Host: Welcome back to another episode of Go Beyond Fundraising, where we explore trends, motivations, and strategies that drive nonprofit marketing and charitable giving. Today, we are looking at a fascinating topic shaping the future of fundraising: generational giving.
This is always a popular topic, and we’re specifically going to break down some of Gen X’s unique characteristics, make a few guesses about the up-and-coming Gen Alpha, and look at how their philanthropic behaviors and preferences will transform the landscape for nonprofits as they come of age in the next decade or so.
Joining us to discuss this topic today is Alyssa Boger, our EVP of Client Strategy. Alyssa, welcome.
Alyssa Boger: Thank you, Leah. I’m excited to be able to talk to you today about Gen X and Gen Alpha. We’ve had a lot of conversations in the last year about Gen Z, and we’re able to work with Classy on some research there. But sometimes Gen X is a little bit forgotten, so I’m excited to be able to talk through what we’re seeing in that generation and what’s to come on the horizon with Gen Alpha.
Host: Absolutely. Gen X is such an interesting generation because when we think about people in their prime earning years right now, it’s Gen X. They’re such a fascinating generation, like the millennials that came of age in this rapid technology transformation. And so, I’ll be interested to get your thoughts on what we’re seeing and expect to see as this generation starts to retire in the next decade or so.
Who is Gen X? What do they look like as donors?
Alyssa Boger: Gen X typically are those born between 1965 and 1980. There aren’t official generational markers, but that’s what’s traditionally accepted. So, that makes them around 44 to 59 years old this year. They’re about 20% of the U.S. population, and they represent around 22% of giving in the United States.
So, a significant portion of our available donor base and those we want to talk to from a fundraising standpoint. They lead all generations in the number of volunteer hours served. They average about eight volunteer hours per month and are embedded in the state or mindset of philanthropy. It may not always be giving of dollars; it might be giving of time or their passion, whether advocacy or volunteerism.
So, I think that’s just an interesting thing to consider — they’re very connected to the organizations they want to serve or be part of and feel deeply connected to their communities. So, that’s something that I think we’re seeing in the types of organizations they want to serve: those within their community. That might be education organizations, places of worship, and causes or missions, like environmental issues, international development, children’s welfare.
If you take a step back and think about where they are in life, they probably have families and children of all different ages. Some within this generation still have elementary school kids because they started later in life, and others are on that empty-nester track. They all consider the world in which their children are growing up and what they’re stepping into, and so they are driven toward causes that will support their family unit and their children’s success as they continue to grow up.
They are also more focused on the number of organizations that they support. Boomers tend to support a few more organizations. Even millennials tend to support a few more. Gen X is starting to zero in on the causes that are most meaningful to them. They probably had to be more mindful about their spending and their giving because they have been raising kids. And I know from personal experience that’s costly. And so, through that time of raising and building a family, you prune the types of organizations and number of organizations you serve. So, they are more fickle or loyal to a smaller number of organizations than other generations.
Host: That’s interesting that you shared that they tend to support fewer organizations that they’re more loyal to because when I think about some of the most transformational events, especially in the U.S. in the last 20 years, Gen X has weathered a lot financially with different recessions, a lot of volatility with, I’m sure, things that are happening in their retirement fund. They’re thinking about what they want their post-retirement years to look like.
So, do you have any other thoughts before we move on to other questions about motivation?
Alyssa Boger: They’re in this interesting spot where they’re, like you mentioned earlier, more at the peak of their career, feeling a little bit more settled. However, to your point, they have weathered quite a few financial storms, so they are not feeling quite as confident in their portfolio as they were in the past. But they’re a little more focused on how they can have the most immediate impact. So, knowing that there’s volatility, they’re still on the cusp of finalizing their estate plans, transferring their wealth, and thinking about inheritance.
And so, they’re a little more focused on, “How can I make an impact here and now? How can I improve things for my community or my children?” As nonprofits, knowing that Gen X is more inclined to volunteer and want to be involved in the charities that they support, how are you reaching out to donors in the Gen X framework that you’re inviting them to be a board member or part of more of those leadership type of opportunities within an organization that furthers that connection and relationship that they have with you? I think they’re in that period of life where they’ve accumulated some wisdom and some knowledge, and being able to share that in some way, activate passions that they might have outside of their work and their home life, can be meaningful for this generation and the point of life that they are today.
Host: There are a lot of interesting facets to Gen X that I don’t know if nonprofits are fully paying attention to in some of their outreach and engagement strategies because, as you said, they don’t necessarily look like the previous generation — boomers — and how they like to give in the number of organizations they support and even the way they want to be involved with them.
