Connecting Millennials to Causes with Social Media

While they individually are not significant donors (60% give $100 or less a year), collectively Millennials represent a significant source of new revenue for not-for-profits. Here's evidence: 3 million donors made a total of 6.5 million donations online to Campaign Obama, which added up to a total of more than $500 million. Of those 6.5 million donations, 6 million were in increments of $100 or less.

Gen Y is are literally 'pre-wired' to support causes. First, they are connected. According to Harris Interactive, 75% of Millennials have a Facebook account, 29% check it every day (or more frequently) and 8% use Twitter. Second they are motivated. Gen Y's volunteer rates are unprecedented, with 80% of high school seniors volunteering their time. They are passionate about preserving the environment, enhancing educational opportunities, serving the needy, and 'giving back'. Little wonder professional fundraisers are taking a close look at social media as a means of mobilizing supporters.

Here are ten suggestions for connecting Gen Y with causes via social media. :

1. Invite them to join the Team.

Millennials relate to heroes and young people with ideas. (Think 911, NBC's Heroes, Harry Potter). DO: Show them how they can get involved and contribute in ways other than money. Like other segments, Millennials are more likely to give when they have a personal connection. Feature team members who are having an impact.

2. Give them a Voice.

Generation Y wants to be heard so help them tell their story. Make it easy to join the conversation. DO: Use blogs to encourage two-way conversation. Blogs are usually less formal and more dynamic than a regular websites. Good blogs invite comments and discussion and repeat visits. DON’T FILTER: Allow the negative and positive comments to remain.

3. Make It Personal.

Millennials use social media to connect to people, not institutions. DO: Feature real people. Be authentic. DON’T: Don’t be afraid to be transparent and have a little fun.

4. Use Facebook with Caution.

Facebook is about connecting with friends, not making friends. Use Facebook to continue a conversation you started someplace else. DO: Create a company page or a group or a fan page for your organization or event. Use Facebook to seek volunteers, donors and fundraisers (who find other donors). DON’T OVER DO IT: When people join your group or become your fans, you can send them messages, but not too many. Make them useful.

5. Embrace Twitter.

Twitter an ideal place to to begin cultivating future donors. Do: DO: Start ‘following’ people!! Participate – ask questions and respond. Don’t: Underestimate Twitter. Yes, it's true that Millennials are underrepresented among Twitters 17 million users (Techcrunch, 5.12). Yet we don't think it will be long before they start to literally and figuratively 'get it.' Nearly one in five online adults ages 18 to 34 have ever used Twitter or another microblogging platform. The number of users is doubling every month.

6. Offer lots of ways to contribute.

According to Yankelovich Monitor, 50% of Millennials agree that regularly donating your time to help others in need is a sign of success and accomplishment. DO: Make it easy and fun to participate – flexibility is key. Don’t Over-organize: Millennials will tell you what they want –think Twestivals and ‘groundswells’ vs. big events.

7. Enable directed giving.

Millennials want to know that their giving, whatever the size, matters. Do: Provide options that allow Millennials to ‘customize’ their giving. One size fits all is not appealing. Personalize the appeal. Don’t: Expect them to contribute to the general fund. Don’t put them on the spot. Avoid direct appeal phone calls or too persistent requests.

8. Emphasize quantity over quality.

Focus on building long-term supportive relationships. DO: Re-orient to a model that encourages thousands of $25 gifts, rather than twenty-five $1,000 gifts. Don’t: Wait for them to pay off their college loans – they can make small gestures now.

9.Tailor the media to the target.

Know your audiences (current and future) and ‘court’ them appropriately using multiple touch points, including both conventional and social media. DO: Have a strategy that fits the media to the target. If you neglect conventional media, you might leave out your core supporters. Social media is for the most ‘techie’. Don’t: Over-rely on social media or expect immediate results. You may never see results. Even Twitter hasn’t figured out how it’s going to make money yet.

10. Market with them, not to them.

Think of your efforts as multiplying and activating advocates. Do: Work for ‘retweets’ - Encourage donors and fundraisers to publicize their support and progress to their friends. Find ways to give them ‘social currency’ to spend with their friends. Don’t: Wait until you have it all figured out. Put your advocates to work on your behalf. They are in the best position to know how to talk to their peers.

