Editors’ Note:  Periodically we reference the wit and wisdom of Jeff Brooks over at FutureFundraisingNow and occasionally run a few snippets. Today we’re featuring an unabridged guest post by Jeff on the pitfalls of relying on myth and stereotype — sadly an all-too-common affliction with many fundraisers.  Roger and Tom

“How are we going to replace our dying donors?”

It’s a reasonable question.

With a lot of unreasonable answers.

A fellow fundraising professional recently told me that we can’t replace passing 90-year-olds with aging Boomers — who are now between 50 and 70. Here, according to my correspondent, is why:

“Boomers are ex-hippies. They don’t have any money, though they do have big hearts.”

So Boomers — the entire generation — are a hopeless case. The fundraising industry has no choice but to skip the Boomer generation and move straight to the Millennials. (For unexplained reasons, we’re also skipping Gen X, the generation between Boomers and Millennials.)

I hope you see the two problems here:

• It’s strategy by stereotype, from someone who seems to have learned about demographics and marketing by watching cartoons rather than watching actual human behavior.

• It’s observably not true.

Sweeping statements about what an entire generation is like are almost guaranteed to be misleading. So while the “ex-hippie/no money/big heart” description may fit Roger and Tom to a T — it is by no means a meaningful description of all 75 million Boomers in the US.

In fact, very few Boomers could be called ex-hippies by any definition of the word (though admittedly, a lot of us Boomers made some seriously regrettable fashion choices during the 60s and 70s). And when it comes to money, Boomers are the wealthiest generation in human history. As to heart size, I think it varies little from generations before or after.

Anyone who is raising funds and paying attention to the demographics of their donors will know these things:

• Looking at donors by generation, Boomers are our second strongest group, after Silents (those born from 1928 to 1945). Gen Xers are third best. Millennials are fourth.

• Boomers have significantly higher average gifts than their elders.

• Boomers are somewhat less responsive to direct mail than their elders — though it’s not yet clear whether that’s a characteristic or their generation or of their current age.

So while it is scary — okay, it’s terrifying — that our stalwart Silent Generation donors are dying at an accelerating rate, the news about their replacements is not all bad:

• Boomers are the largest generation yet (though Millennials will soon outnumber them).

• It is the wealthiest generation yet.

• Their donor behavior is different from their elders’ — but not radically so.

• They will live longer than any previous generation.

If you’re doing strategy by stereotype, you might feel like a doomsday prophet carrying a sign that says THE END IS NEAR. That’s a cartoon. And if you think Millennials are the natural replacement for the Silents … you’re entering a long era of pain and disappointment.

Demographic reality says otherwise. You should be looking at the Boomers and feeling more like a Gold Rush Prospector. It’s not going to be easy, and we’re going to have to adjust to a lot of new realities. But there’s gold in them-there demographic hills!

Jeff Brooks

Editors’ P.S.  For an extraordinarily valuable helping of Jeff’s wisdom, we recommend his just-published How To Turn Your Words Into Money. There’s a lesson you can put to use on almost every page.