Some of the country’s most iconic nonprofits have struggled to raise money in the past few years while a new breed of philanthropic organization is thriving thanks in large part to its appeal to millennial donors. While the American Red Cross ran an operating deficit after its worst fundraising year in over a decade in fiscal 2015, ended last June, Charity: Water reported its best year ever in 2014, raising more than $27.9 million for clean water. And its donations have increased each year since its founding in 2006.
Previous generations of donors made it easy for big nonprofit organizations to rely on mass marketing, workplace collection and brand loyalty to meet their fundraising goals. But those donors have now been surpassed in numbers by a generation of digital natives who identify with causes instead of institutions and are rewriting the rules of fundraising.
“We give millennials a low barrier to getting involved, and we make things as easy as possible with features like our online fundraising platform,” said Cubby Graham, social media strategist at Charity: Water. “We want to keep people passionate and engaged and really show them the impact they can have with a birthday or a bike ride.”
“It’s about the evolution of giving,” said National Council of Nonprofits communications director Rick Cohen. “In the past, there were a few big brand names for people looking to give. Now, if a natural disaster happens, rather than donate to one size fits all, it’s a lot easier for people to find more specific nonprofits to align with their more specific interests.”
It’s not easy to estimate total spending across a field as fragmented as fundraising. But according to 2013 data from philanthropic software developer Blackbaud, baby boomers account for 43 percent of all charitable giving compared to millennials’ 11 percent. (Millennials donated on average $481 annually, while boomers gave $1,212.)
A new way of giving
Millennials, as a group, see giving in much broader terms than their predecessors. They like to volunteer, enlist others to join them and use social media for crowdfunding. They want to be more involved than their more passive boomer counterparts, according to Dennis McCarthy, director of sales and targeted analytics at Blackbaud.