Gen Y Core Value: Fight for What You Believe In

Over and over in our research we hear Millennials talk about wanting to make a difference. This article by Chip Walker provides perspective on this insight and helps explain what their idealism means for their careers and brand choices. I am especially intrigued by his description of Gen Y's activism as 'self-activism' - the idea that their very life is a 'cause'. This is a key difference between Gen Y and Gen X. The article originally appeared on Mediapost's Engage Gen Y blog. I have never reprinted an article in totality before, but this one was just to insightful to excerpt. It carries a strong message to brands or others who want to motivate this generation: Be sure you have a purpose 'worth fighting for'.

The Rise Of Cultural Movements

by Chip Walker, Strawberry Frog

In 2007, I fielded a global quantitative study of Gen-Yers in 13 countries and was surprised to find the No. 1 attitude unifying the generation was: "I would fight for a cause I believe in." A large majority of global Gen-Yers agreed with it from among dozens of other attitudes. My colleagues and I were all puzzled by this finding and weren't quite sure what to do with it. As I've created campaigns for Gen-Yers during the past couple of years, the meaning of this finding has become crystal clear.

Simply put, Gen-Yers have an activist bent. But their activism is different from the idealism and rebellion of their Boomer parents in the 1960s and '70s. For today's Gen-Yers, activism is not about rebelling against institutions -- there's simply not that much left to rebel against. Belief in institutions like government and big business crumbled long ago. Rather, in a world of almost infinite lifestyle choices, Gen-Y activism is about young people knowing their own inner priorities and making a vow to live by them -- even in the face of adversity.

A big part of Gen-Y activism is what I call "self-activism." They treat themselves and their dreams almost like causes. It's less based on idealism and more a matter of necessity: If they don't activate the revolutionary inside, they simply won't get anywhere in today's hyper-challenging marketplace. According to the Wall Street Journal, half of all new college graduates now believe that self-employment is more secure than a full-time job. According to a Gallup pool, over two-thirds of high school students say they intend to start their own companies.

Clearly, an independent spirit pervades this generation, and it's fueled by a strong sense of their personal values and beliefs. Among GenYers' most important personal values are authenticity, altruism and community. Yet, it is this generation's consumer activism that makes them a unique challenge for marketers. Gen Y-ers don't just want to buy brands, they want buy in to what a brand believes in. They flock to brands like Red and Livestrong that spark movements.

Some are social movements -- the sweatshop-free and socially responsible clothing movements are making clothing brands like Timberland, American Apparel and Patagonia must-have items for GenY. Others are cultural movements -- rather than selling processing speed, Apple invites GenYers to join a creativity movement. Obama became the choice of Gen-Y voters because he asked them to join a movement for change, not simply to vote for him.

Would your brand fight for a cause it believes in? Would your employees? Most Gen-Yers would. Today more than ever, GenYers are seeking to summon their own passion, courage and determination. Thus, if you want to connect with them, it's time to stop doing traditional marketing and start believing in something bigger than making money.

It's not easy for a brand to spark a cultural movement. But it's worth doing because it allows us to go beyond having a point of difference and actually have a difference-making purpose in the world. I, for one, believe Gen-Y's unique activist spirit will be its lasting generational hallmark, one that will change the future practice of marketing for the better.

Plays Well With Others: Linking Millennials with Bands and their Causes

Ryan Davis and his friends are leveraging Millennials' love of music with their desire to support great causes. The result? Plays Well With Others, a site that calls attention to bands that support great causes. According to Davis,

"We feel that there is an unprecedented desire among young people right now to change the world for the better, and may not know about all the organizations that they can join. We want to help connect those fans to the organizations and causes that bands are involved with, and help build awareness about new bands and the causes that they support."

Plays Well With Others designs and publicizes events that call attention to bands and the social causes those bands support. The next big event is Feb 13, to raise awareness about an organization called Not For Sale that fights human trafficking. Here is the result of a short interview with Ryan earlier this year:

How did you get started? Who is involved and how did you first get the idea for Plays Well With Others?

Davis: It began with a few individuals that work in the music industry seeing how many socially aware causes had a presence at shows and festivals, and wanting to find a way to extend that experience with those causes to beyond just the show. We wanted to take that interaction that the fans had with that cause and that band and extend it to their day-to-day lives. We began working on what that would mean and how it would look, and a few weeks later www.doyouplaywell.com went up. Right now we are working in all aspects, such as event production, artistic involvement, even a film team to help us build content for bands that are involved with us and to help tell the stories of the causes that we're working with.

What kind of response are you experiencing?

Davis: The response has truly been overwhelming, both from the organizational side and from the bands wanting to get involved. As soon as we've explained the concept of what we're trying to do everyone has been very eager to get involved.

How do people learn about your site?

