New philanthropy research from Indiana University's Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and Bank of America. Managing Editor Bill Jarvis shares highlights from the Charitable Giving by Affluent Individuals report and what they mean for fundraisers.
Learn more from Bank of America's report: How Affluent Households Gave Back in 2020
Know More. Raise More. is presented by Insightful. The team at Insightful knows connecting with donors is hard. That’s why Insightful helps fundraisers like you better know your donors (and the people you would like to be donors) so you can:
There’s a big change happening right now affecting fundraisers. Over the next decade, up to $70 trillion dollars will shift from aging baby boomers to millennials. This wealth transfer is already underway.
Are you prepared to work with millennials?
Start by downloading Insightful’s free ebook:
9 Insights Fundraisers Need to Know to Prepare for Millennial Major Donors. Just head to insightfulphilanthropy.com/ebook
New philanthropy research from Indiana University's Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and Bank of America. Managing Editor Bill Jarvis shares highlights from the Charitable Giving by Affluent Individuals report and what they mean for fundraisers.
Learn more from Bank of America's report: How Affluent Households Gave Back in 2020
Know More. Raise More. is presented by Insightful. The team at Insightful knows connecting with donors is hard. That’s why Insightful helps fundraisers like you better know your donors (and the people you would like to be donors) so you can:
There’s a big change happening right now affecting fundraisers. Over the next decade, up to $70 trillion dollars will shift from aging baby boomers to millennials. This wealth transfer is already underway.
Are you prepared to work with millennials?
Start by downloading Insightful’s free ebook:
9 Insights Fundraisers Need to Know to Prepare for Millennial Major Donors. Just head to insightfulphilanthropy.com/ebook
Welcome to Know More. Raise More. the podcast for fundraising professionals. I'm your host, Jennifer Trammell. Usually we talk with donors and gift officers to learn how they're working together to change the world for good. On the podcast today, something a little different, a deep dive into recent research on high net worth families.
Bill Jarvis:So here's a situation where the athletes are not only continuing this charitable behavior, but in fact, stepping it up.
Jennifer Trammell:That's a key finding from Bank of America's study of philanthropy, charitable giving by affluent households. Bill Jarvis is managing editor of Bank of America study. And he's here to share highlights from what's now the eighth report in a series of studies that usually happen every other year. With research conducted by Indiana University's Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. This report is full of important takeaways for fundraisers, and starts with some good news, even through the pandemic and economic uncertainty of fluid families are even more generous than before. Bill and I talk about what's behind the uptick in unrestricted giving, why you want donors to see themselves as experts in philanthropy, and what we're learning about digital tools to reach new generations of donors. Know More. Raise More. the podcast for fundraising professionals is brought to you by insightful, insightful helps improve engagement between nonprofit organizations and donors. We know connecting with donors is hard, insightful, helps fundraisers like you better know your donors, so you can raise more money, advance your mission and do more good in the world. Bill Jarvis Welcome to Know More. Raise More. the podcast for fundraising professionals.
Bill Jarvis:Happy to be here.
Jennifer Trammell:We are so excited to learn from you today. You as the managing editor of this report, you know the material forwards and backwards. So we're very eager to have you walk us through those key findings today.
Bill Jarvis:Great to share this with you.
Jennifer Trammell:Would you start by giving us some context for the report this time around, and specifically waiting to do the research so that we could capture a critical time period in our world?
Bill Jarvis:Right. So there's a cadence to this, Jennifer. And as you said, this is the eighth study. We began doing this in 2006 Quite a while ago, again, in partnership with the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy. And we had been doing it every other year. 2010, 12, 14, 16, 18 Along comes 2020. And we thought well, we should do the study, right. But in fact, 2020 was such an exceptional year as we know. And we looked at each other as a team and said, people are not really going to want to know in report in 2020. What charitable giving was in 2019. Let's wait a year. And we'll be able to provide a really rich report about charitable giving during this incredible year of 2020. And we will also be able to do which we did a separate carve out of getting related to the COVID 19 pandemic. So that was how we decided to proceed. For a long time, this was known as the study of high net worth philanthropy, it is still the same group and working with Indiana University and a professional research firm that creates panels of households that are willing to be interviewed for this kind of study. They prequalify the households so that we understand what their assets are and what their income is. So that this is a group of over 1600 households, the entry threshold for the study was to have a net worth of at least $1 million, not including the value of the primary residence, or net income every year of $200,000, at least$200,000. Now those amounts in some metropolitan areas in the United States will not make you terribly wealthy. But remember, that's just the entry level point. And in fact, the average levels of wealth and income were substantially above that wealth over $30 million income over half a million dollars a year. So we think about this study Jennifer as being essentially call it the top 3% to 5% of income and assets in the country, the very types of people that many many nonprofits would like to pursue for donations.
