The candid reflections and insights in this book come from individuals in their twenties and thirties with a capacity for high-level giving now or in the future, many of whom have never before shared their thoughts on philanthropy. Data from these donors comes from an online survey and in-depth, semistructured interviews, and our analysis of this data is based on our combined 40 years of experience in the philanthropic field.

Despite their power to control big giving and a range of social causes for decades to come, there has been surprisingly little research—good or bad—on Gen X and Millennial major donors. We know a bit about giving and philanthropic attitudes among rising generational cohorts overall, but less specifically about those people within the cohorts who have the capacity for major giving. And we have some good data on high-net-worth donors in general, but this data is rarely parsed and analyzed in depth by age cohorts.

Because of this, our project was designed from the beginning to be more inductive than deductive, more about asking exploratory and open-ended questions than about testing hypotheses. We also had a distinctly applied orientation, knowing that we wanted our findings to be of direct help to both this population of next gen donors and those who work closely with them. These aspects of our approach influenced our research questions, methods, data collection, analysis, and presentation of the results.

This book builds on a research report published in 2013, which included the survey findings and a subset of interviews but not much discussion of the implications of our findings about next gen donors.¹ This book adds new stories (including the 13 featured donors) and a considerable amount of new data, identifies in greater depth the most significant patterns in what they told us, and highlights implications and advice targeted to specific audiences, from families to wealth advisors to nonprofit professionals and fundraisers.

We sincerely hope this exploratory, generative investigation can now inform additional research on this incredibly important population. We indicate some questions and areas for future research below.

Data Collection and Analysis

The research began in 2011 with an initial literature review, focused on topics such as generational identities and philanthropic preferences, trends, and challenges in multigenerational family philanthropy, and giving by high-net-worth donors. This review helped clarify the focus of the study and informed the specific questions for these donors.

Using our relationships with partner organizations across the country, as well as our own organizational lists, in early 2012 we invited potential participants to take our survey and then screened responses to be sure each respondent met our age and financial requirements. The threshold for sufficient financial capacity for high-level giving included both individual and family measures. Respondents had to meet at least one of the following requirements:

• Personal net worth of $500,000 or more
• Personal income of $100,000 or more
• Annual personal giving of $5,000 or more
• Annual family giving of $10,000 or more
• Endowed family philanthropic assets of $500,000 or more

A significant majority of respondents qualified on more than one of these criteria, and many far exceeded these minimum levels.

After screening on these criteria, as well as eliminating significantly incomplete responses, our final survey sample included 310 valid respondents, although many specific questions received fewer answers because of attrition or skipped questions. All responses were recorded anonymously.

We designed the survey instrument to get detailed information and open-ended reflections from each respondent. The survey gathered information about each donor's “personal” philanthropy (the giving and volunteering of their immediate household, including spouse or partner and children) and their “family's” philanthropy (the giving and volunteering of extended family, including family giving vehicles such as a family foundation). Questions focused on each donor's range of philanthropic activities, preferred strategies and causes, reasons for giving, sources of information and learning, and demographic details.

We identified interview candidates through our network of project partners, numerous colleagues in the field, and our own networks.² In the end, we interviewed a total of 75 individual donors.³ Interviews were done mostly in person or via Skype (three were conducted only by phone), and lasted from 1 to 2½ hours. The interviews were recorded and either fully or partially transcribed.

Interviewees were assured of confidentiality and anonymity, which is why all quotes are given anonymously—except those from the 13 featured donors. Any potentially identifiable information in quotations was removed or anonymized. Quotations, from either the interviews or open-ended survey replies, have been only slightly edited for readability and grammar.

The interviews were conducted on a “guided conversation” model. They probed further into the core research topics listed for the survey above, but also asked for more detailed explanations, for examples and stories, and for specific advice these donors would offer to those who want to engage them better.⁴

We asked 13 of the 75 individuals interviewed for this project to become featured, named donors in the book, sharing pieces of their personal story and their reflections on giving in their own words. While all the donors we interviewed were fascinating in some way, the donors we selected to feature had both compelling stories and a particular fit with one or more of the core themes in the book. After gaining their permission, we provided an initial draft of their feature based on portions of their interview transcript. They edited the drafts, sometimes extensively, adding new details and examples. After additional editing stages, the words presented now in the book as each donor's first-person account—and any other quotes we provide in the book from these named donors—have been approved by each donor.

