The Donor Retention Project – Week 7

You may consider Millennials a future source of revenue for your nonprofit, something to focus on when you have more capacity or someone to drive social media.  But that would be a mistake.  Did you know that Millennials are now the largest generation?  According to Ian Adair who is interviewed for Week 7 of the Donor Retention Project, those born between 1982-2000 have surpassed the baby boomers – by 30%!  That means there may be more than 100 million individuals waiting to be solicited by your organization.

Need another reason? While you may look at 1982 and think the person is too young to be noticed by your development staff, consider that people born in that year will turn 32 this year.  And are already donating to nonprofits on a regular basis.

Getting in touch
Best practices for working with donors is that you have to go to them, with their preferred method of communication and in a way that they find palatable.  Millennial donors are no different.

They have been proved to be a very charitable.  They like hands on projects and really getting to know the nonprofits that they support. But their methods of getting involved reflect a generational-shift.  Social media is, of course, key.

While that may seem scary, posting pictures or videos of your executive director, chairman of the board and a group of twenty-somethings working on a project is actually a lot easier than creating a newsletter and figuring out how many different ways you need to deliver the piece.  And, as a bonus, when you are ready to create a printed newsletter or pdf – you know what images are available to you – just check your social media pages.  Chances are some of your Millennials posted additional images that you could use (with permission).

What does This Have to do with Donor Retention?

While there were a few tips that directly dealt with the concept (i.e. using current millennial donors to help post and share updates), consider what was not said.  Millennial donors want to know they are not alone.  Knowing that a nonprofit has accessed an entirely new generation of donors provides confidence in a solid future for the organization.  And that in itself provides additional, and larger, donations for many years to come.

Interested in learning more about Donor Retention? Click here

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Read the rest of my series on 90 Days to Larger Gifts and Lifetime Donors by clicking here