Jennifer Trammell:Because you have so much history and so much experience with this type of research. Let's use your human Encyclopedia of knowledge and talk about what's remained the same and what was different this time around. So start with the same. Tell us something that's been consistent across reports in the recent years,
Bill Jarvis:there are some consistencies that I frankly found very reassuring. The first consistency was that in 2020, despite all of the catastrophic events that occurred, and we can put those to one side and discuss them, affluent individuals, affluent households, across all of our separate areas that we analyzed, generational race, ethnicity, gender, sexual identity, absolutely continued to remain generous in their supportive charitable organizations in 2018. In our study, we found that 90% of these affluent households contributed to at least one charity, in the 2020 survey, we found that it was 88%. So essentially the same 88 90%, you're talking about nearly nine out of 10 households, continuing to be supportive of charity, and more important, as we know, despite the economic turmoil, but in many cases, market stock markets have been very positive, very advancing very strongly. And so what you see, bearing in mind that this is from 2020, versus 2017, three years ago, there's a three year gap, not a two year gap between the studies, as we said, the amount given increased significantly to over $43,000, a year from in 2017, around$29,000. So here's a situation where the athletes are not only continuing this charitable behavior, but in fact, stepping it up. Also, we saw on the front on the front of volunteering, which is many ways to kind of gateway to becoming a donor, becoming knowledge about knowledgeable about an organization giving before giving to an organization going in looking around getting familiar with the operations. You would have thought Jennifer, that in 2020, with all the lockdowns with all the social distancing, you would have thought that volunteering would have collapsed completely. In 2017, we had 46% of households saying that they volunteered with at least one nonprofit in 2020, you would have set out everybody just gave it up? No, no, no. In fact, a third 30% of affluent households volunteered for at least one organization. And those that volunteered. And this is a consistent pattern across the study that we've seen over the years, volunteers tends to give more, as a matter of fact, they give substantially more and more than twice as much as those who do not volunteer for organizations. So this is an important set of messages, these continuities here, I would also say that broadly consistent with previous years, the top three types of charities supported both in terms of incidents of giving to these categories of charity, and also dollars given were basic needs, that's food, clothing, shelter, religious organizations, bearing in mind that religious organizations are frequently also vectors for the provision of basic needs food, clothing, shelter, and health. But also, if you think about education, which is very important, we separate the categories out into K through 12, education, and higher ed. And if we put both of those together, both in terms of incidents and dollars, given education becomes number three. So let's call these basic needs, religious organizations, health care, education, to know that our citizens have means are thinking about these consistently, as the types of causes that they want to support, even in really tumultuous times, is very reassuring to me. And that I think consistency comes up against another fact that was actually in front of us all in 2020. We think of the affluent Jennifer as being people who might have inherited wealth, or who might be financially very secure. And that can be the case. But in in our case, not necessarily in this study as such, but in our practice as private as a private thing. We know that many affluent households, in fact, own businesses, or they're building businesses. And that can be assumed for this group, this survey group as well. And when you think about the fact that in 2020, many businesses had to either shut down operations, or furlough employees really changed their operational models, their business models, had other financial stresses, it could have been very easy for an owner of a business to simply say, I'm done in 2020, I can't think about philanthropy, I really need to save my business, protect my employees, serve my customers, and so on and so forth. And yet, what we saw is not only that they consistently gave, but that they gave more, and they continued to volunteer. So this, to me says a lot about the character of American philanthropy, that even in very, very stressful times. It continues in that tradition that we've seen, going now far back more than a decade into these into these other studies. So those are the things that I thought were really, really interesting and continuous and to me very reassuring.
Jennifer Trammell:It really is reassuring to see that kind of generosity across the United States. Your research One in three households increase their giving related to the pandemic with 90%. Giving to those basic needs locally. And I think that shows a great awareness by the high net worth individuals who were surveyed of the reality of the pandemic, and the impact that's having on families in our own local communities.
