Generation Impact, Updated and Expanded Edition

APPENDIX ABest Practices for Nonprofits and Fundraisers

Introduction

Gen X and Millennial major donors will be your organization's lifeblood for decades to come—they could even turn out to be your biggest donors ever. As nonprofit and NGO leaders, professionals, and fundraisers, we want to help you learn what these next gen donors are about, what to expect from the emerging philanthropic revolution, and help you devise “next gen appropriate” ways to engage them.

This guide will help you rethink and retool your donor engagement strategies for next gen major donors. We'll show the most practical ways you can prepare for the coming changes, what proactive steps to take, which changes you should brace yourself for, unintended consequences or unforeseen pitfalls to avoid, and new opportunities you can leverage.

The Coming “Impact Revolution”—A Revolution of How Not What

The most common question we hear from nonprofits concerning next gen donors is: Are they going to give to the same issues and causes as their predecessors? For the most part, our answer is “yes,” although it's a complicated “yes.” The issues that this rising generation says they want to support track with those that have interested past generations, even though there are some variations (see Chapter 2, especially Figure 3.1).

However, how next gen donors go about supporting these causes will certainly change as will which organizations they gravitate to within those cause areas. This is because the coming transformation ...