What’s Different and What’s the Same in How and Where We’re Asked to Give

September 29, 2010

It seems that one of the prevalent topics in philanthropy and nonprofit fundraising is the impact of generational differences (or similarities). How will the values and characteristics of the next generation affect who they give to and how much they give? How will those values and characteristics affect how nonprofits interact with this younger generation?

The report The Next Generation of American Giving discusses not just the next generation, but four generations and their charitable giving - what makes each a target worthy of donation solicitations, how do they prefer to be asked to give, and how do they prefer to give and engage with nonprofits?

Released in March 2010, the report was commissioned by Convio, a provider of constituent engagement solutions for nonprofit organizations, and conducted by market research firm Edge Research, with technical support provided by Sea Change Strategies.

The report sought to answer what every nonprofit wants to know: How do we attract the next generations of donors without compromising current revenue from mature donors?

The short answer: The best fundraising is profoundly multi-channel. Seek ways to integrate those channels for stronger results.

The long answer is, of course, much more complicated.  In  Convio’s March/April 2010 online newsletter, in an article titled “Next Generation of American Donors: Changing the Art and Science of Fundraising?” by Tad Druart, Convio’s director of marketing and communications, the company’s Chief Strategy Officer Vinay Bhagat says:

This research and the decline in donor acquisition rates indicate that the marketing model needs to shift to attract the next generation of donors while supporting continued direct mail success. Charities need to move away from a solely direct response focus to a multi-channel approach with a heavier emphasis on online marketing, emerging channels such as mobile and social media, and empowering supporters to market and fundraise with and for the organization. Online marketing programs that have mostly operated as a silo must be integrated with traditional campaigns.

Here are some of the of the report’s findings.

Overview of the Generations

Mature Generation

  • Born before 1945.
  • U.S. population: 39 million
  • 79% gave to a charitable organization (other than school or place of worship) in the last 12 months.
  • Annual average total giving: $1066
  • Number of charities given to: 6.3

Boomers

  • Born 1946-1964.
  • U.S. population: 78 million
  • 67% gave to a charitable organization (other than school or place of worship) in the last 12 months.
  • Annual average total giving: $901
  • Number of charities given to: 5.2

Gen X

  • Born 1965-1980.
  • U.S. population: 62 million
  • 58% gave to a charitable organization (other than school or place of worship) in the last 12 months.
  • Annual average total giving: $796
  • Number of charities given to: 4.2

Gen Y

  • Born 1981-1991.
  • U.S. population: 51 million
  • 56% gave to a charitable organization (other than school or place of worship) in the last 12 months.
  • Annual average total giving: $341
  • Number of charities given to: 3.6

How Do the Generations Like to Give Money and Get Information?

As one would expect, giving a check by mail is the run-away most common giving method for Matures. While giving by mail is still prevalent for Boomers and Gen X, it is significantly less so than Matures. The likelihood of giving via a website increases with younger generations; for Gen X, giving via the web only slightly trails mail, but for Gen Y, the web slightly surpasses mail.

An intriguing note: All generations give at similarly high rates through donations at the check-out registers of retail stores.

Similarly, the predominant charity information channel for Matures is mail. For younger generations, the channels are more varied, encompassing a combination of e-mail, websites and social media.

One of the most interesting findings in the report notes that when looking at how charities solicit donations from those with whom they have pre-existing relationships, donors said the most appropriate form of solicitation was indirectly via a friend who asked for a donation. This finding that  indirect messaging is impactful could have great implications for all those strategies that involve communication “hits” directly between the nonprofit and the donor.

Again, for communication between donors and familiar nonprofits, mail was considered acceptable by more Matures. Mail did, however, score well with younger generations as well, but it is balanced with e-mail, “indicating the importance of multi-channel appeal strategies,” the report writes.

What Triggers Giving?

According to the report authors:

Younger donors are more likely to support a charity when friends/family ask versus the charity asking them. They consider much of their giving relatively random based upon their emotional reaction to something in the media, or based upon who asks. Older donors have a well established commitment to their primary charities. They have a budget set aside for charitable giving, and know the organizations they plan to give to. This suggests that it is harder for a new charity to break in with older donors, but once you secure them, they are quite committed. Younger donors represent relatively open targets. The best way to reach them is either through inspirational stories in the media or better still,via their friends. Given that a vast majority of charitable marketing efforts today are directed towards direct donor engagement and solicitation versus stimulating peer-to-peer engagement and general media exposure, it would suggest that those marketing efforts are poorly aligned with what younger donors say motivates them to give.

To read the full report, including recommendations for “Actions You Can Take Tomorrow,” visit the Convio website.

