Page 6 - Winter 2018 Digital inLEAGUE Vol.41 No.01

into new challenges for the leaders of charitable organizations. They will need to find better ways to attract
these donors if they want to ensure the sustainability of their organizations.
“The biggest consequence for charitable organizations is going to be, they’ve got to retool how they think
about engaging major donors,” Moody said. “The next generation wants to be much more closely involved
in hands-on ways inside the organization. The line we use is that they’re less interested in having their name on
the outside of the building as a big donor. They’re more interested on being inside, working side by side on real
problems, giving their talent, not just their treasure. That means that organizations are going to have to be more
transparent with these major donors. They’re going to have to find ways for them to engage in real problem
solving and give them ways to be hands on.”

Frankly, Moody said, next-gen donors will be more “high maintenance.” But they will also be more loyal and
better for the organization in the long run.

The authors also noted that newer donors are more willing to experiment with different ways of leveraging
impact, so organizations should, too. Goldseker offered an example in Daniel Lurie, who runs Tipping Point
Community, a nonprofit that fights poverty in the San Francisco area.

“He’s featured in the impact chapter of our book,” she said. “And he says, very concretely, ‘Good intentions
are not enough. We can’t keep doing the same thing over and over and expect better results. We actually
need to do something different. We need to be innovative. We need to fund our indie in the nonprofit world
just like we would in the corporate world to be able to finally move the needle on some of these entrenched
issues.’”
The next generation is more willing to take some risks “because they think it’s a greater risk not to,” Goldseker
added. “There are pressing social issues in our world that haven’t been solved, and at the front end of their lives,
they have the time and the energy and the inclination
to make a difference. So, they’re willing to fund C4s, to
do crowdfunding.”

Future Areas of Giving

There is an assumption that the younger generation
heavily favors global and environmental causes over
local or traditional causes. But the authors said that
notion is incorrect.

“We found actually their interests are pretty similar to
previous generations,” Moody said. “There are some
differences around, for example, giving to climate
change and for LGBT rights and other human rights and advocacy. There are some changes that are emerging
there, so we certainly think those causes are going to be more prominent in the future. But again, they’re
not going to give up on health care and education and basic needs. What will be different is that they’re
probably going to be giving to different kinds of organizations within those causes. They want to give to smaller
organizations. They don’t really like to give to big institutions in which their contribution, no matter how big, is still
in some ways a drop in the bucket.”

That means umbrella organizations such as United Way or the Jewish Federation will have a particular challenge
in courting future donors. “That part of this philanthropic landscape is going to transform, I think, a little bit. And I
think they’re aware of that and trying to adjust,” he said.

Goldseker summed up the changes with a story about Victoria Rogers, who went to school on Chicago’s tough
South Side as the daughter of John Rogers, one of the most successful African-American money managers and
philanthropists in the United States. Her father encouraged her to volunteer starting at the age of 12. By the time
she reached her 20s, she already had 10 years of experience volunteering in the nonprofit sector.

“She’s now on the boards of the Brooklyn Museum … and Creative Time, and not brand-new to this field,”
Goldseker said. “Sometimes I think nonprofits look at 20-somethings and think, ‘You must just be starting out, so
I’m dealing with your parents and grandparents.’ Actually, millennials have been volunteering and participating
in nonprofit life for decades already.”

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