Episode Notes
This time we’re exploring how charities can better develop relationships with supporters in their teens, twenties and early thirties. Younger supporters tend to see the world differently to older generations – as charities, how can we respond?
Rob speaks to Victoria Roe, a Senior Philanthropy Manager at UNICEF UK about her charities’ ‘Next Gen’ approach. She shares the rationale for why this is an especially valuable opportunity for charities to look at now; examples of success so far; and various insights to help other fundraisers who want to develop good relationships with younger philanthropists.
If you want to share this episode with others you think it would help, THANK YOU VERY MUCH! We’d love to hear what you think. Victoria and Rob are both on Linked In and on twitter Rob is @woods_rob, or you can follow Bright Spot on Instagram at @brightspotfundraising.
Further Resources
Giving needs of the future wealthy, report by The Beacon Collective
Podcast Episode 33 – Generating major gifts momentum, with Paul Davies
Podcast Episode 125 – Growing major donor income from zero to £2m / year, with Tony Gaston
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Quotes
‘This approach provides a relatively low entry point…a direct debit that starts from just £20 a month, and that means that that individual has started to be looped into the charities’ Next Gen community…’
Victoria Roe
Transcript of Episode 128
Rob:
Hello, welcome to the Fundraising Bright Spots podcast. This is Episode number 128. I’m Rob Woods and this is the show for anyone who works in fundraising, who wants ideas and maybe a little dose of inspiration to help you enjoy your job and raise more money. This time we’re exploring how charities can go about developing relationships with younger supporters. For example, people in their teens, twenties, and early thirties. One example of a charity that’s been giving some deliberate focus to better looking after younger supporters is UNICEF UK, and this has already been paying off. I was really pleased recently to get the chance to speak to Victoria Roe, who is a senior philanthropy manager at UNICEF UK. In this, the first of two episodes with Victoria, we discussed why this is such a valuable opportunity for charities to look at, what her charity’s approach is. And various insights to help other charities who want to improve in this area. It was a real pleasure talking to Victoria. I found her insights fascinating and I hope that you do too. Hello, Victoria, welcome to the podcast.
Victoria:
Hi, Rob. Thank you so much. Very pleased to be here.
Rob:
Thank you. Thank you for making time. So I’ve been looking forward to this for a couple of months ever since I saw you and a couple of other excellent fundraisers do such an interesting panel discussion at the Chartered Institute of Fundraising, major donor fundraising conference. A really good conference, I got a lot from all the sessions actually. But in particular I learned so much from that session you did recently at that conference. And I’ve been looking forward to inviting you onto the show so that we can share some of these insights with the listeners to the podcast. Just before we get into the content, what’s your job title and what’s the name of the charity you work for?
Victoria:
Yeah, so I am a senior philanthropy manager working at UNICEF UK.
Rob:
Great, thank you. So let’s jump in. It seems to me that many charities inadvertently don’t pay enough attention to younger potential donors who care about their cause. And a lot of their activity is focused on older ones in terms of major donors, but also other types of giving as well. And you and your colleagues on that panel were saying that this is really missing an opportunity probably now more than ever before, to not take account of younger people who care is missing an opportunity. Do you want to set the scene?
Victoria:
Yeah, absolutely. And it was such a pleasure for me to be able to be a part of that panel and to meet some of the other fundraisers who are focusing on this area. Whether that is in its entirety or sort of dipping their toe into it because it was my entry point into fundraising was looking at the next generational lens specifically. And there’s so much I think that I have learnt in actually a relatively short period of time about what is good stewardship, what is good practice with donors, what does that relationship look like when it’s working really, really well. That has come through that next generational lens, but is actually about fundraising, philanthropy, relationship building, management much more generally. But it’s fantastic that people are now having these conversations in a much more targeted way because it’s something I’m just very passionate about sharing. So again, thank you so much for making space for this conversation on the podcast.
