Do you know their birthday?

Danielle Johnson

 

On the Go! eNews (Sept/Oct 2013 edition)

 

This summer Blackbaud published The Next Generation of American Giving, a study examining generational giving habits in the US.  If you haven’t yet seen or read the paper, try to block off even just 15 min this week to walk through the report.  Regardless of the size or marketing sophistication of your organization, understanding the trends in generational giving and the messaging that resonates with each cohort will help improve your fundraising efforts.    

 

Identifying and appealing to the unique sensitivities and behavioral trends of donors in different generational groups has long been a challenge for the nonprofit fundraiser.    But the proliferation of new communication channels and the rapid evolution of digital technologies has made interpreting the generational landscape more confusing today than ever before.

 

Reading the study and trying to understand all the permutations of how to bridge generational gaps and appeal to each group uniquely can feel overwhelming.   But there is a lot you can do, both in the short term and the long term, to drive fundraising across all generations.   To help you get started, below are 6 tips for how to incorporate generational giving principals into your organization’s fundraising strategy. 

 

Collect donor birthdays.  Understanding generational differences and messaging uniquely by age bracket will be critical to fundraising success.  But this requires knowing your donors well enough to be able to segment along generational lines.  Prioritize donor information, especially information that will allow you to segment by generation.  As both this paper and Blackaud’s Online Benchmark report notes, email appeal rates are declining precipitously.   Undifferentiated ‘one size fits all’ email campaigns will continue to lose ground to highly targeted messaging.  The more you know about your donors, including into which generational bracket they fall, the greater your ability to appeal to the topics and sensitivities that drive engagement and fundraising.   

 

Ask donors what they want.   Our for-profit colleagues have long recognized the importance of customer satisfaction mechanisms.   Call your bank, book a rental car or make on online purchase and you are likely to be asked to complete a customer satisfaction survey.  Understanding how constituents view your organization is just as critical in the non-profit space as it provides key insights into how we can engage them in our mission.  Asking constituents what information they want and how the organization could service them better doesn’t have to be an onerous process.   Consider adding a link to a survey on email autoresponders or in a welcome series email.  Events are also an ideal venue to poll constituents about what’s important to them.  The more organizations invest in finding ways to deliver the information and engagement opportunities constituents want the more money and commitment they will derive from those relationships.

 

Facilitate P2P fundraising.  As the Next Generation of Giving report points every organization can attract younger donors and a share of the $16 billion they give annually.  Peer to peer fundraising represents big opportunity to reach all donors, but Generation X and Generation Y are particularly receptive to the P2P channel.  Even if your organization doesn’t have a formal event program you can still get into the P2P game through Do-It-Yourself fundraising programs.  DIY fundraising allows anyone to raise money on an organization’s behalf while incorporating the value of crowdsourcing and personal networks. 

 

Break down barriers.  It’s a tall order, and one that will take a lot of time and in all likelihood no small amount of organization frustration, but eliminating internal barriers to cross functional marketing and communication efforts will help organizations better realize multigenerational engagement.   Be prepared for shifts in the kind of organizational transparency younger donors expect and think about how every side of the organization can contribute to a new model of information sharing. 

 

Target by channel.  It’s multichannel world and every generational cohort engages in each channel.  But just like email, there is no ‘one size fits all’ strategy.  Consider what asks are appropriate for each channel and to what cohort.  Fundraising through social media may still be in its infancy, but using social as a purely engagement tool is now considered Fundraising 101.  Use social media to promote your website and to capture email.  Ask donors for feedback on what information they want and how well they think your organization is serving its mission.   This will provide invaluable information about who you constituents are, the generational cohorts they belong to, and how to build stronger relationships with each group.

 

Invest in sustainer programs.   Sustainer donation programs are gaining traction across the nonprofit space.  According to Blackaud’s Online Benchmark report the total value of sustainer donations rose 27% in 2012.  Sandwiched between caring for aging parents and raising children, Boomers are in ideal target for sustained giving programs as they are a convenient and time saving way to support charities.    21% of Boomers say they are already sustainers.   Tailoring the ask to those constituents most likely to support an already growing trend will help improve fundraising performance and build confidence that your organization understands the unique needs of each audience. 

 

Written by Andrew Shoaff