Older donors do it online
Howard Lake | 12 February 2010 | News
Think it’s only young people who give online? Think again. According to a survey by JustGiving found a significant proportion of online donors were over 45 and that they gave the most money online of any age group.
More than 5,200 online donors completed the survey. Of these, the biggest number of donations came from the 25-34 age category , but the 35-44 and the 45-54 came very close. The number of over 55s who took the survey was exactly the same as the 23-34 age bracket, proving that just as many older people as younger are actively participating online.
Although it was the first time almost a third of the respondents had given online a massive 70 per cent of 55-64 year olds had made a donation online before.
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The research also showed that generally, the older you are, the more generous you’re able to be. As a third of all revenue came from just those donors over 45 who gave £50 or more, we can see that trends seen in direct mail are replicated online.
The survey revealed that the majority of donation asks are still made by email. Facebook is the next popular channel and 12 per cent of asks were made in face-to-face situations. Only in the 18-24 age group was Facebook above email, but only two per cent of over 64s were asked to donate via Facebook compared to 59 per cent by email.
This shows, says JustGiving, that email is still the most important communication medium with your older donors because they use email more than social networks to communicate with each other.
Jonathan Waddingham from JustGiving suggests rethinking how you communicate with older donors by making it easy to adjust the text size on your website and focusing on meeting web accessibility standards for starters.
www.justgiving.com
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.