Thundering Silence From Caucasians
On Monday, Roger posted regarding fundraisers’ neglect of the non-white market in the US.
After commenting specifically on the Hispanic market, he observed:
“It should come as no shock that in today’s direct response fundraising “Caucasians” are currently and overwhelmingly the target audience. List brokers and telemarketers — urged on by their clients of course — apply ‘zip selects’ and ‘demographic selects’ to ‘optimize’ returns based on affluent areas … indirectly targeting the white population.
I’m not faulting the brokers and telemarketers. The short-term mindset of most clients demands and tolerates nothing less.
What I am questioning is the long-term effect of this direct response apartheid — a process that too often simply ignores major non-Caucasian ethnic groups (Hispanics and Pan-Asians for example).
Why are these groups ignored?”
That question inspired a thundering response — two comments.
My conclusion? Most of today’s US — dare I say, white — fundraisers: a) are clueless as to whether their organizations and missions have any relevance whatsoever to — let’s start with — Hispanics; b) would be equally clueless as to how to communicate with them anyway; and c) are probably equally clueless as to whether it even matters.
So let me ask the question differently, and see if I get any better response.
Suppose you’re told definitively that your current market will be half its size within 20 years. How do you plan to counter that … to fill that gap? A Facebook page? More tweets?
Yet where is the innovation energy in the nonprofit sector, such as it is, directed today?
Tom
P.S. In case you are interested in the evolving market, here is Pew Research’s latest, excellent portrait of the US Hispanic population.
P.P.S. If anyone wishes to make a carefully reasoned argument that the US market is one big melting pot of consumers, each fueled by the same motivations, responsive to the same values and symbols, and using the same communication channels — in other words, don’t hyperventilate Tom, one size fits all — I’m happy to give that case a listen.
9 responses to “Thundering Silence From Caucasians”
Behavioral Science Q & A
Integrating an individual giving appeal with other communications from a charity can have both positive and negative effects, and the outcome largely depends on how it’s executed. Advantages of Integration Brand Consistency: Maintaining a consistent appearance and messaging across all communications can reinforce the org’s brand identity and strengthen brand recognition and trust among your […]
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Interesting question. I had a quick look at the testing done on this topic. On the positive side, in all cases, over half of donors decide to cover the fee. In some cases, it goes as high as 65%. Not a negligible percentage at all. Here’s another test from iRaiser showing consistent results (see point […]
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I’m not an expert in this but a quick search surfaced this article on the effect of tax reforms on 2019’s charitable giving. The researchers didn’t find a reduction. Actually, they observed an “increase in charitable contributions in 2019, even with the lower tax rates and the dramatically smaller number of taxpayers who itemize their […]
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Your morning challenge, Tom, made me respond. In my experience, the “majority” (even the declining not-much-of-a-majority anymore) often does not think about the “minority” (which isn’t much of a minority anymore).
Here’s a curious example: A colleague of mine was working in Canada. Her audience asked about the awareness of those “south of the border” (reference to the U.S.) for those “north of the border.” (Canadians) And my colleague responded honestly. “Nope, we don’t pay much attention to you. You’re more aware of us.” Majority-minority.
With no evil intent (or sometimes evil intent), the majority seems to disregard the minority – or those the majority has always thought of as the minority. Lack of awareness. Unearned advantage. Privilege and power.
I find that “organizations” (the people in the organization) don’t think about thinking about or talking about the others. I find quite a bit of discomfort with the idea of talking about differences and diversity.
From fundraising to boards to staff, etc. For example: How rigorous does the board and its governance committee talk about diversity for board membership? Whether it’s race/ethnicity, gender, generation, sexual orientation, socioeconomic status. And the same holds true for fundraising.
Too hard. Too uncomfortable. Not paying sufficient attention to the external environment. I hope that the Agitator will continue pushing. And that other leaders will continue pushing. Hopefully, the wake-up call will be in time. But for many organizations it won’t be. And they’ll close.
Thanks for asking this question, Tom. It’s an important one. Up here, north of the border, I’m involved in a groundbreaking project that is focused on this issue. We’re looking forward to sharing the leanings far and wide. Would love to know your thoughts: http://afpinclusivegiving.ca
Excellent questions, Tom. Here’s my perspective.
I am an ad and content producer with most of my professional history in the commercial world. I’m also African-American and female. I’m in the process of migrating my company’s focus from producing ads and content for commercial entities to doing the same exclusively for small and medium sized non-profits.
I have to say after working with a few already, that I can concur that there is an amazing lack of innovation in the non-profit sector. Things that seem common sense to me, coming from the commercial world, such as concerted, deliberate outreach efforts to various groups, are mostly absent.
In the commercial world, large ad agencies hire entire other agencies who specialize in taking the brand message and making it appealing and relevant to specific audiences. I don’t see much of this at all in the non-profit sector, even amongst the “big ones”.
Your question about long-term sustainability is an important and provocative one. I think the answers can best be summed up like so many others in the sector. There are those non-profits who simply lack the funds and/or can’t take the financial risk. It’s a bit of a catch-22 – a feedback loop. But the larger orgs who can afford it, just like many large commercial enterprises, are much more insulated from these shifts and trends and may not see them as being terribly important *right now*. The difference is that in the commercial world, agencies know that they *have to* appeal to as many buying groups as possible. There’s no lack of data on the consumer spending power of the Latino-American community (expected to reach 1.5 trillion by 2015) or of the African-American communities (expected to 1 trillion by 2015) or of the Asian American community (approaching 1 trillion already). I think the data for their charitable giving patterns is much less prolific.
Commercial interests, granted, are not the same as charitable organization’s interests but my opinion is that at some point, organizations will have to do what commercial brands have realized they’ve had to do ver the last decade. This will involve social research, not necessarily by the organization itself; followed by organization-specific market research and re-crafting/altering existing messages to best fit these different audiences.
