooted in a lack of concern for human rights among baby boomers. They say they hope to find alternative ways to cultivate donors, using Web sites and e-mail alerts, or working on college campuses to court potential contributors.

Commissioned by Craver, Mathews, Smith & Company, a Falls Church, Va., fund-raising consulting company whose clients include advocacy groups, the survey was based on telephone interviews and meetings with small groups of donors. Six advocacy groups and one other charity provided names of donors to the researchers to develop a nationally representative sample. The polling company would not disclose the full list of groups that participated.

Among the other key findings:

* Nearly 60 per cent of the younger donors said they plan to give more than they currently do to charities over the next five years. Only 18 per cent of people over 50 said the same.

* Forty-six per cent of all the donors polled said they prefer to give once each year rather than monthly or “whenever appropriate or necessary.” Donors’ preference for making a single annual gift was particularly strong among men under 50. Fifty-three per cent said they want to make only one donation per year to charities they support.

* Only 20 per cent of donors under 50 said they give the bulk of their donations to their church or synagogue, compared with 38 per cent of the older donors.

* Asked about the best things charities could do to maintain donors, young donors said “keep issues in the media” (77 per cent), “educate the general public” (76 per cent), and report “progress on goals” (75 per cent). By contrast, older donors said the best way for charities to maintain donor support was to demonstrate “spending accountability” (82 per cent).

* A majority of donors in both age groups said that newspapers and network television are primary sources of news and information, but fewer younger donors rely on those sources. For example, 75 per cent of the older donors rely on newspapers, while only 62 per cent of those under 50 do.

* Younger donors were much more likely to depend on National Public Radio (40 per cent) than older donors (21 per cent). They were also more likely to rely on on-line services for news and information (12 per cent) than their senior counterparts (4 per cent). Seventy-five per cent of donors under 50 said they have Internet access, compared to only 43 per cent of the older donors.

Based on the survey results, researchers made several recommendations on ways that charities can improve their appeals and other communications with people under 50.

One reason that such donors tend to look favorably on local groups is that they can see contributions at work in their own neighborhoods, Ms. Klingender notes. “With larger national groups, donors don’t see what is happening; what they get instead is direct mail or a magazine.”

To convince baby boomers to give, national groups need to find tangible ways to illustrate their accomplishments locally, says Roger Craver, president of Craver, Mathews, Smith & Company. “Those organizations that are doing the best,” he says, “are the ones that have local applications, like Habitat For Humanity.”

That charity, he notes, has 1,500 local affiliates where volunteers working in every state have built or repaired nearly 25,000 homes for the needy.

The researchers also urged charity leaders to reconsider their approach to mass mailings. Ms. Klingender said many charities may be alienating young people with their frequent appeals.

Many groups say that they honor the request of any donor who contacts them to request only one solicitation each year, but few groups have explicitly offered that option to all of their donors, notes Ms. Klingender. Such an approach might increase donors’ loyalty by showing them that the charity respects their preferences — in addition to saving money on direct mail.

“Organizations are going to have to be more selective in how they approach current and prospective donors, particularly in the boomer generation,” says Ms. Klingender. “When you have people saying, ‘I really want to give just once a year,’ the way to go about it is to ask them once a year, but ask for more each time.”

Because so many donors in the survey, particularly younger ones, stressed the need for charities to increase efforts to educate the masses and keep their causes in the public eye, charities need to “take assertive measures to make themselves heard, other than through direct mail and the organization’s own publications,” says Ms. Klingender.

During interviews for the survey, people under 50 demonstrated how seriously they take publicity efforts. They said that environmental organizations had achieved more in the last decade than any other type of group. The reason: Even if environmental groups have not reduced ecological threats, younger donors said, they have promoted greater awareness among the public about such dangers and about steps people can take through recycling, composting, and other practices to improve the environment.

The demand for increased visibility by charities points to the need for communications that concentrate on a finite number of messages, says Ms. Klingender.

“But many organizations do not have an overall strategy like ‘These are the three things we most want donors to know,’” she says. “Their appeal asks for one thing and the newsletter talks about entirely different stuff.”

When donors in focus groups were asked to write down five accomplishments of a particular group, they had a hard time identifying what those achievements were, says Ms. Klingender. “It’s not because they are uninformed. They are bright people in tune with world events. But they get mail from several groups plus their newsletters and magazines. We are making it too difficult for donors to sort through the information and realize what is most important about a given group.”

In addition to changing their strategies for print communications, the researchers suggested that charities focus more on ways to get coverage on public broadcasting, which the survey found was very popular with donors under 50.

Researchers specifically pointed to the 40 per cent of younger donors who rely on National Public Radio for news and information. They suggested that groups raise their visibility either by getting coverage on the network’s programs or making a gift that is acknowledged in a brief message.

Few charities are taking advantage of such NPR messages, however. No more than 10 out of the roughly 200 underwriters who currently support the radio network’s national programs are non-profit organizations, NPR officials say, though a few charities have made donations in exchange for the chance to announce their telephone number or Web-site address on the air.

World Wildlife Fund, for example, made a donation last year in exchange for being mentioned five times each week, along with its Web address, on NPR’s morning and afternoon news. The messages have been running for several months. While officials say that it’s impossible to determine how effective the spots are in recruiting donors, they believe that the spots have made people more aware of the organization’s influence.

The charity conducted a survey of NPR listeners to find out if their awareness of World Wildlife increased after the spots had aired for eight months and found “a modest increase in awareness,” says Mark Rovner, the charity’s vice-president for communications.

Public-radio spots are significantly cheaper than television and other types of advertising. The Humane Society of the United States gave NPR $12,870 and received 52 mentions broadcast nationwide in twice-daily spots. By contrast, the charity paid $22,600 for 50 advertisements on the local affiliate of a national TV network.

“More and more donors expect to see evidence in the media that these organizations are changing the world, and the survey shows that boomers have really raised the bar,” Ms. Klingender says. “They’re saying, ‘Not only do you need to talk to me, you need to educate a much wider public. This is the progress I expect.’”

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For a free report on the survey, contact Dana Kessler, Account Executive, Jasculca/Terman and Associates, 730 North Franklin Street, Suite 510, Chicago 60610; (312) 573-5437.