Episode 300: Communication and Outreach By Generational Need
To steal from Mr. Rogers. It's another beautiful day right here on this edition of Around with Randall. We talk a lot about the way in which we interact. We develop trust. We build rapport with our donors. This could be plan giving, annual giving. Major gifts. Communication, general outreach. Today, we want to attack this just from a little bit different perspective and be a little more nuanced, because what we need to do is pay more attention to how we communicate and the decisions that we make in those communications.
And we have all the answers generically, or at least for groups right in front of us, but we tend not to use them very well. And what I'm talking about is understanding generations and understanding the language that goes with them. So, I want to start with a great nod, particularly to two organizations, but there's some other really good research in the work that's done by first and foremost giving you a say.
Reports. You have to get into the nuance. I'm lucky enough to be part of the group that helps support that and works through some of that data piece, at least analyzes it and the outcomes and the great work that's done by the school philanthropy. The second is the work that's done by the Denton and Company, who's done studies in 2016, 2000, I believe, 20 and now 2425 on this.
And this is where nerdy Randall can help you out. You don't have to read all of this. I'm going to give you the synopsis in my 20 minute classroom here on A round with Randall, but it's premised under a very simple understanding. I have an amazing 81 year old mother, and I have a as amazing and completely different ways nine year old daughter.
I don't communicate with them in the same way. I just don't. When you send my mother a handwritten thank you note, it is as if you have walked into her home and given her the golden chalice. She appreciates it and she writes them better than anybody I know, and probably I should be better at it myself. My daughter, nine year old, who is being forced to learn cursive, thank goodness, is going to walk into a world where she doesn't use those kind of communication tools.
And the point being is, is that while we limit social media and iPad time and certainly anything related to social media, her life is going to be based on more of a digital communication way. We're beginning to see this because we've allowed her to send me some text messages through her mother's phone. She's sitting right next to mom when I'm texting Marilyn on something, if I'm traveling, and the next thing you know, I get a just a line of emojis, some of which you can guess from a mischievous nine year old include things like poop and the giggles that go along with it.
She's already building into that communication. Habits shape relationship expectations. We can't assume that one way of communicating or outreach is good for everybody, and that donors bring some level of expectation to that communication. They want it easy. They want it in the way that's meaningful. If you try to communicate with my mother through an app, which, by the way, happen the other day and knocked off her email off her phone.
They wanted some authentication of that. This was after a period of time. I think it was Yahoo. It doesn't make it to the particular email, house or format is every once a while you got to log back in. My goodness. Not a good morning for mom until you know her son me got over there and fix it.
The point is, is that we have to have different approaches, and we're going to get into this small staffs. That may mean some adjustment, but we'll talk about what that might look like as well. So let's start at the top. Work our way down. We'll get into the tactical. But the attack will be a little different today. But it will be tactical.
I'm going to break apart the generations and tell you on a in a big picture. Really? What are some of the details that you can look at in doing this? So we have to come to the conclusion. We have to understand, we have to be willing to accept that one standard donor level of communication or outreach is no longer sufficient.
That technology helps us. Small staffs cannot use this as an excuse. And this gets into the questions of how you communicate. Do you do different annual reports for different generations or groups of people? Do you have different levels of outreach with email versus letters? How about different letters that say different things? How about how you think people video versus letter versus asking them for dollar support or philanthropic opportunity?
If you're a small nonprofit listening to this, or maybe you're one that maybe a little bigger, but you're like, we don't have a stewardship staff, we can't afford it or had to cut back on this or that. You're going to have to learn to trust, to adapt, to embrace artificial intelligence. I talk about AI and awful lot, and I've always follow my dear friend Nathan Chappelle, who's the leader in this by leaps and bounds.
Get his book nonprofit AI. It will help you. He and my other friend Scott Rosenkrantz, who wrote it together, two geniuses in this area so far ahead of everybody else. They'll help you with this. And if you want to go back and listen to one of my podcasts on it and High Level episode five, I kind of attack it.
That got to be like five, five years ago. I was like, you got to get into this and acceptance organizationally and individually. And episode 198, if you have any of my prediction shows, which I do always to a right before the end of the year and then review the previous year's every prediction show it's in there. The point is, is that AI can help us in these ways with stewardship outreach.
It can change things. And there are there are great third party vendors that can help you do this. I'm not going to embrace any of them off the top, but what I'm telling you is, is that you can do this if you're a small staff and if you're a big staff, there's no excuse for it anymore. We need to meet donors where they are.