You’ve talked about scene setting. So I think if any of the listeners are working in legacy giving, then they probably already are familiar with the concept of this great transfer of wealth that is on the horizon, and that is this concept of trillions of dollars that are predicted to be passed down from that boomer generation to Gen X and millennials. And we sort of talk about the fact that in the next 10 years, the next generations are predicted to have their assets increased fivefold. And when you couple that with sort of shifting lifestyle choices, these individuals are just much more likely than their parents to have access to significant disposable income. So really they’ve got the potential to be our wealthiest ever major donors. And so by tapping into that approach, that way of thinking, and by building those relationships today, we’re really securing an organization’s future both in the here and now, but really for that long term gain.
Rob:
And if our listeners are interested in this, but in order to really take some serious action, they’ll need to justify this with data or more academic insight. I think before you mentioned something published by the Beacon Collective.
Victoria:
Yes. So there’s a couple of pieces actually that they’ve done, which I’ve found really interesting. There’s one that they published in April 2021, which was the Giving Needs of the Future Wealthy. I think what’s really nice about the Beacon Collective is that they pick out data, but then they also put some market insights in there. They’ve done some research with young philanthropists and are able to… I think there’s even a sort of dos and don’ts guide with regards to terminology. It’s really, really interesting and a great resource that I would recommend to anybody because it is presented in such a way that you can, as I say, sort of dip your toe into it without feeling that this is going to form necessarily a huge strategy internally, but to start picking up on what those differences are. And I think something that is probably no surprise to anybody with the way that the news agenda is going, et cetera, that there is evidence that the Beacon Collective refer to that social values are a massive behavioural motivator for the under 35s.
And so there’s a really strong possibility therefore that those young wealth holders will be the driving force of what the future of philanthropy will end up looking like. So it does seem like a unique opportunity to be creating a really positive giving experience with those individuals today. So that those giving practices aren’t necessarily put aside or forgotten about later in life for those individuals. And as a sort of charity of choice perspective, can there be anything better than have already established that education into what your charity does, why your cause is so important and how your supporters can get involved. If that can be grasped now, it can only exponentially grow as that person’s assets grow and as their sort of ability to create really significant impact grows.
Rob:
This might seem a really silly question, why are these generations about to become so much more wealthy compared to when wealth has been inherited in the past?
Victoria:
It’s a lot to do with the changing ways that people can become self-made philanthropists, the industries that these generations are working in. So with regards to tech, with regards to innovative finance, et cetera, these are trailblazing individuals who are really working at the cutting edge of those types of industries. With regards to that sort of, as I said, that self-made wealth. It’s also, I mentioned sort of lifestyle choices, but there are individuals choosing perhaps not to have children, not to start families, to use their wealth in different ways. We might get into this later, but also the conversations that I’m having with these individuals is with much more of a lens of why is philanthropy important in comparison to the public sector. What’s the role of the private sector, et cetera, are much more sort of targeted and quite direct with regards to why are we needed, why is our wealth needed? How can we create impact?
Rob:
And it’s great to see that UNICEF has quite deliberately worked out a strategy and an approach to doing something about this and trying to communicate and build relationships with younger supporters. Top line, could you tell us what that approach is? What’s it called? What kind of activity does it involve? Yeah,
Victoria:
So I think approach is definitely the right terminology as opposed to perhaps strategy, which we can get into in a little bit as to why that’s sort of becoming more and more apparent to me. But at UNICEF, we launched UNICEF Next Generation and that is very simply put a path to engage the next generation of supporters with UNICEF’s work. And so it’s a global UNICEF offering. We are an international development charity. We do have presence obviously outside of the UK, which means that we are able to, in great circumstances such as this, operate much more on that sort of global scale. Which I appreciate won’t be relevant to everybody that’s listening, but hope through this conversation there are going to be some sort of areas of business as it were, that come out that you can see are really transferrable to lots of different setups, internal setups. But the way that UNICEF Next Generation works is that we are encouraging young leaders to pledge, yes, their financial resources. But also their time, their networks, their skills to our course.
Rob:
And practically speaking, what might that look like if you are reaching out to a younger philanthropist?