Alyssa Boger: Yeah. I totally agree. There’s a lot of opportunity for those volunteer roles that might look different than in the past. It’s not just volunteers for events or a board, but someone who wants to do some consulting or has a unique skill set that could be leveraged to support a cause they care so deeply about. And so, not being afraid to explore those types of connections. If you open the door too wide, being able to control the message or strategy and have donors influencing some decisions can be tricky.
But looking for those opportunities to engage Gen X differently will set you up further for success as we also think about the great wealth transfer they’re about to be part of. And that’s something, in particular, that’s just another unforeseen and something that we have yet to experience in the nonprofit space to this magnitude. When you look at giving or adherence through 2040, Gen X is estimated to inherit $30 trillion. Millennials, about $7 trillion. So, just with those two generations combined, there will be a huge surge of giving potential and capacity within those generations. Gen X sooner, a little bit sooner than the millennials. But I think it’s an interesting strategy to be thinking about.
Gen X is less reliant on traditional investments and is moving into alternative investments, like private equity. Since 2018, the number of investors with sustainable and impact investments in their portfolios has doubled. So, organizations will need to be able to show donor impact and create family-donor relationships.
So, from a major gift perspective, you have some key donors who are boomers. How are you developing relationships with their children, not just that donor, so that the giving almost passes down from parent to child at some point and doesn’t completely disappear? So, there’s a lot of interesting nuance and, I think, opportunity to rethink some of the ways we’ve always engaged with donors, particularly for Gen X.
Host: And you bring up a great point that, within the next few years and even now, many Gen Xers are having to care for elderly parents. And so there are probably many who are already heavily involved with their parents’ finances and are seeing the mail coming in. They’re seeing the estate and how it’s been set up.
And I think having a mindset to who the caretakers are of those people in that estate is going to be crucial because the last thing any nonprofit would want to do is to mishandle that tender and delicate part of that handoff of that legacy gift or things like that with Gen X children who are used to a much more personalized relationship with organizations that they’re already supporting or even with brands that are interacting with them in incredibly personal ways.
Alyssa Boger: Yeah. I totally agree. I’m not sure if our CEO Trent Ricker shared the story on a past podcast, but there are two organizations that shall remain nameless that his father donated to in his estate. And the way that those organizations followed up with mom through that process was night and day.
One sent more of just a form letter from a legal department thanking them for this pretty sizable gift. The other wanted to get to know his dad’s wife and invited Trent and his brother to events to get to know the family. And that organization is likely to receive yet another estate gift when his mom passes away, possibly ongoing giving from Trent and his brother, versus the other organization that is nowhere in their ether, which has left more of a sour taste in their mouth because of the lack of engagement and stewardship.
And so, just thinking about how we as an industry sometimes lean toward more of that transactional approach because it’s easier — that’s how it’s always been done; we have a process and a system for it — versus taking the time to build connections and relationships. It’s a long game, but it really sets us apart as an industry, as people, and the connections we’re building.
And that will be important for Gen X in particular: the care that organizations provide as they start to receive these estate gifts or as they start to build more family-based donor relationships. This longevity can come with that because organizations have taken the time and intention to think about donors that way.
Host: Moving on to channel preferences: mail, digital, SMS. What are some key characteristics of Gen X donors and volunteers in their relationships with some of the most popular ways to market your nonprofit to raise funds for your nonprofit?
Alyssa Boger: Unlike some generations, Gen X is comfortable giving online and offline. So, continuing to build and support a true omnichannel strategy is critical. Gen X, really all generational donors, are bombarded with emails, advertisements, direct mail campaigns, phone calls, and texts. So, you need that combination of touch points with the right message at the right time to break through in certain areas.
That multichannel approach comes with inherent brand building, recognition, and familiarity, which allows the donor to decide how they want to make a gift and activate. It may be the direct mail appeal they receive, or it might be scanning that QR code and making a gift online. But that direct mail piece helped break through their cluttered email inbox and show them something that caused them to want to take action.
I think it will be, as much as we’d love a silver bullet and one specific channel to focus on, really more of that surround-sound approach of being able to leverage all of the different channels at certain points of time to speak with and activate donors in the way that’s going to resonate most.
I did read an interesting article that said that Gen X, more so than any other generation, is likely to be put off by bad testimonials, negative reviews, and outdated websites. They’re much more focused on impact, transparency, and the effectiveness of a nonprofit. And suppose it seems like a nonprofit isn’t serving its constituents, stewarding their gifts, or has an outdated website, insinuating that they’re not up with the times. In that case, it doesn’t have the internal strategies to be able to deliver on its mission as well as another organization that has a more updated website. Those types of things can influence their giving.
So, it is important to think about the impression that the organization is cultivating publicly and the story that you’re telling through donor impact stories, your presence on the web and social media, being able to clearly articulate your story and present it in a way that feels professional but also authentic.
