Final Project: Part 1
As the Donor Base Gets Younger, Arts and Culture Institutes Must Shift Their Focus
High level overview
This project will explore, through data visualization, changing demographics of non-profits’ donors in the US, their likes and dislikes, their motivations for participating in the arts, and their motivations for donating. It will draw on data from the National Endowment for the Arts and from Culture Track. The target group for this story is anyone who works in arts and culture nonprofits in the US.
What is the aim/target of the story?
The target of the story is to show how the arts donor base is getting younger and how their motivations for participating in and donating to the arts are more based on socializing and doing good rather than prestige. After viewing the presentation, the reader should feel the urge to rethink their donor cultivation strategies and their donor prospects.
Project Structure: Key Topics/Points
SET UP
The US population is getting younger
The US population is changing; people age 25-64 are the fastest growing group
CONFLICT
The nonprofit arts/culture industry is reliant on old money, and cultivates prospects according to this, but potential donors are getting younger
- “Older generations have always been the bread and butter of individual arts giving, but demographic shifts suggest that middle-aged benefactors could become just as important.”
- “According to the Federal Reserve’s Survey of Consumer Finances, wealth in America is shifting, with more millionaires in their 50s than in their 60s”
- “But young philanthropists do give widely to education and community development programs; experts are finding that they donate to arts institutions that champion education.”
Source: Kathering Boyle, “Cultivating the Next Generation of Arts Donors,” the Washington Post, 19 October 2020, https://www.washingtonpost.com/lifestyle/style/cultivating-the-next-generation-of-arts-donors/2012/10/18/5a457fa0-f85f-11e1-8b93-c4f4ab1c8d13_story.html
Younger generations and older generations differ on their reasons for participating in the arts and donating to the arts.
Why are younger generations attracted to the arts?
- Social and interactive (millennial/gen x) vs Lively/Calm (baby boomer/prewar)
What are they participating in?
- Live music, fair or festival, art exhibit, such as paintings, sculpture, or digital art
With the drive online due to COVID, has this changed?
- No, in fact, people report missing spending time with family and friends as something they miss most
Donating patterns
Why do younger generations donate?
- Younger generations: Community, Human rights and equality, Children, Health
- Older generations: Community, Poverty Alleviation, Social Services, Religion, Disaster and Humanitarian Relief
How much are they donating, on average?
- More Millennials donate, but average a lesser amount
- 11% of total US giving comes from Millennials, 84% of Millennials give to charity, donating an annual average of $481 across 3.3 organizations
- 72% of Boomers give to charity, donating an annual average of $1,212 across 4.5 organizations.
- 26% of total US giving comes from the Greatest Gen; 88% of the Greatest gen gives to charity, donating an annual average of $1,367 across 6.2 organizations.
Source: “Online Giving Statistics,” Nonprofit Source, 2018, https://nonprofitssource.com/online-giving-statistics/
RESOLUTION
Connect with this next generation of donors on their level to make a case for funding
- Millennials are active on their phones and respond best to text message and social media, but rarely check personal email or respond to voice calls.
- Millennials are most likely to contribute to work sponsored initiatives, donate via mobile and watch online videos before making a gift.
- Gen X prefers text messages or voice calls. These donors regularly check email and stay up to date on social media feeds.
- Email prompted 31% of online donations made by Gen Xers
- Boomers answer voice calls, check email regularly, and use text messaging and social media. Though initially slow to adopt new technology, they take to it quickly once they do.
- Boomers are most likely to make recurring donations on a monthly, quarterly, or yearly basis.
- Pre-war prefer voice calls and direct mail. These donors are late adopters of email and do not typically use text messaging or social media.
- Pre-war are most likely to give through direct mail campaigns and donate physical goods.
Source: “Online Giving Statistics,” Nonprofit Source, 2018, https://nonprofitssource.com/online-giving-statistics/
Call to Action
Older generations still represent the largest source of funding for nonprofits for now, but younger generations are upcoming. Incorporate new strategies to cultivate new donors from younger generations by appealing to their interests – social interaction – and their motivations for giving (community, equality, child, and health initiatives.) Connect to them using methods they will respond to (social media, text messaging, email).
Initial Sketches
I want my presentation to be engaging and visually interesting to hold the viewer’s attention on a topic that is arguably not the most interesting. I’ll employ the use of creative visualizations and transitions to accomplish this. These are initial sketches of the flow of the presentation.
Data Sources
The datasets I will use for this project come from four sources: Culture Track, the National Endowment for the Arts, Americans for the Arts, and Our World in Data.
Culture Track is an arts and culture tracking survey delivered by arts consulting firm LaPlaca Cohen. The survey focuses on the attitudes and behaviors of cultural consumers in the US. I have sourced two datasets from Culture Track; the first is the result of a survey about trends in arts and culture audiences and was released in 2017. The second provides information on cultural consumers’ responses to the COVID crisis. I will use information from these datasets to compare younger generations to older generations on participating in the arts now and pre-COVID, and on motivations to donating. of Both datasets are publicly accessible and can be found here: https://culturetrack.com/research/reports/
The National Endowment for the arts in a federal agency that supports the arts. They put out a survey periodically to record adult participation in the arts, the Survey of Public Participation in the Arts (SPPA). I will use the information from this source to determine what activities different generations are participating in, and with what frequency. The raw data from the survey is available in a publicly accessible dataset here: https://www.arts.gov/impact/research/publications/us-patterns-arts-participation-full-report-2017-survey-public-participation-arts
A third source I’ll use is Americans for the Arts. Americans for the Arts is a nonprofit dedicated to advancing the arts in the US. They put out a survey to collect perceptions and attitudes about the arts. I will use this source to determine general sentiment toward different art forms per age group, and how this affects motivations to donate. The raw data from this survey is publicly available here: https://www.ipsos.com/sites/default/files/ct/news/documents/2018-09/americans-for-the-arts-report-09-27-2018_0.pdf
Finally, I’ll download a dataset from Our World in Data on population growth in the US, by age group. I will use this at the beginning of my presentation to make the point that the number of people in older generations is shrinking, and younger generations are growing. This information is publicly available here: https://ourworldindata.org/world-population-growth
Other sources
I will use other sources to reference specific statistics for the project. Though these are not in the form of datasets, they provide valuable information. These are an article by Katherine Boyle from the Washington Post, “Cultivating the Next Generation of Ars Donors,” and a page from NonprofitSource.com highlighting important giving statistics for the year 2018.
Method and Medium
The first step of this project will be to process the data into visualizations that tell the story I want to tell. I plan to use a combination of Tableau and Flourish Studio to create the visualizations from the datasets I previously identified. I will also include pictures sourced from open sources which I plan to research using the list provided by the CMU library. I might also use GIMP, a photo manipulation software, to further enhance my visualizations by adding extra elements.
To present my project I plan to use Shorthand. I think that Shorthand is a good choice because it allows creative transitions from one visualization to the next. It also allows for the incorporation of text in a way that flows and doesn’t bore the reader. I’ll probably start with a Shorthand template and adjust slides to fit the flow in my sketched outline.