Victoria:
So UNICEF NextGen, we run ever slightly differently in the different markets because it is dependent on the supporters that we’re working with. So as I said, we’re a global offering. But if I speak most predominantly about how we operate here in the UK, so the concept is that we are both a sort of low entry pledge program and a home for young philanthropy, which means lots of different things and we can pick out some of that. But to start at that sort of low entry point there, we’re talking about a direct debit that starts from just £20 a month, and that means that that individual has started to be looped into what we call sort of the next gen community. And they will be receiving from my team, they’ll be receiving quarterly newsletters which are very targeted to the audience of what we know about these supporters and they contain advocacy actions, different ways to fundraise, sort of inspiration behind how to sort of kickstart that fundraising mentality.
We invite these supporters to UNICEF briefings, whether that’s virtual, in person and really start to deepen their knowledge of our work, our priorities, the who we are, what we do, and really what we need help with. And I think that’s that piece that is so important because by showing what our priorities are, by showing what our fundraising gaps are, we start to invite conversation of where do you fit into this? But it’s that education piece that’s needed first to be able to make sure that we are not wasting anyone’s time, we’re not having conversations that are not strategic for what the organization needs, what the supporter is looking for, et cetera. So I really put so much weight on the fact that this concept of having a way of sharing those learnings and those tidbits of information with our supporters is that jumping off point. Despite the fact that we’re talking pledge program, that’s the jumping off point for someone wanting to make a significant gift too.
Rob:
That makes sense. And I think I wrote down when you gave the talk before that for instance, there is also a global board of younger supporters.
Victoria:
Yeah, absolutely. So we recognize that this group of supporters, I always refer to them as sort of global citizens, I think more so than ever before are less insular in terms of, this is a lot of people who’ve been educated globally. Or they’ve gone to school, university, et cetera, or they work in lots of different countries, their families are based all over the world. And so this concept of maybe just looking at them within your own borders, it was missing a trick definitely. And so it was in January of last year that we launched a global board. So we’ve got 11 countries represented within that board, and it is some of the most engaged, interesting, brilliant young leaders and business leaders that we’re speaking with, working with in a committed way.
So this isn’t about that pledge program, it is very different, but the impact that they’re able to leverage is hugely considerable. And using Ukraine as an example, the Ukraine crisis unfortunately unfolded very quickly after the board had just formed, and we were absolutely gobsmacked by the passion and the commitment that they were able to demonstrate with us right away. And they actually mobilized over $4 million for our Ukraine efforts within just three weeks. And that was really the jumping off point for the board. So it’s only really grown from there in terms of our relationship with them and how we’re working together.
Rob:
Wow, that’s an amazing achievement, isn’t it? And I guess we’ll never know, but had you not already started quite deliberately considering the interests and needs and background of those younger supporters, maybe some of those people who care about UNICEF would’ve given any way. But it seems to me that segmenting, if we can use that word in this particular way, very definitely will have made a big difference to them being spoken to in a way that suited them, issues that they cared about to do with that appeal and extra generosity being achieved.
Victoria:
Yeah, absolutely. And I think it’s that two-way conversation then because it was also that they were able to suggest roots that maybe we didn’t have access to. They published articles in outlets that we don’t necessarily have access to. They spoke in investing circles within private networks, et cetera, that they in a way are already operating in and that they welcomed us into. So that’s that two-way piece as what I think is so meaningful about it is that together we were sort of looking at what are the aims here and what is the impact we’d like to achieve. But the actual structure for it came from what are the nuances of the people that we’re talking to as opposed to sort of suggesting that it had to work in a certain way.
Rob:
Hi, it’s Rob. And I wanted to jump in quickly to let you know that if you are the manager of a team or if you belong to a fundraising team, at the time of publishing this episode, we’re still accepting team memberships to our learning and inspiration site, the Bright Spot Members Club. To give you a quick sense of the impact that ongoing access to these resources can have, here’s what one fundraising manager shared about how the club has helped his team’s results.
