Fundraising from Millennials
How to make sure that you won't raise funds from our largest demographic
Pretty much every nonprofit worth its salt has been trying to figure out how to raise money from Millennials. “Trying to figure it out”, though, might be too strong a statement, because most nonprofits talk about marketing to Millennials, but they really are spending most of their time and resources marketing to/pitching the “usual suspects” — the rich, much older folks (mostly “guys”) who have been giving money for decades. I get it — they have bills to pay and an organization to run, and most (but definitely not all) Millennials aren’t writing big-ticket checks quite yet.
Really, though, they’re not writing checks at all. (Ask a Millennial if they carry a checkbook, or when they wrote their last check, and they might look at you like you’re from another planet.) But Millennials are giving, and they’re giving generously (via other means) — just not in the numbers of the older donors. Yet. On average, Millennials are giving about 65% of what Gen Xers are giving, and about 40% of what Boomers are giving. Of course, take the life span of those in the Millennial generation, and you’ll see that their giving potential is — already — significant. It’s not prudent to ignore them.
So assuming that we can carve out some time and resources from our current budget to “recruit” Millennials as donors, how do we do so? How do we build a relationship with a demographic group that operates, in general, completely differently than our usual (older) donors?
There’s lots of suggestions, tutorials and information online about this, and much of it is spot-on and productive. Unfortunately, though, some of the suggestions are misguided, unhelpful, and actually offensive.
To that point, here are some examples that I’ve found online and in conversations in just the last few months:
Make sure your pitch lasts only 20 minutes or less. Millennials have short attention spans.
Use the word “technology” a lot. They like that.
Use Facebook to connect with them. They all use Facebook.
Invite them to lunch. They’re sure to like a nice fancy lunch.
Suggest a meeting (or an event) in a bar. They like to go to bars — especially trendy ones.
Could these suggestions be any more demeaning?
I have lots of thoughts about how to market to Millennials effectively, and I’ll detail them in my upcoming book. In the meantime, suffice it to say that you should absolutely start a program that will appeal to Millennials, but if you try to do it using the “checklist” above, you shouldn’t bother even trying. Being condescending to and out of touch with your future donor base is a lousy strategy.
Millennials are now our largest demographic, age-wise. Let’s try to respectfully engage them in the good work that we’re all trying to do. We can’t afford to screw this up.
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- Lisa