Excel and SPSS statistical software were used to generate frequencies and cross-tabulations of the survey data and to conduct Chi-square significance tests. A portion of the interview transcripts were coded using NVivo qualitative research software, primarily in the first phase of the research as a way to codify and confirm emergent themes and patterns.

Our analysis of all the data, and our interpretation of the most significant patterns in what these donors told us, is based in part on what we've learned during our decades of experience studying and working to improve philanthropy. We also draw implications for what the numerous findings mean for those who engage next gen donors professionally or in their families and for all of us who care about the causes and benefit from the organizations these donors support.

Note that the full set of 75 interviews provides the bulk of the data cited in this book. Only a few of the specific numbers from the survey data are cited here, though some of the quotations in the book came from open-ended questions from the survey—and of course, many of the patterns and themes we explore here emerged initially in our analysis of the survey.⁵

Characteristics of the Sample

Some of the next gen donors we describe throughout this book have last names that nearly every U.S. citizen will recognize; others have little or no public profile as donors, despite devoting a high percentage of their earnings, and much of their free time, to philanthropic passions. We surveyed and talked to first-generation wealth creators as well as inheritors; among the latter were widely varying degrees and types of engagement in broader family giving processes. Some are next gen members of families with massive global foundations; others hail from families with small foundations giving only in specific regions.

The donors examined in this book give through giving circles, through their own donor-advised funds, and through many other vehicles and charitable activities such as online, in-kind, and event giving. Some focus as much on making impacts with their investments as their gifts. Most of the donors serve as volunteers in some capacity and have since early in their lives. Some are both donors and professionals working in the philanthropic field—running their families' foundations, working for philanthropy support organizations, and so on. Others prefer that their friends and neighbors don't know how big a donor they or their family are and will be in the future.

We worked hard to contact a large and diverse sample of this generally hard-to-reach population. In selecting the samples for both the survey and interviews, intentional efforts were made to increase diversity along several key dimensions, including age, gender, race or ethnicity, and geographic distribution. We also actively sought to include many donors who were themselves first-generation wealth creators, even though these are harder to identify because they are less likely to be connected to a known giving institution (like a multigenerational family foundation).

Table E.1 summarizes the demographic and other personal characteristics of the sample of next gen donors in the survey and interviews.⁶

On the whole, the next gen donors referenced in this book are highly educated and employed full-time. The majority are married but without children, and two-thirds are women. Their income, wealth, and levels of giving and endowed charitable assets (either personal or family) place them in the top tiers of socioeconomic status and philanthropic contributions in the United States. They clearly have significant capacity for major giving now and in the future.

The age range we focused on (21 to 40) includes, roughly, the younger half of the Gen X Generation and the older half of the Millennial Generation. We zeroed in on that age range because that is the time in next gen donors' lives when they are settling into their roles as major donors—when they are taking a more formal role in their family's foundation, for example, or starting to think about how they want to give the wealth they are creating in their burgeoning careers or inheriting as part of the wealth transfer. Note that the ages summarized in Table E.1 reflect the respondents' ages at the time they took the survey or sat for an interview.⁷

This research was deliberately limited to next gen high-capacity donors based in the United States, although it did include donors from across the country and many individuals with global families and global philanthropic interests. We hope this study can prompt additional research on next gen donors in other countries, and the growing number of major donors who transcend national boundaries in both their giving and their living.⁸

The sample for both the survey and the interviews included many donors who self-identified as liberal/progressive or moderate in political orientation, and very few who said they were conservative. This is due, in part, to the fact that these generational cohorts, overall, skew more liberal and progressive than previous generations.⁹ There are also several established next gen donor networks on the progressive end of the spectrum, but fewer on the conservative end. We tried to increase the number of political conservatives in the interview sample, but were unable to connect extensively with donors from that community. Although we did find that the political conservatives we interviewed were not notably different on key elements of the next gen approach to giving, we hope future research can investigate these questions further.