Dan McNally:
Hi, my name’s Dan McNally and I’ve been a Bright Spots members club for over a year now. And what I absolutely love about the club is the practical ability to translate Rob’s amazing sessions out into real life field fundraising results. When I was at the British Heart Foundation, we created a workshop based on Rob’s corporate fundraising bundles, and within six months, every single person who had gone on this workshop that we’d developed had managed to secure one of their dream 10 corporate organizations.
Rob:
To find out more about all the live workshops and training bundles that you get access to through the club, go to brightspotmembersclub.co.uk/join. Or to find out about the valuable discounts available for teams, send me a message at events@brightspotfundraising.co.uk. Right now, let’s get back to my conversation with Victoria.
I guess that moves into one of the things I was most interested in talking about, which is things you’ve discovered that are important in working with younger supporters compared to older generations of supporters. And the truth is good high value fundraising, we do our utmost to work with the whole person, not just the cash they may want to give to help solve the problem. Of course, good fundraisers are trying to understand a donor of any age or a company or a legator and understand them and match back and offer them ways in addition to cash, which helps solve the problem. And yet I sense you’re implying that’s even more important to get right with people, for instance, under 35 under thirties. Is that true?
Victoria:
Absolutely. Absolutely spot on. And I think when I reference that at the beginning of our conversation, this concept of a lot of the learnings that we’ve taken on from working with next generational philanthropists have then definitely informed our approach more generally speaking. Or opened our eyes to the fact that we can do that and that is about cross collaboration between departments. So I think that concept, we talk about 360 value, so we’re looking at the person or donor as a whole as opposed to just their financial means. And so it’s also their networks, their leverage, their influence, and really those unique experiences or viewpoints and value ads, if we would call them theirs, that can then leverage significant impact. And I think that is where we then start to be able to navigate that long-term versus short-term piece of the fact that we are in danger of putting stewardship in now and not being able to necessarily refer to it as ROI.
What is the return here? Are we over stewarding, which is a term that I have real difficulty with because I completely appreciate that we’re all working to bottom lines. And that they’re all so busy that to be able to prioritize, of course there have to be some of these terms come into play with regards to opportunities that we’re able to work on or donors who we’re able to work more meaningfully with. But I think that that concept of over stewarding needs to shift in terminology when you’re looking at things like building a relationship today with somebody maybe whose wealth is going to really come into play in five to 6, 7, 8 years time. But what are you able to leverage in the here and now that maybe doesn’t look like a major donor gift, but are these incredible amazing doors that are unlocked or absolutely income that’s unlocked. But in a different direction than necessarily traditional philanthropy.
Rob:
I see. And I wonder, could you give us an example of that in practice?
Victoria:
Yeah, absolutely. So last year we held a celebration for Well Children’s Day that was very much in conjunction with our NextGen members and that was held private members club in Knightsbridge and the space itself was secured in kind by one of our NextGen members, beautiful space. They were really generous with their offering. We had over 50 plus attendees, many of them completely new faces to us, so the friends and networks of our NextGen members. And by working collaboratively on what this event would entail, we ended up fixing on a Q and A that was about UNICEF’s work. That was with one of our emergency experts here at UNICEF, and the host was one of our members. So this idea really of the fact that there was this sort of peer to peer engagement right through the actual, “Where is it going to take place and what’s it going to entail.”
But also the experience on the night, which is so much more than we can necessarily offer as charity staff talking about charity work. And when I look at the sort of avenues that were opened up through that event, it’s not just about the conversations that we had on the night, but things that end up being such fantastic opportunities that you don’t necessarily come across every day. So the photographer on the night who the venue staff had secured and the DJ actually both offered their services, they said, “Really, really happy to work in for any events that you might have coming up.” Our events team built a really lovely new connection with that members club. And so we start to start building out networks that are not just in terms of, “Okay, who was in the room, who’s going to be our next philanthropy donor.”
