Giving: It's All About Age

Times are tough, and more than ever, we are thinking about how to motivate people to become members, or to renew their annual gifts.  Turns out, those motivations, even during tough times, tends to be related to life stage.  A lot happens, financially, to adults as they grow older. 

 

Young adults have tend to have high expenses, including high housing costs compared to income, and they typically have the high costs associated with child-rearing.  Family budgets are tight, with little to be spent on unnecessary things.  Sadly, philanthropy is not the highest priority to families with a constant eye on the budget.  There is a place for it, but for younger adults the focus is more on making ends meet and planning for the future.  And when it comes to museums, they are significantly more likely to give to pay for the services they, and their families, receive, or to save money, than to give for purely philanthropic reasons.

 

Things change as adults grow older, however.  In their forties, adults start to become a bit more philanthropic.  The budget-minded reasons to give are still front-and-center, but for more forty-somethings the philanthropic reasons become more prominent.

 

But by the time adults are in their fifties, philanthropy is the primary motivation.  Children are largely moving out of the house, housing costs are usually lower, and incomes are peaking over their lifespan.  There may be more room in their budgets to give, so the budgetary reasons recede.  Thoughts are also beginning to turn to giving back to the community, including supporting museums.  Additionally, there are a higher proportion of Museum Advocates among older visitors than younger visitors, and those Museum Advocates are making deeper connections to the museums that engage their interests.

 

We wanted to track philanthropic giving over the major studies we have completed, and since this question was virtually unchanged from survey to survey, combining responses and tallying them up were relatively simple.  Interestingly, education and income had little effect on how people responded to these questions.  Instead, age was the primary factor . . . and by a mile. 

 

Below, as seen in the graph, it is clear that motivations change between those in their forties and those in their fifties.  The lines for the budgetary reasons, saving money and paying for services received, cross those of the more philanthropic reasons, supporting the community, helping the museum improve, and supporting history/science/cultural organizations.  

 

 

Although the change happens between those in their forties and those in their fifties, the trend does not stop then.  Respondents in their sixties are even more philanthropic-minded, and those over seventy are the most philanthropic-minded. 

 

Interestingly, very few people joined or donated because they “were asked.”  It hardly shows up  - and we think this is a very good thing.  Joining or giving because they “were asked” implies that that the respondent had little self-motivation to support the museum.  Instead, it implies a purely financial transaction without a sense of the value of the museum.  We would love to see this percentage go down to nothing, with members being so engaged with the purpose of the museum that they do not even perceive an ask ever took place.  Instead, it is a highly-engaged, value-laden proposition, whether it is for the benefit of a family, a community, or both.

 

So what does this mean?  Clearly, museums need to create different membership materials to attract members of different ages.  Materials that play up the value of a membership will be much more appealing to younger respondents, particularly young moms making economic choices for their families (and even more so during these economic times).  In contrast, materials that instead focus on the good a museum does for its community and its visitors will be more appealing to older respondents who have a more philanthropic mindset.  For museums actively seeking members of all ages, creating two sets of membership materials is more expensive, and more time-consuming to manage, but the return on that investment will likely more than pay itself back in better response rates.  

What are your thoughts?  Click on “comments” below to share.  (If you are reading this from your e-mail subscription to the blog, please go to our blog's website to add a comment.)  Please include the name of your museum as well!

 

Comments

[Tracey]

Very interesting data. I look forward to hearing from you in 10 years to see if anything has changed (i.e. the attitudes are also impacted by the generation of the respondent.) Once again, your studies have described me to a T! I have noticed a total shift in my consumer and giving attitudes from always bargain hunting to doing things to support a cause or my own community.

[Elishka Flint]

I just watched James Chung give a speech at the AGM of the International Council of Museums (ICOM) in Paris during a debate entitled "What is the crisis changing for museums?".

For me, the most interesting point was the way that the ageing population in western countries and especially the USA might help combat government funding cuts during the crisis due to this evidence that as people get older, they are more pre-disposed to philanthropy and perhaps more keen to become part of a community.

This idea of community around cultural institutions is one that is being discussed a lot on the web, particularly around the idea of Web 2.0, social networks and new media. Is there any evidence that social media can be used to help attract older generations to give money or is it only worth targeting online projects at younger generations? I suppose my question is, can you see any way that the two things (ageing population and explosion of social networks) might go hand in hand or are they likely to be mutually exclusive for a little while yet?

The talk was great by the way!