Learn More at the MCF 2010 Annual Convening

This report and other insightful research and tools will be part of an Idea Session, “Unleashing Our Human Assets: A Fishbowl Conversation on Engaging All Generations for Change,” at the 2010 MCF Annual Convening. Titled “Innovative Strategies for the Future: Realizing Our Full Potential,” the convening for Minnesota grantmakers will be held Oct. 28 and29. For more info, visit MCFconvening.org.

- Chris Murakami Noonan, MCF communications associate

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Making Minnesota a Great Place to Live and Create

September 24, 2010

This week The McKnight Foundation announced the winners of its 2010-2011 $25,000 artist fellowships, something it has done every year since 1982.

I believe the McKnight Foundation’s committment to artists is truly something that makes Minnesota a great place to live. Artists agree, and many make Minnesota home because they feel the tangible support offered throughout the year by The McKnight Foundation, other MCF members and Minnesota’s strong network of artist-service organizations.

McKnight gives nearly $1 million per year to Minnesota artists through the fellowships. Each award is made in recognition of a midcareer artist’s body of work, and there are virtually no requirements as to how the money is spent.

Fellows are selected by jurors outside the foundation, and the costs of managing the program are funded by McKnight. The fellowships are administered by nine community-based artist-service organizations with expertise and experience serving working artists. By housing the fellowships in these community organizations — such as the Loft, the Playwrights’ Center and others — the foundation supports the infrastructure of artist services and expands their impact.

Minnesota’s artist service organizations, which provide income opportunities, space, technical assistance, advocacy, camaraderie and training, are each leaders in their respective fields. They contribute to Minnesota’s extraordinary environment in which artists are supported and valued.

McKnight’s fellowship program currently serves choreographers, composers, writers, visual artists, photographers, playwrights, theater artists, ceramic artists, filmmakers, screenwriters, performing musicians and dancers.

A list of this year’s winning artists can be found on McKnight’s web site.

Image CC freeparking

- Susan Stehling, MCF

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World Leaders Focus on Clean Cookstoves

September 22, 2010

On a road trip earlier this week, I had the chance to listen to a lot of National Public Radio, and I was glad to hear coverage of the United Nations Millennial Development Goals (MDGs). Until earlier this year, when MCF’s Global Funders Network did a program on the goals, I hadn’t heard of them so I’m sure they can use the attention.

Why the coverage this week? The United Nations is hosting a high-level meeting of 140 government and private sector leaders to assess progress made so far toward the MDGs and to accelerate progress to reach the goals by their 2015 target date.  There are eight goals that include slashing poverty, combating disease, fighting hunger, protecting the environment and boosting education.

Complex global strategies are being launched and recommitted to, but the coverage I heard this week focused on the seemingly simple idea of clean cookstoves. Worldwide current methods of cooking over open fires, or on inefficient clay stoves, pose daily risks to hundreds of millions of women and children. In fact, health officials attribute more than 2 million deaths annually to women’s exposure to smoke and toxins from cooking fires. Smoke is also a major cause of pneumonia in infants — a leading factor in high infant-mortality rates in the world’s poorest countries.

The cookstove initiative, announced by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, is a partnership of governments, nongovernmental groups and private companies. The idea is not to flood poor countries with a one-size-fits-all cooking alternative, but instead to consult local cooks and use local markets to develop and distribute different cookstoves for different regions and cultures. The objective: create cleaner, healthier, environmentally sound and locally adapted stoves that women will want.

The project caught my attention because it seems so simple yet so necessary. Years ago while traveling in Thailand, I stayed with a family that cooked on an open fire in their small home. A hole in the ceiling was meant to attract smoke, but the walls and ceiling were still covered with oily black soot. While cooking and tending the fire, the women also worked to ensure toddlers didn’t topple toward the flames. I believe those women and millions like them would love to make use of a solution that made cooking easier and safer for themselves and their families.

The meeting in New York ends today, but watch for updates on progress toward the MDGs on the United Nation’s site.

- Susan Stehling, MCF

Photo CC United Nations Media

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Acting Bigger, Adapting Better

September 21, 2010

“Philanthropy does a lot of good in the world, but it’s not fulfilling its potential,” states Gabriel Kasper.

Kasper, a senior consultant at the Monitor Institute, is co-author of the report “What’s Next for Philanthropy: Acting Bigger and Adapting Better in a Networked World.”

The report argues that the best practices of philanthropic innovation over the last decade have been about improving the effectiveness, efficiency and responsiveness of individual organizations. And the next practices of the coming 10 years must build on those efforts and include an additional focus on coordination and adaption — acting bigger and adapting better.