But also in terms of if we’re able to host these events where the bottom line is there has been no cost to the organizations, then we’re just opening up so much more opportunity for people to know that we exist to have those conversations. And then that’s where we really see that it builds from there in terms of who walks in that door could then completely change the next area of focus for us. So it’s very exciting, it’s the excitement of the unknown. So you are in a way being able to take a risk because there was no spend, there was no big impetus that this had to fundraise X for X target, et cetera. This was about awareness raising, connection building, and so could be referred to as that non-financial space. But the impact has already started to be clear from just that one opportunity to get people in the room together.
Rob:
And I think you mentioned before that one of the characteristics of younger generations is how important their networks and their friendships and their allies are. And again, all experienced fundraisers know that route one for how you find other people who might care about your cause is to go to your existing supporters and see if they know who they might like to invite in. So this is not a new thing, but I think you said that characteristic of working with others in our, quote, “tribe” is even more important for younger people. And is it true then that many of the people who came to that event and there were more than 50 in the room, many of them were new because they’d been invited by the organizers?
Victoria:
Exactly. Yeah, absolutely. And that’s what’s so exciting about it is that it is an opportunity for us to talk about our work in a setting or forum that we haven’t necessarily got the access to without that peer-to-peer introduction. So to be able to have UNICEF’s work being spoken about in this very beautiful members club to be able to have quite a relaxed setting and for people to come to us with not necessarily a baseline of knowledge about UNICEF’s work, we’re just being able to, as I said, just put our hands up and say, “We are here, we’d love to chat more.” It’s not about strong arming people into sign up, become a member. That’s not the concept, because we’re looking for people who we spark that passion in, we start to engage with. And our relationship can develop organically through those opportunities to just learn more about our work. So again, it comes back to that education piece of knowing what we do and why we think it’s so important that we can continue doing that work.
Rob:
So Victoria, inevitably people of different generations have different characteristics and attitudes. You’ve already mentioned a couple of things which you’ve discovered are especially important to bear in mind if you’re looking to work with people in their teens or their twenties. Are there some more that you could share with us that you’ve discovered we need to bear in mind and maybe they’re obvious, but we need to bear them in mind, for instance, to share with our colleagues. We really have to get this kind of thing for this kind of person.
Victoria:
Yeah, absolutely. And I’d love to obviously caveat what I’m saying with the fact that when you are talking about homogenous groups, of course there are nuances even within that and there is no blueprint with regards to one size fits all. But there are certainly passion points that come up fairly regularly. So the ones that spring to mind for me are causes that are to do with mental health, causes to do with climate change, anything that’s sort of in that innovative new thinking space. So what are we doing that’s different to what’s been done before? I think what I do see is sometimes a lack of trust of charity generally. Thinking if the sector was so brilliant, why hasn’t it achieved more? The world is a potentially very bleak place at the moment with regards to the multiple crises that we’re facing.
And so I think that transparency piece is really, really important to these supporters in terms of, “Why should I trust in you to use my gifts?” And that is something that I think is a great internal challenge as well to make sure we’re doing that for all of our donors of course. So how are we saying that? Because if our new supporters don’t feel that that’s obvious from day one, then we should be shaking up for everybody because it’s one of the most important pieces of communication that we can be putting out there. The thing that I would say is a big challenge for me with the organization that I’m working for is that these supporters are very, very interested in sort of local community impact, sort of that grassroots feel of feeling really, really close to the work.
So almost in quite a transactional way, really wanting to know that my gift of X pounds will impact X beneficiaries or wanting to volunteer in person. And that is something that we aren’t able to offer at UNICEF. We don’t have volunteering within the UK, those types of opportunities. And so it’s been a sort of creative challenge for me to think, “Okay, but that volunteer energy can mean so much more than the traditional volunteering as we might otherwise know it.” Or the thing that comes immediately to mind for that audience of, “Oh, have you got any shops that we can help out at?” Or, “Are we able to support the work hands on?”
Rob:
Well, that’s really interesting Victoria, because it’s such a common challenge for many organizations to create those opportunities for people to help in ways other than primarily the financial donation. What kinds of things have you and your colleagues managed to create?