Bill Jarvis:I would also add to that just one little extra point that historically, giving has often been restricted by donors to a particular purpose. So it might be if you're giving to a college university, it might be for scholarships, it might be for endowed professorships, social service charity might be for a particular program and so on. One of the things that we really noticed in this pandemic related giving when when we surveyed about it was that there was about three quarters to four fifths of the donors reported that their gifts were unrestricted, they were for general operating purposes. Why was this because they realized that it was an existential moment. For many of these charities that were in organizations, they realized that if they didn't give them money and say, look, use this as you need to keep the lights on to keep your employees going to keep operations so that on the other side, you'll still you'll still be surviving. That level of frankly, maturity is something that is very interesting to see. And we see some signs that that may, I want to say it will, but it may have been a permanent switch. In other words, an understanding that organizations, although they like to have individual programs, and so on supported, historically, unrestricted giving has been very scarce. It's been kind of like gold. And we see now perhaps a maturation of the donor base, realizing that if organizations don't have this core of support, to enable them, to maintain their offices to repair their facilities to employ their people quite apart from specific programs, they might not be able to continue. And I think again, that's very interesting observation that was accelerated, if you will, by the pandemic,
Jennifer Trammell:we'll have to see if that trend continues in the coming years. We've talked about what's remained consistent, and really that foundation of generosity, let's talk about what's changed what was new in this report, and even some things that may have surprised you?
Unknown:Well, I think one thing that made all of our eyebrows go up was that in previous surveys, we've asked, broadly speaking as a donor, do you pretty much give to the same organization? Year after year, your philanthropy organization based? Or do you find issues that are important to you, and then seek out or research or discover organizations that are involved with those issues and get to them? Historically, this organization based philanthropy at the last time we did the survey in 2017 56% of donors are majority clear majority said yes, organization basis, the way we think we get to the same organizations year after year. This year, it was neck and neck 44 45%, basically, organization based versus issues based philanthropy. And I think what's driving this is if you look at the generational tiering, we now see, for better or worse, the greatest generation and frankly, some of my generation baby boomers passing from the scene. And the rising generation of the so called millennials and Gen Z people under 38 years old, are numerous. We have them in our study, because some of them are people of means and afterward people. And they were the ones who are much more likely to give based on specific issues that they hoped to influence using their donations compared to older donors who are more likely to sort of give to sort support specific organizations year after year. And this should send a message to charitable organizations that even if they've been relying on this cadre of the same donors year after year, that may change and they may need to get better at communicating what issues they address how they address those issues, in order to attract the attention of these younger issue based donors.
Jennifer Trammell:Thinking about these younger issues based donors Did you know there are currently 700,000 millennial millionaires in the United States, and many more coming with the major wealth transfer happening over the next decade. So some good news for your organization. This generation is more philanthropic than any that came before them. The bad news, how millennials want to be engaged in philanthropy is completely different. So you're likely going to have to make some changes to engage this new group of donors. To make sure you're on the right track. Download insightful is free ebook, nine insights fundraisers need to know to prepare for millennial major donors. Just head to insightfulphilanthropy.com/ebook That's insightfulphilanthropy.com/ebook. This free download includes the keys you need to know to work with millennials and connect with insights. That's insightful philanthropy.com/ebook One more thing, if you're picking up some good tidbits from Bill, leave us a five star rating in your podcast app. And make sure you click subscribe. So you'll know right away when a new episode of Know More. Raise More. drops. And now back to our conversation with Bill Jarvis.
Bill Jarvis:We had another sort of surprise, last time in 2018, for 2017 giving, we asked about whether the donors had made any impact investments. Now, impact investment is not necessarily a donation, it's an investment. And it has a return and that return may be the same as the market return or it may be lower, may be higher. If it is lower, you chalk it up to charitable mission. And what we saw in 2017, or previous survey was that a small number about 7% said, Oh, yes, we've made at least one impact investment. This year, it was 13%, nearly double the intellectual small number. But the direction, the trajectory is pretty amazing to nearly double over a period of three years. And again, what we saw here is this is largely being driven by younger donors. And so this to me, again, is a message to certain types of charities that can structure themselves in this way to make these impact investments available, because they seem to be attractive. And what's interesting, too, is that, broadly speaking for over half of the donors, they were not substituting for other types of donation, they were additive to their philanthropy, broadly speaking. So it's not as if you're going to be subtracting from donations that you otherwise otherwise receive. These donors seem to want to do this, in addition to their other philanthropy, there's a substantial proportion that says it's in place of part of my other philanthropy, but only a tiny proportion said, this isn't in a substitution for all my philanthropy. So this this impact or sustainable investing trend seems to be something that can be pursued and can be additive to overall philanthropy. From the organization's perspective.
