So, Dorothy Donor and Billy Boomer are not getting together anytime soon…

Howard Lake | 12 April 2008 | Blogs

But haven’t we known this for years? At least since Judith Nichols book ‘Global Demographics’ waaay back in 1995 by Bonus Books Inc. Yet, it still appears as news every so often. If it’s still news to fundraisers, it’s no wonder direct mail is tanking, and some charities are finding it really hard to raise the wherewithal. Perhaps not a bad thing if they can’t even get to grips with the fundamentals.
Much more interesting are the Millennials, Gen Xers, Gen Y & Co., and even the Silent Generation that sit quietly between Dorothy and Billy spooking the whole family. Look at the Harvard Business Review back in 2006-7, which ran great articles showing how refined we need to be in segmenting our marketing, retention, selling etc for each generational cohort. Since then countless books and blogs in the US have fought over the adaptations we need to make e.g.
http://discussionleader.hbsp.com/erickson/2007/08/in_praise_of_the_middle_child.html
I’m not going to repeat them here, but the rules have changed; we certainly can’t run a major donor cultivation programme like we used to, let along a capital appeal, and frankly nothing is quite like it was. Is it?

About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale. He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.