Are We Hung-Up on Younger Donors?

Let’s face it: It takes a real act of the imagination to get into the head of someone older than you. It’s even harder when you’re impressed with your own hipness and think the oldsters just don’t get it.

Jeff Brooks writing in Fundraising Success:

Young Donors and Other Mythical Creatures

… even if you’re in your 40s or 50s, you are a rare young donor. (Enjoy this last chance of being thought of as a young anything!) If you’re under 40, well, statistically you don’t quite exist. Charitable giving is almost entirely dominated by older people. It’s their territory, the way pop music belongs to young people.

If you have a sense that there are lots and lots of young donors, it’s an illusion – caused by the fact that you are one and you know many others. Thing is, you aren’t a tree in the midst of a great forest. You’re in a tiny copse in the middle of a vast, treeless plain. The forest is where the old people are.