This is a premise that I talk about all the time, and I'll reiterate here in a moment when I talk about the generations, is we have to adapt what we do to go where they are, and that we have to look at this in different ways and be willing to change what we do. Because generations and the trends and the research give us an opportunity to hone what we do in a meaningful way, and then we tailor even more specifically or narrow down what we do through individual relationship building activities, trust discussions.
But this all leads us to figuring out what we're actually trying to do. So the tactical piece today is a look at the generations and some of the things that we can garner out of them. And each one of them will talk about what's our realization, what's our outreach, and what's our relationship building, and give you a couple in each area.
So if you want to take a note or two, might help you in framing some of this communication. As I mentioned about 100 and 20s ago. All of this, though, is based on a on a basic premise that I think all too often our industry fails, and I seem to talk about a lot more and more because we have to quit talking about what we need, and we need to be asking our most loyal supporters, the people who believe in our mission, who are the most dialed into what we do.
We need for that. We need to ask them what they want. What are they trying to accomplish? How can we help them do that? How can our nonprofit help them accomplish their goals? Does that also then align with what we're trying to do? Yeah, but people are getting tired, particularly larger donors of it'll give you 25 bucks for that, but they're not going to give you 25,000 unless you sit down with them and say, hey, what are you trying to accomplish with your philanthropy?
And can we help you do that so it meets them where they are, their emotional connection. That's how you get transformational, not number of zeros, but the bigger picture of what they're trying to do. And how do we maximize that emotional connection. So let's break this apart into the generation. So we move into the tactical. We'll start with baby boomers starting in.
They're born about 1946 going to somewhere between 1964 and 65, in terms of their birth year. I'm going to skip the silent generation. So that's born in or before World War two. It's not that they are gone. They are not. In fact, my mom misses this by like six months. Eight months. The point is, is that a lot of the decisions that they are involved with are already done.
And if they were born, think about this in 1936. They're 90 years old. So we're talking about a small group. If you want more information about the Silent Generation in particular, you can email me at podcast at Hallett Philanthropy. I'm glad to answer any individual questions, but for the largest, we're going to start with the baby boomers, born in 1946 to about 1964 65.
And really, the realization is, is that we've understood them as in philanthropy or philanthropic opportunity connected to the institution, to longstanding long term relationships, not with individuals, but with the institutions that help frame their life. Church universities? Maybe private schools could be a social service agency that they volunteered at for years. What we're really talking about in this kind of realization of the generation is, is that they are connected, but really they're moving into the legacy connection stage should bring up plan giving.
We've talked about that a number of times here on the podcast around with Randall. What they really want is a recognition of really loyalty and the history of their engagement. So that brings us to from realization to how you do outreach. They're still probably not all mom does pretty well with email. You're not going to get very far with the Facebook and the Hulu.
Is that to make an old joke with the technology? She's not going to do any of those things. She so it's at most art. It's more direct mail, personal calls, face to face communication, and it's more traditional. And that's good because that builds trust, that builds engagement, that builds the opportunity for us to build a relationship. The relationship building process is really based on access to leaders.
They want to hear see the people that are making the decisions they want to know because it's the institution they believe in that that leader is driving the institution mission driven to where the organization can be incredibly engaged in the mission that they're involved with or that they that is articulated, that comes through the leader. But on the other hand, they also want personal stewardship, which means the relationship gift officers have really is important.
And this is where again AI if your small shop you can. Stewardship is one of the great places AI can be integrated to create individual annual giving reports or individual thank you letters or individual outreach. They look at things in the long term in the longitudinal, particularly as they move into the legacy stages of life. And I've talked about this a number of times in the plan, giving pieces of articles, podcasts, blog posts with my mom.
She's beginning to think about this. What does she want her life to stand for beyond her family? So baby boomers 46 to about 6465. The second is my favorite generation. Probably the best generation of all time, generation X, and I say that because I'm a part of it is we're talking about 1964 or 5 to maybe 81, 80, 82 different kind of metrics out there.
But it's going to be right there at about 1980 or 81. And the realization here is, is that they want a connection that's based on respect. They want to know that they're valued and that the relationship needs to be clear and efficient and most importantly, understood and understood means two things. Number one, that there's that appreciation, as I mentioned.