Host: Let’s move on to Gen Alpha. What do we know about Gen Alpha at this point? There are not a lot of studies I know of on them. They’re still mostly minors under 18. But a lot is still happening in social media, giving us some indications of where this generation may be headed.
Alyssa Boger: They were born between 2010 and 2025, some yet to be born, half of whom have Gen X parents. So, they’re a combination of Gen X and the millennials. For this generation in particular, the pandemic accelerated their adoption of technology, so it became embedded in every part of their lives.
Remote learning. You’re at home. Your parents are probably working from home, so TV and screen time became a bit of a babysitter to get through the crazy onset of the pandemic. And so, they’re not digital natives. I saw an article that calls them Digital Ninja. And so, it’s just this next level of digital immersion, from anything from YouTube to gaming to social media.
It’s just a completely different world that these kids are growing up in, which is then translating into the causes they care about. One study showed that about half of 12- to 15-year-olds want to protect people from bullying and treat everyone equally. So, they’re in this environment, especially social media. There’s this innate desire for Gen Alpha to be famous because they see all these influencers around them, yet they also know that this isn’t healthy for them. And they see their friends or themselves being bullied, that their mental health isn’t where it should be.
More and more studies are coming out about social media’s impact. I think the Surgeon General is saying there should be a warning that it’s not safe for minors. And so, there’s this tension of, “This being where all of my friends are engaging. This is where I get my information. This is where I feel value and worth. But, also, I need to be in the real world and spend time with my friends, and I don’t want to feel this way about myself.” And so they’re starting to align more to those causes that are giving them a voice, such as anti-bullying and equity and mental health, those types of causes that they can already resonate with, which is, honestly, really sad. As a parent of young kids, it’s just wild.
Host: The awareness that nonprofit organizations need to have around how technology continually changes, the places where people want to spend time online, will always evolve. There’s always going to be something on the rise and something on the decline, so it’s good to have a built-in strategy for any new technology, social media, or platform that comes online.
What are our set procedures for evaluating this piece of technology? How do we ensure that we lock down our handles? How do we ensure that our branding remains consistent, no matter the channel?
That’s one aspect that, if I were sitting at a nonprofit, I would be thinking about. How do I responsibly respond to the changes that are happening, especially on the Internet?
Alyssa Boger: Yeah. I agree. Obviously, you can’t communicate directly with minors, even though we all want to have them in our email systems so we can start sending them fundraising messages. So, leverage platforms like Twitch to create and cultivate an audience within the gaming community, especially as younger individuals increase their engagement with video games. It’s an escape for a lot of them.
It’s not necessarily a long-term donor relationship play because you’re not getting all those individual donors and continuing to reach out to them. But you are, in essence, starting to plant those seeds of a culture of philanthropy and how someone might be able to support a cause because that gamer or an influencer, through a peer-to-peer campaign, is talking about how passionate they are about your mission, why they want to support it, and why they’re asking all of their friends and followers to support it.
So, it’s also essential to think about strategies in that way. Again, it’s definitely more about long-term play for creating connections with future donors who can be more one-to-one but, for now, can be part of a larger group or collective that feels like they’re supporting your mission through someone else.
Host: I also wonder if nonprofits should be thinking about how saturated Gen Alpha is in the whole world of influencers because I’ve seen kids on TikTok who are doing the “Get Ready with Me” videos, and they’re 12, and they probably shouldn’t have a TikTok, but they’ve got, like, a million followers because they’ve just got a great bubbly, engaging personality. And to your point, many of them want to grow up and be YouTubers, and being an online content creator is just a career that seems natural to many. How can nonprofits harness this in the future?
They’re all marketers — they’re all just born marketers. They’re all going to be born communicators and content creators. So, how can they leverage those native skills that these young people will have in the future to make them voices for their brand?
Alyssa Boger: That’s a great point, Leah. It will be interesting to see what unfolds with this generation.
I do think — I would hope — that a number of them have their parents who are helping to shepherd this content creation or if they’re developing partnerships with other brands because that’s happening with just the sheer buying power and influence this generation can have, being able to connect those relationships with their parents and with that child.
As we think about Gen X being so entrenched in volunteering and directly impacting an organization’s mission, what are those opportunities to invite the parent and child to volunteer together or to do some type of content collaboration? So, there are some interesting opportunities. As you said, they’ll have some great marketers who might be able to come in at some point and help elevate the organic content that an organization is creating and putting out there. So, it’ll be interesting to see how that partnership unfolds as they grow up and get older.
Host: Another facet I think about with Gen Alpha is that it is so difficult to curate content online, do fact-checking, and ensure that all this information pouring into their young brains is accurate and not influenced by biases. I can especially see more education-driven or advocacy-driven nonprofits thinking about how they can be responsible with the information they’re putting out there.
