The prime fundraising population is expected to grow from 72 million to 120 million over the next 40 years, according to U.S. Census projections. This is great news because many of these people will become donors.
However, it’s not a slam dunk. We also need to pay attention to the generations that make up this audience, which are indicated by the different shades. Over the past 10 years -- the period over which most of our direct marketing testing knowledge is based -- the dominant generations were traditional. These are the G.I. and Silent generations, indicated in blue and red, respectively. In the next 10 years, Baby Boomers will be the majority of our audience.
Much has already been written about how the generations respond differently to fundraising approaches. This generational shift has huge implications for our donor marketing.
Growth Recommendation: Split out age in your testing to learn which approaches work best with the emerging Boomer segment.
More observations and thoughts to follow in future weekly updates.
In today's economy, fundraising needs to give value back to the donor. We have done many fundraisers for our school, Henderson Elementary, as I am the PTO president. I feel I should share or write a handbook on the dos and don'ts in fundraising...
ReplyDeleteThe best value fundraiser we've done recently was discount cards. The fundraising company we worked with put the merchants together for us in 3 weeks which we approved. Some offers were tremendous, like buy a burger get a free burger at the local McDonalds or 10% off from True Value Hardware (my husband can spend hundreds of dollars on one project alone...).
Anyhow, the discount card was a proven winner for us and something we will use as a traditional yearly fundraiser since the cards are good for 12 months.
The fundraiser company we used was scratch and help, which can be found at www.scratchandhelp.com
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