Jennifer Trammell:I think that's so important for our fundraisers to keep in mind, how are we giving opportunities for people to donate for people to invest, and ultimately see the impact of those dollars. And you saw a change also, with the vehicles that people are using when it comes to philanthropy?
Bill Jarvis:Yeah, giving vehicles and they let's talk about what those would be, for example, a will, with a charitable provision in it, or qualified charitable distributions from an IRA, that's a category that just came into being with the 2017 tax act, or a plan giving instruments in other words, a charitable remainder trust or so on. This was a larger percentage this year using these giving vehicles than before and again, interestingly, driven, in many cases by younger daughters, and you would have thought, well wait a minute, you know, they're, they're in their, in their relative youth. They don't need to think about this. But I think what's happening here is that the structured nature of these, and the regular way in which you can fund them, for example, qualified charitable distributions for an IRA or plan giving instrument can be very attractive to people who want to make philanthropy a habit, as we said, want to make it something that's issues related that issues theme. And, for example, if you were a community foundation, the Community Foundation's regularly have planned giving programs, as do educational institutions and other types of of nonprofit. But if you were, for example, to have an issues based sleeve, and say, Alright, don't just give to the general purposes of organization, here is an issue that we're going to pursue strategically. We're going to do it through you through your plan giving instrument. And here is a panoply of organizations that we've researched that support this and into which you can make through for example, a donor advised fund that we might administer for you, we thank America private bank do this, we can make donations for you, either in your name or anonymously into these issues that you want to support. So I think that this is something which once was relatively, I won't say esoteric, but not terribly common, now becoming much more common and becoming part of people's strategy. Quite in addition to the things that you would have thought a family foundation or writing individual checks every year.
Jennifer Trammell:For the first time since you've been doing this study, we talk about digital tools, digital platforms when it comes to giving. So what did you ask about in this study, and what did you learn?
Bill Jarvis:We gave them a list of different types of digital tool and we said, Alright, here's a bunch. So start with a website. But we also went into crowdfunding, payment processing apps, social media, fundraising tools, donor advised fund recommendations, even text to give. And of course, remember bearing in mind that this was this period of social constraints couldn't have in person galleries. So there were online galleries, so that also wood wood wood spur, giving through the nonprofits websites, we saw 57% of our donors saying, Yes, I gave through a nonprofits website that might have been as part of attending a virtual Gala. It might have been In response to an online appeal, but I think it's very interesting that we see, for example, crowdfunding, attracting 18% of donors, payment processing apps, attracting 17% of donors, social media, attracting 13% of donors, and so even text to give it 4%. So it's tiny. But this is not nothing. And I think, again, if you think about the digitization of, I won't say everything, but the strong trends and digitization, which is something that our Chief Investment Office here at Bank of America has long been calling out. This, again, is an area where nonprofits, it would behoove them to make an investment, let's put it that way, in this kind of technology, if you will, or outreach so that in fact, they can be sure to be reaching the people that they want to reach, who increasingly are using these tools.
Jennifer Trammell:Thinking about the world in 2020, of course, we've been dealing with the pandemic. But this was also a really important year for social issues for social justice. How did that play into giving trends that you saw?
Bill Jarvis:Well, we asked for the first time about whether the donors had given specifically to racial and social justice related causes. And it popped up in terms of incidents of getting over a fifth 22% said that they had given to at least one racial or social justice cause in 2020. In terms of dollars, given it was not as prevalent as the others it was 5% of dollars, but that is holding its own with many other types of charity. And so I feel again, that this is perhaps a part of the landscape that will become something that nonprofits wants to be sure that they're being aware of. Certainly, racial justice, social justice causes are not confined to social charity, social service, social action charities, there are many, many, many, many fields in which the nonprofit sector can serve these causes, if you will, these issues that we've been talking about, ranging from scholarships, down through ways in which you present your materials if you're a museum, or an educational institution, across other types of outreach. So I do think that this is something that bears watching. And it's certainly again, very encouraging.