And I don’t know. I don’t have an organized thought about that, but sometimes the thing that keeps me up at night is whether this next generation will be able to tell the truth from fiction.
Alyssa Boger: I know. I’m even struggling with that, Leah. I was on YouTube, and there was a video of this woman making this dish that had to be a parody. But you don’t know if it’s fake because it seems so real. Then you go to the comments, and it’s half and half. Some people are, “Oh my gosh. Who would eat this? This is wild. This is ridiculous,” thinking it’s really her because she does recipes. And then other people say, “This has to be fake. This can’t be real. This has to be just for the engagement and the likes.”
Another video I saw, I was like, “Oh my gosh. Is she really making that for her husband?” Then I went to her page, and she’s just like a digital creator. So, again, she’s just creating stuff for the likes, comments, engagement, and monetization of that.
You have AI. It’s really hard; more and more reels are being created that are people’s faces, but it’s AI-generated content that they’re speaking. And you have to take a beat to either read the caption or to see that this isn’t matching up. It’s interesting what we’re going to be facing, which is even more reason why nonprofits have to be even more grounded in that transparency, authenticity, and honesty about their impact and what they’re doing with donor dollars because trust is going to be at such a premium as we continue. It’s going to be harder and harder to trust those unknown voices.
Host: Absolutely. As we wrap up today, is there anything else we should consider? Are there any other interesting facts you found as you researched for this episode to be thinking about these two generations who are one generation apart, the parents of Gen X, and then their children of Gen Alpha?
Alyssa Boger: I’m excited to see how fundraising strategy unfolds as we seek to engage these different audiences. We’re at an interesting inflection point, similar to what I was sharing earlier for Gen Alpha, even for Gen X. A number of their parents have been immersed in this digital world but, in many ways, are just longing to break that grip of social media and experience the world and be with people. And so, it’ll be interesting to see if we continue to see more of an emphasis on things like volunteering or if engagement in actual face-to-face, in-person events starts to see more of an upswing, especially for Gen Z. They seek experiences.
So, how are we, as an industry, rethinking the event space and creating those opportunities for more personal connection? It doesn’t have to be a huge run-walk-ride or a super expensive gala because that’s not what these generations seek. But what does an impactful experience look like for these generations, especially Gen X and Alpha, that they can create those memories as a parent and child of being able to experience the impact of their giving, whether it’s through volunteering or advocacy or making a gift? That’s how we start to pass down that culture of philanthropy and create a more sustainable culture and environment of giving well beyond the current generations we rely on for support today.
Host: That is such a great point. When I think about what we shared about Gen X and how they want to roll up their sleeves and lend some of their wisdom in the process or how younger folks see this world where they can customize anything, these rigid ways of interacting probably seem a little bit old fashioned to them.
I wonder how nonprofits can think about ways to invite their donors, volunteers, and constituents to come up with their own ways of volunteering or helping and be more creative in that process. At the end of the day, generations today want to feel like they’re contributing more than just showing up. They want to feel like they’re actually contributing something of their own insight, wisdom, and creativity in the process.
Alyssa Boger: That’s a great point. Thinking about those do-it-yourself events, whether it’s a fundraising or a volunteering opportunity, if you’re a food bank, how are you supporting Generation Alpha to do a mini food drive with their friends? It will engage their parents, as Gen X will help supply those things. But it’s putting more of the power in the youth’s hands, so they feel like they’re making an impact, making a difference. They’re coming together with their friends and community and starting to sow those seeds of philanthropy.
I think it’s also really easy, especially with the pandemic, to live in our bubble and not get out to experience what might be truly impacting our communities, the cities in which we live, or the injustices that other groups might be facing. And so, also, thinking as an organization, what are those learning experiences and teaching opportunities?
When I was in college in Los Angeles, I worked in our volunteer center. Our very first event, or I guess team bonding experience, if you will, as part of that Volunteer Center, was that we were broken up into groups. We had basically a route that we had to take through Los Angeles on public city buses. You had to stop at certain places. You had to navigate the bus schedule.
I went to a university outside of LA, so just getting to LA was a trip. But it opened my eyes to how most of the LA population travels and has to rely on getting around. It started making me consider so many things about my daily experience and how I could make an impact, whether it was environmentally or supporting all different types of missions and causes. And I wouldn’t have had that perspective if I didn’t have that out-of-the-box experience.
Even just thinking about how you, as an organization, can bring your mission to life through unexpected experiences like that. It allows Gen X, Alpha, and the parent-child relationship to see a new aspect of their community or city for the first time and build those experiences together, which is really meaningful.
Host: So many great things you’ve given us to think about today, Alyssa. And like you, I’m excited to see some of the studies about these generations and how they interact with philanthropy in the coming years. Thank you so much for your time today and for making time for this discussion.
Alyssa Boger: Of course. I appreciate it.