But number two is they want to know where the money goes. What's the ROI? What are we trying to accomplish here? Remember, we're about institutional relationships, a great deal of trust between the donor and the institution. In generation X, it's more about the project. It's more about the cause. It's more about the impact in a narrower band, just not the institution as a whole.
But in this particular endeavor. Which brings us to how you outreach my generation. Generation X is the first to really begin to lean into email, and they're a little bit more mobile friendly. I was born in 1970, so I'm kind of at the front end of the generation or, you know, a third through. And I'm probably less likely to engage in the social media.
But if you're in the latter half and my sister is one, I have two sisters, but the second is at the very talent. She's much more socially social media engaged and willing to do that. So it depends on where you are in the generation, and technology's changing quickly for a lot of us in this generation. But it comes down to also selective mail.
And I would tell you that I am less likely to make a larger gift with electronic means, and many of my generation feel the same. So there's some way, shape or form you're going to have to build in some mail component to them, to my group. Which brings us to how you relationship build. And that's all about inviting people in to be part of meaningful change, meaningful involvement.
I think about a couple of nonprofits that my wife and I have prioritized over the years and years. Excuse me. And I'm a little surprised I haven't been asked to be a little bit more engaged, in part for two reasons. Number one, there are gifts to these organizations are enough to be at least know our name. Nothing major in terms of like earth shattering.
But number two, because of my career and I don't get asked now. Maybe they're smart because I'm a pain in the backside and people don't want to deal with me, and that's fine. But my decisions are based on the connection. The older I get, the more I want to feel as if I'm connected in a meaningful way. And I'm very much along the lines of what?
Second is about thinking about future leadership for me, for the organization, for the board. What are you doing to move forward? And it's important because we want to treat people, this group, generation X, as major donors, even though they may not be your largest major donors. Now, because we're back to the wealth transfer, we're going to inherit money now.
All of us aren't going to inherit the same. But the point is, is we're going to come into money. And it may be in our early 60s, but we feel a pull to be supportive of what our parents wanted us to do. And I don't mean by organization, but by I want to make the world a better place.
And so if you don't treat us that way now, eventually I'm going to say, yeah, you're not going to get it. And there's one particular case I'll use without names where that's an exact emotion for me. I'm right there. Like they're treating me with the donations we're giving and they're not 50 bucks. As if they just don't count.
Like we need bigger dollars. You're not that important. And I'm like, yeah, you're throwing away the relationship for long term when they're probably going to be a lot more opportunity. So generation X 64 to early 80s. And really it's about really being smart with the communication, the outreach and making them feel engaged to the particular projects. Millennials this is actually the largest generation.
Anyone to you know, to short of the turn of the century. And this is all about impact. And it's they're looking at ROI and they're looking for transparency and how that's developed and what transparency overall. They're also the first generation that really pushes in. And I think it's in part because of the way in which we communicate. We'll get to that in a second, is they're looking for real stories and outcomes.
It's just not numbers. And I think that's really true. I like looking at, you know, spreadsheets, but I don't want to sit and watch a bunch of videos. And there are other people in my generation that would be just the opposite. But generally we know that millennials want emotion connection. And that brings us to how we communicate their mobile first and its strong website strong, you know, lots of interaction.
And it's multi-channel. It's an email with a video. It's a text message with a hyperlink. It's something in the mail. Less often. It's, you know, all kinds of ways in which they can feel and touch the causes that they believe in. The final part of millennials in this area, as we kind of break it apart quickly, is relationship building is you have to create opportunities for them to be engaged.
We know this generation will give to where they're going to be most engaged, which is volunteering and events and feeling connection. They also will align their own personal belief system to the causes that they believe it.
If we think back to generation X and Baby boomers to contrast much of our connection and baby boomers is to the institutions, millennials are saying, no, no, I'm aligning my going to align my philanthropy with my values. What do I want to do with my spare time? And I'll give to that. And so you have to change the way you look at this also from the perspective of not today, but tomorrow, another wealth transfer group.
So you have to be smart enough to engage them. You may not treat them quite like a major donor, but you may want to make sure, are we communicating multichannel with the right kinds of emotional stories and outcomes to really show that transparency of what we do today, that may leverage pipeline ten, 15, 20 years down the road, the last one we'll cover today, because the current now born generation, we don't have a lot of data on its generation Z.
This is moving into, you know, 2000 born up till about some time before Covid 2015. And obviously, I think about my son, born in 2013. He's part of this generation. At the end of it, we don't know as much about him, but we do know from a realization is is it is all about three things quick, impact and easy.