Coordination, because no private funder alone has the resources and reach required to move the needle on the most pressing and intractable social problems. And adaptation because given today’s pace of change, funders need to get smarter faster, incorporating the best available data and knowledge about what is working and regularly adjusting what they do to add value.

Acting Bigger
Unfortunately, collaboration today is still more often the exception than the rule. Working collaboratively can mean giving up individual control, being patient with group processes that feel slow and dealing with interpersonal tensions. It doesn’t help that collaboration’s benefits are often hard to measure in the short run.

But declines in foundation endowments remind us that no individual organization or actor, no matter how large their assets or how efficient their processes, has the resources to single-handedly produce meaningful change. Funders may not legally need to work with others, but if they hope to have a significant impact on their communities, they’ll have to. And increasingly, the others they work with will be not just from the nonprofit sector, but from business and government too.

The report says the most successful funders in the future will combine long-standing instincts toward independent initiative with an emerging “network” mindset that helps them see their work as part of a larger, diverse and more powerful overall effort.

Adapting Better
Yet, once philanthropy truly accepts acting bigger, the work will be only half done, according to Kasper.

It asserts mistakes made at a grand scale are still mistakes, and ambitious efforts that fall short of expectations are still failures. The successful philanthropy of the future will make judgments based on the best evidence available and then learn and adjust rapidly and publicly — adapting better.

Positive pressures to support these behaviors continue to build. Grantmakers no longer occupy a safe haven where they are given the benefit of the doubt simply because they are doing charitable work. As a New York Times headline proclaimed, the public is now “asking do-gooders to prove they do good.”

Kasper at MCF Convening
Don’t miss an opportunity to hear Kasper’s insights in person. He will present the opening plenary at the MCF Annual Convening on October 28 and 29.

Grantmakers who attend will have an opportunity to engage in discussions on key questions related to philanthropy’s ability to act, adapt and innovate. For more information , visit MCFconvening.org.

- Susan Stehling, MCF

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Using a Website to Make a Complex Issue Less So

September 20, 2010
A snapshot of ILTF's snazzy new site.

Click on the screenshot above to visit ILTF's new, user-friendly site.

None of the issues that grantmakers are tackling is simple, that’s for sure. In fact, it never ceases to amaze me that, just when I think I “understand” poverty or school readiness, for example, another cutting-edge grantmaker and the nonprofits they’re working with teach me about new aspects of an issue and innovative solutions to address them.

While I basically can grasp what an issue encapsulates just by its name (homelessness or health screenings are examples), that was not the case when I went to interview the staff at Indian Land Tenure Foundation (ILTF), a Minnesota Council on Foundations member, for our summer issue of Giving Forum focusing on public policy.

What is Indian land tenure? Indian land issues are complex, and I needed a place to go to learn.  I turned to the foundation’s website. While I was able to gather sufficient information on the issues and strategies so that I could formulate an article on ILTF’s public policy work, what ILTF has just done since – revamping its website – will go miles in educating and impacting its work on Indian land issues.

First, what is Indian Land Tenure Foundation?

In short, ILTF’s mission is to see that “land within the original boundaries of every reservation and other areas of high significance where tribes retain aboriginal interest are in Indian ownership and management.”

According to ILTF, these key points are behind its mission:

  • Overall, less than half of the reservation land in the U.S. is owned and controlled by Indian people. On some reservations, such as White Earth in Minnesota, only a tiny percentage of reservation land is Indian-owned.
  • From 1887 to 1934, more than 90 million acres of reservation land that was guaranteed for the exclusive use and occupation of Indian people were taken out of Indian ownership and control. Only a fraction of those lands have been recovered since then.
  • With each passing generation, Indian communities and families continue to see tribal lands slip out of their control at an alarming rate.

How the New Website Can Help Paint a Picture of This Complex Issue

Here are some of the key features of the site:

  • Learn about the effects of the General Allotment Act of 1887 and the major land issues affecting Indian people today, including land loss, fractionated ownership and checker-boarding.
  • Access information and educational resources on the history of Indian land tenure in the U.S., including an interactive map with data for each reservation that was allotted and free land tenure curriculum for Head Start, K-12 and college.
  • Find information on available grants and search a database of grantees.
  • Read stories about Indian communities recovering their homelands and strengthening their cultures and economies.

“We serve many different audiences from diverse geographic, demographic and cultural communities, so we wanted the new website to be appealing and accessible to everyone,” says Erin Dennis, ILTF’s communications specialist. “While our primary focus is on supporting projects and initiatives that help Indian people and tribes with land recovery and management, we also hope to educate people who may not know very much about these issues. As a community foundation, we rely on contributions from other organizations and individuals to accomplish our goals. To that end, we also hope our website will provide potential partners, donors and funders with an understanding of the importance of addressing these issues now and the positive impact we are making on Indian communities.”

