Are Older Donors Harder to Please?

November 07, 2008

Are Older Donors Harder to Please?

Donors older than 65 are more skeptical of charities than younger people and are more likely to refrain from giving because they are unsure that donations will go to the purposes they intended, according to a new survey.

Released by the direct-marketing experts Tom Belford and Roger Craver, who also write The Agitator blog, the survey of 1,500 adults compares attitudes about giving among people born before 1946; baby boomers born from 1946 to 1964; and “newbies” born after 1964.

Forty-seven percent of older people strongly agreed that they often don’t give because they “can’t be sure that the money will actually get to the people or causes it is intended for.” Only 37 percent of boomers and 22 percent of newbies strongly agreed with that statement.

Older people were more likely than the boomers or newbies to agree that nonprofit organizations have done a “miserable” job of establishing their effectiveness in the minds of donors.

To counteract such attitudes with both older and younger donors alike, Mr. Belford and Mr. Craver write, “you need to be experimenting with ways to get them involved” through volunteering, advocacy work, or other meaningful ways that demonstrate the charity’s impact.

Have you noticed that older donors are less trusting and more critical than donors from other age groups? What have you done to change those attitudes?

—Holly Hall

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Are Older Donors Harder to Please?