I enjoy mocking generational marketing.  You know the genre; Boomers are loyal, Millennials want meaning, Gen Z wants authenticity, TikTok, and oat-milk.

But that doesn’t mean birth cohort tells us nothing. There are three things that get lazily shoved into the same generational bucket.

An age effect is what happens because people get older. Risk-taking tends to decline with age for everybody.

A period effect is what happens when everyone lives through the same external event. COVID is exhibit A, so is growing up with the internet or social media. Everyone experiences the thing, though not necessarily in the same way.

A cohort effect answers the question period effect leaves open: not just whether you lived through something, but when. The same event leaves a different mark depending on the age it catches you at. A recession at 22, right as you’re starting a career, can shape how you handle money for decades. The same recession at 55 is a few rough years you ride out.

The Global Preferences Survey, covering 80,000 people across 76 countries, found evidence of cohort effects in several preferences that matter for markets, institutions and civil society.
Later cohorts are

• More willing to take risks
• More patient and willing to delay gratification for future rewards and
• They are more prosocial, meaning more inclined toward cooperation and helping others.
• Trust moves the other way. Later cohorts are less trusting.

That’s interesting. It also gives the generational crowd a tiny bit of oxygen but let’s not hand them a flamethrower.

This does not mean “Gen Z donors need X” or “Millennials respond to Y.” That’s still horoscope segmentation.

What it does mean is more subtle and more useful.  People are shaped by the world they grow up in. Preferences are not carved in stone. Technology, globalization and social conditions can leave a lasting imprint, especially when those forces hit early in life.

But the fundraising implication is not “build a campaign for people born between two dates.”

The implication is almost the opposite. sinc the differences within a generation still dwarf the differences between generations.

Take two donors born in the same year.

One sees herself as an environmental protector, scores high on Openness, and is drawn to possibility, discovery and big-picture change. Give her a rigid, institutional, proof-heavy appeal and have wildly missed the mark.

Another donor, same age, sees herself as a protector of family and community, scores high on Conscientiousness, and wants responsibility, order, proof and follow-through. Give her the dreamy exploration copy and she sees fluff.

That’s the part the generational deck never seems to get around to. Cohort effects can tell us something about the climate people grew up in. Useful, yes. But identity tells us what matters to someone and personality tells us how they process the ask.

And separate still, motivation tells us whether giving feels chosen, meaningful and doable.

Those are donor-level explanations not birth year make believe.

So yes, younger cohorts appear more risk-tolerant, more future-oriented and more prosocial, while also less trusting and while that’s accurate, it’s a cohort average and donor strategy has to explain individuals.

You can know, today, about the individual on your file – who do they believe they are? How do they process the ask? What makes giving feel chosen, meaningful and doable?

Birth year is not much of a clue to answering any of those but treating it as one is how we wind up with the “Millennials love experiences and authenticity” deck.

Kevin