There are also significantly more Jews in our sample of next gen donors than in the general U.S. population, perhaps because of Sharna's history and ties to the Jewish philanthropic community. The upside of this experience is that we were able to get more next gen donors overall to participate in the study and speak candidly about their philanthropy. Regardless, the oversample is not as dramatic as it might seem given that Jews are a higher percentage of the high-net-worth population in the United States than in the general population.¹⁰

The number of nonwhite next gen donors in our samples is also considerably smaller than in the general population. This is due to the much smaller percentage of the high-net-worth population in the United States that is nonwhite, especially African American and Latino(a)/Hispanic. In fact, our interview sample includes a higher percentage of donors from some of those nonwhite race/ethnic categories (and those of mixed heritage) than is found among high-net-worth individuals overall.¹¹ Again, we made special efforts to reach out through networks to identify next gen donors from diverse racial and ethnic categories.

Current Limitations and Future Research

As an exploratory, cross-sectional study on a difficult-to-reach population, this study has certain limitations, ones we hope any research that builds on this study can overcome. For one thing, this study primarily examined what next gen donors think and say about their philanthropic approach and action rather than on a direct observation of their activity. We include self-reported measures of their behavior instead of just analyzing their attitudes or beliefs about hypothetical behavior. We report our findings here through the lens of a combined 40-plus years of experiences observing and working with next gen donors, and have confidence in our assessment; that said, we know not everything research subjects say is reflected in what they do, so future research that focuses on close observations of next gen donor behavior will be important.

Similarly, while we identify instances when our findings about the philanthropic preferences and approach of next gen donors are similar or different to previous research on older donors, many of the differences among generations discussed in this book are based on what the next gen donors say they perceive as clear differences. It is important to remember that their parents and grandparents—and other major donors from previous generations—would likely not agree with all of the next gen donors' assessments of differences. Future research that examines perceptions of the next gen by older generations would be interesting, as well as additional research that compares similar data on philanthropic practices and philosophies as expressed by each generation.

Another challenge for a study like this is: How do we know if the approach that next gen donors favor now will be the same across their lifetimes? Which of the findings in this book are due to a distinctive generational perspective on giving by Gen Xers or Millennials, and which are merely what any emerging donors of this age prefer? How much of what we report in this book is a cohort effect, and how much is a life cycle effect? To be sure, this book provides a picture of next gen donors at a specific point in time and at one point in their developments. But even taken in the most limited sense, we think this book is useful as a snapshot of next gen donors as they are today, in this crucial moment when they are becoming more engaged in giving.

We also have some reason to believe the findings here are more than temporary features. We know that research (cited earlier) has identified distinct generational personalities that endure across each generation's lifetimes and that developmental psychology tells us the character traits and preferences we form in our emerging adult years will form the core of our personalities over the life course. This means we can expect that many aspects of the next gen donors presented here will persist as they age. However, we also hope these questions can be answered in future longitudinal studies that track these donors as they age and take on more and more responsibility in philanthropic circles. This book can be useful, then, as a benchmark because these donors are the first group of philanthropists in history to be giving so much at such young ages, so we can now track their attitudes and actions over the course of their lives. As the most significant philanthropists ever, we hope they will be studied for a long time.

Finally, as noted in the conclusion, our sample of next gen donors includes some selection bias. The donors included in this study are those who are currently active—some much more than others, of course—in philanthropy, enough to at least be in the process of forming a philanthropic identity and a set of ideas and plans about their giving. We cannot claim, then, that they are fully representative of the full population of Gen X or Millennial individuals who will eventually become major donors. There are surely many others in this age group who have yet to begin their philanthropic journeys. As an initial, inductive, generative study of an understudied and exclusive population, we accept a certain amount of selection bias as unavoidable. And as described earlier, the sample we study here will be leaders of the larger cohort as it emerges, so there is a research purpose to focusing closely on them in this initial examination. The next gen donors in this book are blazing the next gen's path for the future of giving, and as their peers begin to join them they will not only be influenced by similar generational dynamics but will also look to their already active peers for guidance and inspiration. Again, only further research on the broad range of next gen donors will help us know whether the clear trends we've explored in this book continue as the next gen takes over big giving in the United States.