Thanks for the post!
Thanks to the Agitator for adding Asian Insights to its Blogroll. I hope my small effort to provide some insights from Asia, will help increase the level of comfort in communicating with the ethnic Asian communities in ones own backyard. http://www.ushamenonasia.com/blog
Coming from the UK, I think there is a similar lack of testing and experimentation in this area (though happy to be told otherwise!). I have seen charities start to test mailings to specific demographics in different languages but this may be a little simplistic. There’s obviously no one fix all solution. There is the issue of first gen and second gen values, so on and that doesn’t always correlate neatly across timelines. Generally I think the approach should be one we should know like the back of our hands i.e. data mining and personaliation but it is bizarre how this tends to fall down past understanding (or percevived understanding) of more than traditional, older, Caucasian donors. At the extreme end of this I know of a case where a charity refused to feature a supporter image in a lift device who wasn’t white, as they felt it could impact support from their ‘traditional base’ (this was in 2012) which I find pretty appalling. Much like the implementation of other areas like digital, perhaps this is an area which requires champions within the organisation but defintely needs sector pressure and early leaders to drive this work through.
Thanks for those links, Usha and Leah! And, Madison, I DREAM of having the resources to hire a company to do those things for my little nonprofit – not an option for us financially, unfortunately.
Our community enjoys the Center for Diversity and the Environment which helps us provide better services to more diverse audiences through our programs. We have even had success in finding funding for providing better services to our large, diverse student population and their families at the program level. Our local AFP offered one seminar about how to communicate better with the LBGTQ population, but we haven’t had any trainings available about how to engage other populations. We have seminars about the changing demographics, but I think there is a lack of understanding exactly HOW to do that.
I shared the original article on my LinkedIn page asking my network what they are doing to communicate and engage more diverse audiences, but I had the same experience, Tom. No one answered. Shucks! I was looking for ideas.
Hi guys, very interesting article below. You are preaching to the choir on this (with me anyway). First, I should say I come from 28 years in the wildly for profit tech industry ( marketing, promotions and sales type exec positions). When I moved to non profs I was amazed at how behind the curve most are, even when they have money the thinking is outdated. In non profs I’ve been part of “Cultural Competency” and “inclusivity” initiatives in the past. Some are a big push from HR or the top down, in which case, the field organization is simply trying to serve their boss, or bosses boss, rather than really using the opportunity to make an impact.
I am part of a start up company (ShareLingo, Inc). ShareLingo combines rapid language learning with an infusion of cultural learning in our 8 week course. Since only 8% of the US speaks a second language (beyond using Hola and Adios), it is easier for them to teach knowledgable employees basics in another prevalent language than it is to find and teach the expertise to an existing bilingual person. We can work with any language. In the case of Spanish learners, we combine English speakers that want to learn conversational Spanish with Spanish speakers that want to learn English. Together they learn and help each other learn practical, useful communications (not like your high school grammar class).
Point being, even very large box stores spend millions of dollars learning how to get into the heads of caucasians, but do nothing to get into the heads of non english speakers. They are lazy. They just translate the marketing material to spanish. All they are really doing is marketing to caucasians in a foreign language. Our purpose in teaching cultural insights with the language is so the company that hires us can begin to understand the buying motivations of the non native english speaker. In other words, they learn to understand, what motivates the Hispanic, Russian, Vietnamese…etc, person to come into their store.
This same application (in general terms) also speaks (no pun intended) to todays non profits who are trying to engage a huge growing non native english speaking demographic. Many of which are wealthy and could support them if they could identify with them better.
Sorry for the long one. Love the Agitator. Keep it up.
Kevin
Just finished reading your post “Thundering Silence from Caucasians” discussing how we, as an industry, ignore potential donors of color as a target market, and I was reminded of Thomas Shapiro’s piece “the Hidden Costs of Being African American” that carefully explains how housing policy, generational inheritances, and more reinforce the wealth gap between whites and people of color. This was written in 2004, so it would make sense to add how predatory lending during the mortgage boom and subsequent meltdown disproportionally erased asset value for communities of color. In a recent discussion with a colleague, we also discussed how racial economic disparities and systemic racism force some families of color to provide financial assistance to struggling family members, which also reduces wealthier families’ ability to give philanthropically. I am struck by the conclusion, which is that we, as a non-profit sector, must fight tooth and nail to correct these systemic inequalities and boost the economic opportunity for all Americans equally or we risk slowly putting ourselves out of business. Ironically, I can think of few other sectors that rely as much as we do on the status quo related to wealth inheritance and class disparities in our current culture.
I’d love to hear your thoughts – do you think systemic inequality and racism has affected the giving capacity of people of color, and do you see opportunities for non-profits to address this? And do you think some wealthy donors and foundations are so entrenched in the systems we have now that they actually resist efforts to create greater economic opportunity and equality for people of color?
Just some thoughts. Thanks for the terrific blog posts– I really dig ‘em!
Brian
(oh, and you can find a nice summary of Shapiro’s writing here or a more detailed post of it here.)
B
“Thundering Silence” made me comment. Great to be accused of that for a change!
I wonder if our nonprofit staff target people who are like themselves – people whom they can imagine making a donation because the ask will make sense. The targets are mirrors of the nonprofit staff people. Affluence may be one purposeful filter on the database; mirrored attributes may be not on purpose. Combine them and you end up with “white and affluent.” I think we are seeing both mirroring and unanticipated statistical outcomes.
On the other hand, I have worked with major event income nonprofits who basically gave up on involving minorities in their events. The minorities did not “take to” the language and format of the standard offering so the nonprofit walked away and discontinued investment in those markets with events. A circle of assured failure resulted since the event itself might have been the only touch on that market.