“Not long ago, the best way to get young people to donate was to wait thirty years.”

So observes Aussie fundraiser Sean Triner at Pareto Fundraising, in a wry and fact-filled post on 101Fundraising crowdblog.

Although noting that face-to-face recruitment has produced some success with acquiring younger donors, Sean more or less stands by the ‘just wait’ adage in his post, You just gotta love older people.

As Sean notes: “Many charities have a strategy to ‘get younger donors’. This is laudable, and the correct thing to do – after they have got as many older people as donors as they can get.”

Here’s why, according to Sean … and you shouldn’t be surprised:

• older people are usually less expensive to get a first gift in the first place
• older people are much more likely to give a second gift
• older people are less likely to cancel regular gifts
• older people give more
• younger people are less likely to die and leave a bequest within a budgetable time period
• older donors picked up online will be better than the younger ones.

Here’s the ‘tell all’ chart from Sean’s post:

This isn’t to say that fundraisers shouldn’t be mindful of appealing to younger donors. But here’s Sean’s take on that, noting the “constant terror” that “if we don’t get them giving now, they won’t give when they get older”:

“…a constant terror that has been with us for generations. Historically, every single generation gave less than their older peers. Until they became older and then they gave more! Every time.

So far. Past performance is the best indicator of future performance. But we can’t be sure that this will be the case in the future so we should be vigilant. We do have some cool, positive indicators though. For example, the millions of 40 year olds now supporting charity through regular gifts solicited on the streets and door to door. Hopefully these guys will be more generous in 2039 than current 65 year olds are right now.

Yes, we do what young people to give – but the responsible fundraiser absolutely must focus first efforts on older people.

Amen Sean!

And thanks to Harry Lynch at Sanky Communications for the pointer.

Tom