Davis: We've been marketing through the usual avenues of Facebook and Myspace, and also reaching out through music blogs and trend websites. We want to reach young people where they are already, and that's going to be in the online music community. We have a really young group of people involved with this project, and we're working with causes and music that we genuinely believe in. I think that comes across when we're appealing to people, millennial have grown up with online marketing and can tell when something is forced. We are giving them a real and genuine way that they can get involved in areas that they care about, whether it's with the homeless, feeding the hungry, or with a group like Not For Sale.

One of your goals is to "Create an ongoing involvement with people and those bands/causes through both online marketing and real world experiences." What is your plan for getting marketers involved with Do You Play Well?

Davis: We offer a way for both bands and causes to build their communities, without asking for anything in return. Our only goal with this organization is to connect people to music and causes that they care about, in return we can give them publicity, content, and a voice to get their message out to people that might not hear it otherwise. We're talking about the generation that is more plugged in and more aware of the world around them than any before, a generation that wants to find out about ways to better the world. We want to give them all the tools that they need in order to be as effective at doing that as possible.

What's next? What plans do you have for the site?

Davis:We're currently discussing a redesign of it that would allow forums for users to connect to each other in their own communities and join their efforts on new projects, as well as building a space on the site that would allow bands to interact with people that are in the music industry and with organizations that are looking for ways to get more involved in the music community. We want the website to be really the starting point for users to begin projects that carry over into the real world. We feel that this generation can really change the world for the better, and we want to do everything that we can to help.

Buy Cool Stuff, Do Good

Many brands have incorporated social responsibility into their marketing, and this approach is known to influence at least a portion of Millennials. In most cases (Tom's Shoes being an exception), customers are required to DO something -- like recycle their old sweats -- to contribute. With what RetailHitsandMisses blogger, Judy Hopelain, calls 'Millennial perfect pitch', EBAY announced today the launch of a new shopping site, WorldofGood.com, that makes doing good as painless as shopping online. With the tagline, "Where Your Shopping Shapes the World", this new site makes it easy to support whatever cause you like! Want to buy products that are made of eco-friendly materials, support local community services, preserve native plans and native trditions, adhere to fair trade practices, conserve energy and do not harm animals in production? You can find them here. Want to join a community that shares your passion for a cause? EBAY uses its formidable community building skills to make it easy to do just that. There's even a Facebook link and easy way to tell others about WorldofGood.

While WorldofGood will appeal to more than just Millennials, it indeed seems custom made for a generation that has money to spend and seeks to make a difference. Already this site has attracted hundreds of bloggers. We predict that word of mouth will move this site to the forefront of Gen Y's consciousness very quickly.

Millennials: Just Be-Cause

One of the most cherished Millennial values is 'making a difference'. This makes cause marketing a natural choice for many Millennial marketers. Tom's Shoes has leveraged both cause marketing and community-building so naturally, it looks effortless. In case you missed it in an earlier post, Tom's promises to donate a pair of shoes to a child in need somewhere in the world for every pair of shoes it sell. Talk about effortless, it's consumerism as altruism. Hey we all need shoes, right? The shoes are well-made and there are endless variations on the basic design. The Toms web site invites you to 'get involved' by joining a 'shoe drop' or simply joining the mailing list. In between these two options is a smart take on community-building / viral marketing / customization (yes, all three in one) called 'Style Your Sole'.

Style Your Sole...is a great time for you and your friends to get together, express yourself through your own designs and support a good cause. Whether it is the theme of your party or a community building activity, you and your friends are putting shoes on children’s feet somewhere around the world. Wear your originally designed TOMS and tell the story!

To see what looks like the coolest Tom' Shoe party ever, just watch the video. How do I get to a party like that?!

In contrast, the wecansolveit.org site makes it hard to 'make a difference', other than by donating money. I have seen the splashy (but vague) commercials and print ads (full spread in the latest Fast Company) and wondered what it was all about. I am still wondering. It takes a lot of effort to figure out what you can do to support 'solving the climate crisis' (do they mean global warming?). And there is precious little to engage my attention. I clicked through to the Facebook application, which seems to be all about getting my friends to join. Oh, and I can earn points that cause someone else to donate money. Interestingly, the top points earners seem to be pretty low. I already have 112 points for joining and other than the top three, no one has gathered more than 500 points. Mmmm, Tom's, I prefer to Style My Soul with you. I'd bet your viral efforts will do more to attract Millennials than Wecansolveit's flashy ads. For another take on Toms and social responsibility, see the Retail Hits & Misses Blog