Millennial Donors: Show Me the Impact

Giving Compass’ Take:

• In this Stanford Social Innovation Review post, the authors of Generation Impact: How Next Gen Donors Are Revolutionizing Giving discuss younger funders and their desire to see direct results.

• How can we tap into the passion of millennial donors and help them refine their philanthropic visions?

• For starters, engaging Millennials in your cause requires thought and empathy.

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We’d be hard-pressed to find any donors of any age who say they don’t care whether their giving makes much of a difference. But for next gen donors, impact is everything. As the leaders of the new Golden Age of Giving, as donors with unprecedented resources and the power to revolutionize philanthropy, making a tangible difference is their top philanthropic focus. They want an Impact Revolution. They want to reshape philanthropy in ways they believe can finally lead to meaningful progress on our toughest challenges.

Our interviews with Gen X and Millennial donors of many backgrounds, from inheritors to earners, showed the same desire. Impact is what they want—and worry about—most. … When we surveyed over 300 major donors in their 20s and 30s, we asked them to indicate the importance of various reasons for engaging in philanthropy. Out of 23 possible choices, they ranked “seeing that my contribution makes a real difference and the organization has real impact” as one of the top three reasons for giving.

Will next gen donors, with decades of giving ahead of them, have the patience to stick around to see the real change their giving can have on long-term, complex issues? Time will tell. But some of the next gen donors we talked to were keenly aware of this challenge and tried to take the long view.

Read the full article by Sharna Goldseker and Michael Moody about millennial donors from Stanford Social Innovation Review.