Donor Demographics

In the May 2010 issue, Jeff Brooks wrote about "Young Donors and Other Mythical Creatures," advising, "If you want to raise funds, aim your sights at the elderly."

As a millennial, I’m not interested in you repeating what’s worked in the past. While I appreciate working smart, I don’t appreciate doing the same thing over and over when everything else around you changes. I don’t appreciate wasted resources and time spent on what worked before for the sake of maintaining. I’m interested in you having that vision and doing something new to get there.

Changes in eyesight are inevitable as human beings age, according to The Canadian Association of Optometrists. Blurred vision at close range and growing need for higher light levels affect everyone in his or her middle years. That means it’s becoming harder every year for your boomer and civic donors — your most generous cohorts if your charity is typical — to see your printed materials, e-mails and website. To keep your print pieces with these groups clear and readable, follow these tips from CNIB.

The more I thought about it, the more I wanted to know what the experts were thinking in this area — so I decided to just ask! For the most part, what is in this article are direct comments/quotes from the folks that I believe are the brightest and the best in our industry around this topic.

With ever-increasing production and postage costs, nonprofits need to continually fine-tune their prospecting efforts in any way they can. With minimal investment of time and money, you will likely find the best "fishing holes" within your market area.

In June 2011, a handful of writers took on the task of breaking down traits and tendencies associated with a variety of donor segments — mature, African-American and faith-based — in our story, "Segment Snapshots."

At the 47th Association of Fundraising Professionals International Conference on Fundraising back in 2010, three fundraising professionals hit on the topic of "Getting the Younger Donor to Say Yes." The Human Rights Campaign's Lindsey Twombly, one of the presenters of the HRC's case study at Engage, joined representatives from Convio and PETA in the session, "Yeah, Yup, Right On — Getting the Younger Donor to Say 'Yes' to Your Nonprofit."

Survey, contact and interview your donors all you want. There's real value in doing so. But that value may turn out to have more to do with cultivation than with predicting their future behavior.

If your organization’s retention efforts aren’t fine-tuned, this is the perfect webinar to help you focus.

Members of a new class of affluent Asian-Americans, many of whom have benefited from booms in finance and technology, are making their mark on philanthropy in the United States. They are donating large sums to groups focused on their own diasporas or their homelands, like the organization that held the fund-raiser, the Korean American Community Foundation. And they are giving to prestigious universities, museums, concert halls and hospitals — like Yale University and the Metropolitan Museum of Art.