They probably didn’t even look at crowdfunding considering it’s talking about organizations.
Hey uhhhhh…. this just isn’t true. Millennial actually OUTGIVE their previous two generations percentage wise, they just give differently than the last two gens. We spread out our money instead of doing multiple big donations throughout the year. For one of my masters classes I did my final paper on millennial giving and here is my fav source that breaks it down: “In 2014, 84 percent of millennial employees gave to charity and 70 percent of them donated more than an hour to a charitable cause, according to the Case Foundation’s Millennial Impact Report: 2015 (download required). Sure, boomers and Gen Xers are giving more in terms of dollars ($732 and $1,212 per year, respectively), but at an average of $481 given each year, millennials are quickly gaining influence over the philanthropic space (source: The Next Generation of American Giving, 2018). Considering that millennials earn less than their counterparts did and are often riddled with student debt, years away from owning a car or a home, these numbers are significant. If people become more generous over their lives and are more likely to give if their parents give, millennials will become the most generous generation in history. One can easily imagine this reaching 95 or even 100 percent by the time they reach midlife. As millennials double as a working population, their share of charitable donations is likely to reflect that growth. Organizations should be doubling down on their efforts to connect with and reach millennials.” (Forbes, “How Millennials Are Changing Philanthropy, Justin Wheeler)
In conclusion: If nonprofits are hurting it is because they refuse to engage with millennials and their communities, not because millennials “aren’t giving”.
Sincerely,
An MSW student in Nonprofit Management
thoughts, @copperbadge ?
@arielwasreal nailed it. What’s more, almost all nonprofits are aware of Millennial generosity. There’s study after study about it because we want them Millennial Moneys, so we want to know how and why and where they are giving in order to start stewarding them for more. So this article is either cherrypicking or disingenuous in the extreme.
I didn’t read the article in detail because I work in nonprofit for a living and I go to Tumblr for fun, but it’s important to remember a few things:
1. Most Millennials don’t have the familial wealth that their parents did at their age, because Boomers and Generation X are living longer and healthier lives than their parents did.
2. A vanishing middle class means that there’s a much smaller mid-range between working-class and high-net-worth, so there’s a huge chunk missing from the current Millennial demographic that the Boomer demographic had. Middle class giving has been declining because the middle class is declining. And this is doubly important because…
3. Millennials who stand to become high net worth individuals without inheriting are still ten to fifteen years away from the age when that significant wealth (and significant philanthropy, because their kids are out of private school/college) usually starts to really occur. A handful of baby zillionaires in Silicon Valley aside, most of the ultra-wealthy become ultra-wealthy in their forties or beyond, as investments start to really pay out and they gain seniority in their firms. That being the case, a lot of giving right now is coming from the working class, who…don’t have a lot to give yet.
So right now, with the oldest Millennials not quite yet 40 and almost none of them having received parental wealth via inheritance, it often seems like they’re giving less because there’s no middle class bolstering giving and the wealthy tier isn’t actually wealthy yet. But if you look at the number of Millennials giving rather than the numbers they’re giving, it’s incredibly significant.