The following post on nonprofit strategic planning was written by Standards for Excellence Licensed Consultant Jane Stein and is part of our “Ten Years of Advancing Excellence” blog series, celebrating ten years of the Standards for Excellence Licensed Consultant program. With vast experience in the nonprofit sector, Jane Stein has been providing consultation and training services to nonprofit organizations for more than twenty years. Jane became a Standards for Excellence Licensed Consultant in 2016.  

If you google “generational mindsets” you will be awarded with 755 models, studies, articles….all manner of information.  Most of it can be boiled down to several facts:

1. According to Wikipedia, “Millennials are the demographic cohort following Generation X.” There are no precise dates for when this cohort starts or ends; demographers and researchers typically use birth years ranging from the late 1970s to early-2000s. Not so precise, but let’s use this as our working assumption.

2. At first the millennials were assumed to be lazy, entitled and over-confident.  This is simply not true!

3. According to Time Magazine, this could be our next “Great Generation”.  But this is really up to us Gen-Xers, Boomers, grumpy old guys.

4. Millennials want their philanthropy in a different way than the above mentioned Gen-Xers, Boomers, grumpy old guys.

Each generation, according to all of those models, studies, articles, have their own mindsets.  The Gen-Xers have a skeptical outlook, a kinda free-agent work effort, were (not so much as they age!) ever so comfy with debt, are self-reliant, work-to-live and love the computer.  Boomers are more optimistic, driven, work-is-life, and pay-your-dues kind of folks.  And we grumpy old guys, never heard of work/life balance, are practical, dedicated, and never saw a print article we didn’t read….in print! The Millennials are now characterized as confident goal-setters who believe in egalitarian leadership, want integrated work/life balance, and do all things using “mobile” as their preferred medium.  But can we take the passion of the political and civic engagement of the millennial and make this, philanthropically speaking, our “greatest generation” ever?  I believe that we can, as long as we make sure that our nonprofits incorporate these characteristics of the millennials when engaging them in our work.  And here is the startling statistic that should insure that each and every one of the nonprofits that you love pay attention right now!

If every millennial in the U.S. donated just one percent of his or her income to a charitable organization each year, $16,000,000,000 will be raised.

Yup….that was 16 BILLION.  Do I have your attention now?  I sure hope so, because that number from the Giving Circles Fund, got my attention but good.  And now, in the spirit of all of my philanthropy columns, here are some handy dandy sure-fire ways to get the job done.

1. Millennials want mobile.  Duh…make sure you give them all information they need in a mobile format.   And for you Boomers and old guys in nonprofit leadership, don’t figure out how to do this yourself…you will never ever get it right no matter how social media savvy you are.  Get a brand new committee together of, yes, you guessed it, millennials. In the past we called this a “young leadership” group. Give the new committee the mission of creating (and maintaining) the very best possible social media presence.  This will accomplish more than just the goal of better communication all round; it will begin to truly engage a whole new group of future volunteer leadership and donors.  And use the on-boarding techniques that you use for new board members for this handy dandy committee as you recruit them for committee membership.

2. Find the very best way to create experiences.  Millennials want more than the traditional gala/dinnerdance/writingacheck that satisfied so many of the earlier generations.  (Maybe this is why it’s getting so hard to fill those tables at your gala.)  Millennials want to touch the mission, they want to engage on a very personal level, and they want to do it more than once. Make it happen!  And while you are doing this for the millennials, it ain’t such a bad idea to be sure that every single one of your board members, key volunteers and donors have an opportunity to get personal, too.  Dinner at the shelter, riding along with the mobile pantry, sitting at lunch at the school program, reading and mentoring.  You know the opportunities at your nonprofit…and by the way….go do it again yourself!

3. Educate, educate, educate.  Really….does anyone in this generation know who you are, what you do, and the way you impact the community?  Probably not.  Millennias need education (this would be a good plan in general if you suffer from the “best kept secret” syndrome!).

4. Make it easy to give.  That great new millennial committee you created can tackle this and tell you just how to do it!  And remember, just giving one-off is not enough for millennias.  So all of this needs to be tied into the plan for creating ongoing experiences.  I think that the new millennial committee is going to be very busy….and that is very, very good for your organization!

5. Bring all of this together by getting the current more mature (my euphemism for old) board members to make a wonderful financial gift to be matched by the millennials.  Or better yet, get a brand new donor to make a major commitment to set up a challenge gift.  Then let the millennial committee decide where they want to see all of that new money go.  But – offer them a set of funding opportunities to choose from….you know…you can choose to save the whales (not such a bad opportunity if that is within your mission) but they must be at-risk whales living in Park Place between the ages of 0-five.  You get what I mean.  Mission creep is not useful.  New money for new programs does not help to meet the bottom line.  New money to fund, improve and expand the proven areas of impact does just that.

So, back to the earlier question, can we make this, philanthropically speaking, our “greatest generation” ever?  Our at-risk kids, our hospitals, all human services, educational and cultural organizations….in other words the best in our civilization…demand that we must!