Victoria:
I’m aware that we’ve looked at it within UNICEF UK or UNICEF globally within that NextGen piece, is looking at something like special events. So do you already have an event board within your special events team? So could you have a NextGen subset within that board, for example, that allows individuals to start to, yes, network with like-minded peers, but also start to get a sense of what does it entail to be on a board? What are the expectations while at the same time also, again back to that mutually beneficial perspective, of what would our younger generations attending the event, what would they like to see? What would be different for them as part of your usual annual gala? We’ve also looked at it more from the sort of communication side of using some of our members to market research on our next campaign. This concept that you’ve got something that you would like to test out.
There’s probably different ways that your marketing team are already familiar with that they’re very happy using. So maybe this is a value add that we can also have the insights of our sort of warm supporters who are within or represent a certain age demographic, how do they perceive what you’re out there? And I’ve even seen that personally with what we are producing from within the philanthropy team. So regards to proposals, pitches, et cetera, just that outside perspective on how is that landing for you. And one of the things that I think is particularly interesting in that space is there are a lot of self-made philanthropists who are working in that tech space, but they’re used to seeing lots of decks, used to really trying… How quickly can you get behind an idea, how quickly does it translate? But we’ve also got maybe those that are coming from some more established family wealth who have investment portfolios, who look at impact investment. And are used to seeing proposals for investment come across their desk in particular ways.
Maybe we can align more with the ways that they’re speaking about investment, ask for their help in terms of how do we make sure that our third sector jargon isn’t just another barrier for them. But instead we can take some of their language on board to be able to spruce up the way that we are talking about investing in our charities work. And then of course there’s challenge events, advocacy, even things like internal comms. Having some of your warm supporters come in and be able to talk to your staff is such an amazing link to be able to feel that both, as I said, it’s that both sides of the mic we’re talking to our warm supporters. But they’re also being able to share their insights, their intel with us. And that is very mutually rewarding. It feels great to be able to find those opportunities and have that joint value together.
Rob:
And it just is so powerful, isn’t it? It’s so rewarding for someone to feel like they’re really helping, like their expertise. Something they know about or they’re good at is genuinely valuable for this cause they care about. Few things feel as good as that and therefore people are so likely to respond to whether it’s email or maybe for many of these people who need to be WhatsApping them. However, you’re reaching out, I can totally picture that they’re getting back to you pretty quick when you’re offering or when you are asking for help in those ways. And then of course, once they’ve been involved in those ways, it’s really hard to get involved in that genuinely meaningful project and not feel somewhat closer to this mission that we’re involved in.
Victoria:
Absolutely.
Rob:
Well, I hope you found our discussion helpful and because there was so much more that I wanted to find out, we ended up talking for a full hour. So in order to keep this to the usual half hour listen, I’m going to share the second half in a separate episode. In the meantime, you can find a full transcript of this one in the podcast section of our website, which is brightspotfundraising.co.uk. And I’ll also include a link in the notes to the Beacon Collective where you can find that really helpful report that Victoria mentioned, which is called Giving Needs of the Future Wealthy. If you’re not yet following this podcast, please hit that button now so that you don’t miss out on any of the episodes we’ve got coming up, including the second half of my chat with Victoria. Now, if you’d like more in depth ongoing help with your fundraising, do check out our training and inspiration club, the Bright Spot Members Club.
There are now more than 350 fundraisers in the club who get 24/7 access to a whole library of my best training films as well as live training sessions every week. To find out more, go to brightspotmembersclub.co.uk/join. Or if you’re a manager and you’d like to find out about team discounts for the club, do send me a message via the Bright Spot Fundraising website. Just before we finish, I’d like to ask a favour, which is, if you enjoyed today’s episode and you think it would help other people, then please take a moment to share it with your team or on social media. I really appreciate your help getting these ideas out to help as many charities as possible. Victoria, and I would love to know what you think about this episode. You can get in touch or tag us on LinkedIn and on Twitter, I am @woods_rob. Thank you so much for listening today. Best of luck with your fundraising and I look forward to sharing more Bright Spot insights with you very soon.
