Donor Demographics

That's right — even if you're in your 40s or 50s, you are a rare young donor. (Enjoy this last chance of being thought of as a young anything!) If you're under 40, well, statistically you don't quite exist. Charitable giving is almost entirely dominated by older people. It's their territory, the way pop music belongs to young people.

In the session The Generational Divide of American Giving at the Nonprofit Technology Conference held in Atlanta earlier this month, nonprofit consultants Andrew Magnuson and Matthew Mielcarek discussed recent research published by Convio, Edge Research and Sea Change Strategies on "The Next Generation of American Giving."

For too long, nonprofit marketers and fundraisers have decided how to communicate based on thinking grounded in direct marketing and economics. The problem with this approach is that it assumes people are coolly logical and make their decisions about supporting a cause based on a rational, linear thought process. We've laid out the cases for why our causes matter based on facts and numbers.