- Chris Murakami Noonan, MCF communications associate

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Posted by Chris Noonan

Colorado-Based International Giving Nonprofit Connects in Minnesota

September 16, 2010

When Global Greengrants Fund’s senior donor relations manager Jennifer Adams Kurr decided to move back to her home state – Minnesota, she proposed the idea of continuing her work on behalf of Global Greengrants Fund in the Land of 10,000 Lakes.

“Minnesota is very philanthropically minded and has a great emphasis on protecting the environment, so it only made sense to strengthen our connection to Minnesota,” says Adams Kurr. “And, becoming a member of the Minnesota Council on Foundations (MCF) is a great way to start connecting.”

So, please welcome Global Greengrants Fund as the newest MCF member.

Global Greengrants Fund describes itself as “bridging the gap between those who can offer financial support and grassroots groups in developing countries that can make effective use of that support.”

Because it is so difficult for grantmakers to identify grassroots groups in remote areas, transfer funds and then monitor grantee progress, international grassroots grantmaking is challenging to say the least. To navigate internationally, Global Greengrants Fund has built a network of 120 volunteer advisors around the world that enable the organization to capitalize on the expertise of the people who know firsthand where the most urgent and promising work is happening and to facilitate collaboration across language and cultural barriers.

Global Greengrants Fund makes grants typically ranging from $500 to $5,000 to grassroots groups in some of the world’s most impoverished places where other sources of support often are not available. Since awarding its first grant in 1993, Global Greengrants Fund has made more than 5,000 grants to groups in 120 countries.

Adams Kurr is looking forward to connecting with the others doing like-minded work here in Minnesota. In particular, she plans to be involved in the programs of MCF’s  Global Funders Network and hopes to explore partnerships with Headwaters Foundation for Justice, whose work is similar to Global Greengrants Fund’s’ – just on a local scale.

Global Greengrants already has a well-established partnership with locally based Aveda. Their work together goes back 13 years; most recently, Global Greengrants has served as a global partner for the past three years of Aveda’s Earth Month initiative. “I’m looking forward to strengthening our work with Aveda,” Adams Kurr says. “We’ve had a great partnership for many years.”

Adams Kurr will also work to connect with Minnesota companies that are part of 1% for the Planet, a new partnership for Global Greengrants. 1% for the Planet is an alliance of businesses that donate at least one percent of their annual revenues to environmental organizations worldwide.

No stranger to the work of grantmaker member organizations, Global Greengrants Fund is a leader with the national Council on Foundations (COF). Global Greengrants founder and president emeritus Chet Tchozewski  currently serves on the COF board of directors and chairs COF’s Global Philanthropy Committee.

- Chris Murakami Noonan, MCF communications associate

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Maximize Give to the Max Day

September 10, 2010

Last year’s inaugural Give to the Max Day in Minnesota set the single-day record for online philanthropic giving. More than 38,000 individuals visited GiveMN.org and donated $14 million to 3,434 nonprofits.

On this year’s Give to the Max Day — Tuesday, November 16 — GiveMN aims to shatter that one-day record, and they have some great suggestions on how your organization can help by maximizing contributions and making Give to the Max Day bigger than ever.

Contests to Increase Contributions

  • Show me the money! GiveMN will award $20,000 and $10,000 prizes to the two Twin City nonprofits and the two Greater Minnesota nonprofits that attract the largest number of individual donors. Increase your donors and you could end up increasing your dollars too.
  • Hourly giveaways! Throughout the 24-hour event, one donor will be randomly chosen every hour to have $1,000 added to their donation. Strategize on how to get round-the-clock giving going — a 2 a.m. donation could get your organization an extra $1,000!
  • Grassroots matching. This year there are no overall matching dollars, but GiveMN encourages your organization to offer a match. Nonprofits who secure matching funds for the day will be highlighted so donors can double their donations to these organizations. Let your biggest supporters know they can inspire giving by putting up a match for your organization. (More from GiveMN in October.)

Update Your GiveMN Pages

  • Spend some time before November revisiting your GiveMN pages. Ensure everything is up-to-date and reflects the newest work of your organization. Don’t wait until the last-minute when the site will be busy.
  • If you have a video that tells your story in a compelling way, include it on your page. GiveMN pages with video get 20 percent more donations!
  • For other ideas, check GiveMN’s best practices for your page.
  • Sit in on a GiveMN webinar on making your pages the best they can be. (More from GiveMN later this month.)

Spread the Word

Let’s all do what we can to maximize 2010′s Give to the Max Day.

Image CC Thomas Hawk

- Susan Stehling, MCF

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