Today’s charities are more culturally diverse that ever. One diversity issue that is increasingly impacting the sustainability of nonprofits is generational differences.
Defined as a shared tradition and culture by a group of people that are different than other generational cohorts, differences in generations have been weighed down by erroneous misconceptions.
Changing generational demographics require new methods of attracting volunteers and donors. Old paradigms are replaced with new. Executive Directors have to navigate across generations to successfully manage operations. Boards must consider generational diversity when planning for and strategically executing steps to ensure the future of the agency. What worked for previous generations will not work for the next generations. With one notable exception:
What brings people together is the cause, no matter what the generation.
How the cause is communicated by way of messages, branding, experience and management is different for different generations.
The conclusions are that generational differences are a legitimate diversity issue that agencies need to recognize and understand and an issue that needs to be addressed in developing current and future organizational appeals.
MNC provides direction that will help charities channel their resources more effectively to enable the charity to provide shared emotions, attitudes, preferences, for cause related appeals that attract individual contributors from different generations.
In addition, MNC will position the charity to mitigate the significant differences in how generations rank admired characteristics, which correlates to their preferred charitable styles and favorite charities.
The result is sustainability of funds, operations, and programs that continue to support communities in need.