Fishing For The Same Fish?
In his series of posts on Barriers to Growth (more to come next week), Roger is focusing on institutional impediments, among them lousy boards, misguided fundraising investment policies, and lack of an internal growth culture.
These are issues a nonprofit can attack directly … all that’s required is talent and will, producing smarter fundraising.
Let me throw a different kind of card into the ‘is growth possible’ mix? A factor that no nonprofit can control.
Looking specifically at the US now, I’m thinking about the shifting demographics of the population, and asking: Are changing demographics markedly decreasing the donor pool?
From 1990 to 2012, the number of immigrants in the US increased more than five times as much as the US-born population (106.1% versus 19.3%), according to a Pew Research Center analysis of Census Bureau data. As a result, from 1990 to 2012, the share of immigrants in the entire US increased from 7.9% in 1990 to 13.0% in 2012.
When foreign-born and native-born population are both taken into account, the US non-Hispanic white population is 197.3 million, or ‘only’ 62.9% of the total population, and declining.
The regions of birth for the 40.7 million foreign-born in the US are: Mexico (11.5 million), South & East Asia (10.4 million), Caribbean and Central/South America (9.8 million), Middle East (1.6 million), all other (7.4 million).
Look at this chart from Pew Research, reporting the percentage of the foreign born population in the US by state.
Some of the top states on this list represent what has been the ‘mother lode’ of fundraising in the US.
Now, I’m not prepared to argue that ‘foreign born’ persons are less or more inclined than others to donate money to charitable causes. I have no evidence either way. However, I have far less confidence that I would understand the psyche of the individuals involved if I were asked to target them.
And that’s my point. US fundraising is driven overwhelmingly by white ‘natives’ who understand (we hope!) a shrinking population of other white ‘natives’. We keep fishing in the pond we’ve always fished in for the same fish we’ve always caught. And increasingly that doesn’t work.
But maybe the donor pool isn’t shrinking at all. It’s just more diverse and we haven’t yet bothered to learn how to fish it.
What nonprofits have made any investment in learning how they might raise money from our growing non-traditional population segments?
Tom
2 responses to “Fishing For The Same Fish?”
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Thanks for this post, Tom. We do continue to be “U.S.” centric – forgetting that one of the glories of the original U.S. was diversity. And now, too many think that diversity just isn’t so good. It is way past time to welcome and embrace the diversity of life experiences …. whether the prospective donor segment might be women (lots of research on that – but still too many fundraisers and organizations that deny women as board members or donors); people of color (who, of course, are not all one “different color” and just because of different colors are not, necessarily, different than some others and ….)
Well, it’s pretty complex, eh? But let’s be more aggressive in building and welcoming and embracing and creating.
There was something about your question – “are changing demographics markedly decreasing the donor pool” — that hit me in an unsettling way in its framing.
I don’t think that the question is about a shrinking donor pool for the US, but for mainstream organizations that don’t respond to the new reality. Or perhaps become irrelevant as other organizations grow around them in time. But maybe that’s what you meant to say.
Diverse communities, including immigrants, have been forming their own organizations and supporting local philanthropy and philanthropy in their home communities for as long as immigrants have been arriving in the US. (See Simone above).
While there is not a lot of research, though there is some, some studies of immigrant philanthropy have shown an evolution from early establishment of mutual aid societies, remittances and giving to houses of worship, to developing advocacy, social service and cultural associations, to eventually expanding philanthropy to issues not necessarily identified as serving one’s own ethnic or national community.
In various areas of the country, foreign born populations may skew very young still, so giving would also tend to be influenced by age, educational attainment, income level, etc,
When I was in development at a child sponsorship organization in the 1980s, we and our colleagues were already planning for changing demographics. World Vision had already developed a very successful direct mail program uniquely targeted at a diverse set of Latino national origins across the US. If my brain serves me at all, I think I remember that 1/3 of their growth at one period was from US Latinos.
Following that note in a different direction, if I look at Plan International fundraising countries, they include India, Colombia, Korea, Hong Kong, — countries that just a few decades ago were only program recipients, not the giving countries.
And then there are the foreign born major philanthropists like George Soros or Pierre Omidyar.
Just a few more ideas for your continued pondering.