Charitable Giving: DM Remains Tops, Younger People Use Multichannels

Direct Marketing

March 2010 -- According to the recent findings of a survey released by Convio and Sea Change Strategies about how members of different generations learn about charities, interact with them, and support them, members of Generation Y (born from 1981 to 1991) and Generation X (born from 1965 to 1980) -- now make up more than half of today's pool of potential donors.
 

Conducted by Edge Research, the study polled more than 1,500 people who contributed to nonprofit groups in the past year.  Select findings:
 

• People born before 1965 were most likely to keep up-to-date on charities from direct mailings, while younger people said websites were a bigger source of information.
   

• The survey found that while younger people give to fewer groups, they also are donating in multiple ways, compared with their elders.
   

• Direct mail remains the dominant way through which Matures give with 77% of donors born in 1945 or earlier saying they had given through the mail in the last two years.  Among members of Generations X and Y, direct mail remains at the top yet no single way of giving dominates -- online giving is popular too.
   

• Forty-three percent of Generation X and 26% of Generation Y members in the survey said they had given through the mail in the last two years, while 35% of Generation X had used a charity’s website and 29% of Generation Y had donated via a charity website.
   
• Cell phone donations were far less popular, with less than 15% of those in their 20-40’s giving that way.  Just 4% of Boomers (those born from 1946 to 1964) used the technique and 2% of those 65 and older did.
   
• The survey also indicated that text-message giving is gaining acceptance. Seventy-seven percent of people in the survey said they had heard about the opportunity to make a donation via their cell phones after the Haiti earthquake, and 36% said they would be willing to contribute via text after an emergency occurs.

About: Commissioned by Convio, Edge Research conducted the study in two phases and surveyed more than 1,536 donors to nonprofit organizations in the past 12 months. In December of 2009 three focus groups were held to write/refine the survey instrument, and provide qualitative understanding of the survey findings.

Sources:  The Chronicle of Philanthropy, Generations X and Y Make Up Majority of Potential Donors Study Finds, March 14, 2010 and Convio news release, New Study Reveals How Next Generation of Donors Engage and Give to Charity, March 14, 2010.