You have to be able to have quick communications about the mission and its value. And the second thing is about impact through authenticity. And the third is it's got to be easy to do or they won't do it. They expect it to be easy. And if it's not, they'll go find somebody else who makes it easy on them.
And this is where we start moving into the idea of social media, peer to peer communication, who are their friends and who's involved. It's a social networking opportunity and the idea of mobile giving. If you're trying to do things on computer, they aren't going to buy in. I think about my kids in school. They have iPads, they don't even have computers.
There's a keyboard. So if it's not mobile based, you're swimming upstream against the current. The last thing is, is that their relationship building needs are all about belonging and connection. Do I feel if I'm a part of what's going on? So volunteering and advocacy focus on lifetime relationships. Don't forget that in any of these generations, but in particular with generation Z in the back half of the millennials, the things that their parents believed in probably aren't going to be the things the kids believe it unless you bring them in early, unless you make them feel a part of you.
And we did a recent podcast on generational shifting times or dollars with families. And what you should do this is these two generations are you finding ways for them to be involved early, particularly if it's a long standing family, family relationship, family foundation, DAF, whatever. The point is, is that with generation Z in particular, great deal of the millennials on the back half of that generation, it has to be about belonging.
If you just take today and take some notes and think about it, what you can do is, Rycroft, some of the ways in which you communicate, do outreach to help you. And if you're a small staff back to the AI, you do not have to do this alone for very little money. You can make things and invest a little bit in it to create individual pathways for the generations.
Then we can begin to track individual donor preferences and behavior, and we can adapt in this process and let donors know that we're going to meet them where they are. We have one mission, but we might have multiple communication paths. Our generational understanding provides useful tendencies, direction, but they're not rigid rules. Everybody's different, but individual preference can come in individual relationship building.
If you're communicating in mass, you have to take these generalities into place in your decision making so that you feel as if you're maximizing the outreach, the communication. Are we willing to build a relationship with the people that are in all of these generations the way we want, or the way that they want, the way that we think it needs to be done, or the way they believe it needs to be done.
Take a few minutes and think about different opportunities to segment the way in which you communicate what you do. Outreach, what you'll find is greater connection if you choose to do that. And yes, that's an investment and yes, at some time. But we see the dollar, excuse me, the participation rates continue to diminish in terms of reoccurring gifts in terms of Lebanese year over year giving.
I think a lot of that is because we just say we're going to do it one way, because it's easy for us. It's a part of it. Challenge yourself. Take today, throw something into ChatGPT and say, hey, look, give me some Indias on how to communicate better with this generation versus that generation. Be willing to explore and what you'll find is more meaningful connection, particularly in large numbers in mass that will help your organization build better relationships, create new relationships, maintain relationships.
At the end of the day, that's the real evidence of our work relationship building today. Hopefully, it gives you a chance to think about it in a segmented way. Don't forget to check out the blogs. I'm always amazed how many people are reading every one of them that comes out Tuesday, Thursday, 90 second. I don't write but 500 words or so.
They're all over the map. Personal life experiences, professional, always tying back to either life leadership or philanthropy. Something meaningful. It's just not a diary of my life, I don't. No one wants to read that. The point is, is maybe they're helpful to you to give you something to think about. And if you'd like to reach out to me, if you have a comment or question suggestion for a podcast, email me.
Podcast@hallettphilanthropy.com. We live in a time and a needs a lot of moving pieces in, and as such, we, your community needs you to engage, to be involved to someone who makes things happen. And that brings us back to my all time favorite saying some people make things happen. Some people watch things happen. Then there are those who wondered what happened.
We need you to be someone who makes things happen at the end. And nonprofit is a gap. For those who are wondering what happened between free enterprise, who does things for profit and government, which isn't always efficient in that middle ground, and in doing so will be the work you do. The value you bring makes a difference dramatically for the people, places, things, organizations, whatever in your community they're struggling.
I hope you get a chance every day to realize in some way, shape or form that you're making an impact because that will deliver value when you go home. Try it on the pillow and say, did I have a good day? Yeah you did. You may not have seen it because you helped people. You help things in the community that are important.
It's a pretty cool way to spend a career. I hope you feel that, feel that value each and every day. I'll look forward to seeing you the next time. Right back here on the next edition of Around with Randall. And don't forget. Make it a great day.