Jennifer Trammell:Let's talk a little bit about how donors see themselves when it comes to their knowledge level of charitable giving. And just a small percentage would consider themselves an expert. Talk to us about how people see themselves overall, when it comes to the knowledge of charitable giving, and what's different about those experts with the actions that they take?
Bill Jarvis:Yeah, this is so interesting, because we ask people to rate themselves in terms of their own level of expertise, about charitable giving. So we asked, Are you in your own view, a novice, or are you knowledgeable? Or are you expert is purely self self rating. So as you can imagine, different groups across gender, across generation across ethnicity, rate themselves in different ways. Men, for example, 6% of men said, Oh, I'm an expert, only 3% of women, but we know from surveys that women tend to under evaluate themselves. So let's leave that to one side for a moment. If we look, though, for example, at the ethnicities, 15% of the black African American respondents characterize themselves as experts 7% of Hispanic Latinos, and to contextualize this, this is in a in an overall population, we're only 5% said, Oh, I'm an expert at charitable giving. So here we have a situation where these groups are these individuals, these households, and the LGBTQ plus the same 10% characterize themselves as experts have gone to the trouble to educate themselves, about their giving. And they do this in a few ways. One would be to say, they are evaluating the impact or monitoring the impact of their giving for each charitable category. Another would be as we've been discussing, that they have or plan to establish a giving vehicle. And another would be to say that they have this feeling they have this knowledge based on this investigation that they've done, that they're giving is having its intended impact. And as we go across these three categories, Jennifer, from novice, to the middle category, knowledgeable to our little group of experts, the novices are relatively unsure about whether their gift is is having its intended impact. They are relatively uncommonly having the structured giving vehicles knowledgeable group slightly more Oh, but the expert group, let me see almost 70% of the expert group, evaluate the impact or the trouble of evaluating the impact of their gift overseas 71% have or plan to have a giving vehicle and 87 and a half nearly 90% say, Oh, yes are giving is having the intended impact. Why am I telling you this? It's because as you go from novice to knowledgeable to expert, the amount given on average increases to the point where the experts are giving more than twice as much annually as the novices. So the important thing here for a nonprofit is, this is not something that is out of their control. A nonprofit that has a volunteer that has a donor can educate that donor can give that donor more confidence can support that donor and establishing and giving vehicle and that donor then becomes able to say, Yes, I think I know these things, I think relatively speaking, I'm an expert. And with that confidence, they can get more. So this is not theoretical. It's actually something that can be applied, I would propose at least by nonprofits that wants to think strategically about donor development.
Jennifer Trammell:Absolutely, that's an important avenue to pursue. Let's talk a little bit about the donors and how decisions are made within their household. Who's making the decision of where do we give? How much do we give? How do they go about that?
Bill Jarvis:In many cases, we see that the decision is made jointly with the donor and the spouse, that's about half a spouse or partner, it's about half of the cases. And then we also see situations, say about 12%, where the individuals, the partners each or spouses make the decisions independently, but they consult with each other. So call it 49% Making decisions jointly 12% Confront consulting with each other conferring with each other. So that's almost two thirds, that say, Okay, this is a joint process. It's a collective process. But for about 1/3, I was the sole decision maker, they say, or my partner makes these decisions separately, or my partner spouse is the sole decision maker. So my message to the nonprofit is you have to think about this. In many cases, that donor that you're encountering, may have a partner or spouse behind the scenes that you don't know about, but who was part of this process. And so understanding the dynamism of that process that is often a consultative process is something that's probably incumbent on you.
Jennifer Trammell:And for fundraisers if you don't ask the question, you don't know the answer. So learning about how families make those
Bill Jarvis:decisions. That's the thing. In other words, I've long said that development professionals need to be all rounders, not glad handers, they really need to do the work to understand who their constituencies are, who those constituencies could be. Because in many cases, there will be as I've said before, generational ethnic areas, we have we have evidence of philanthropic participation by black African Americans, by women of means by Hispanic Asian Americans by LGBTQ. And it's not as if these people aren't getting the arguing. You just need to know how to find to to to get the messages to them, to make your case attracted to align your values with their values, to enable them to say yes, I want to write that check.
Jennifer Trammell:Knowing those constituents...Insightful as a tool to help you better know your donors, and the people you would like to be donors. Remember, for insights on Millennials from Millennials download insightful is free ebook, nine insights fundraisers need to know to prepare for millennial major donors. Just head to insightfulphilanthropy.com/ebook. That's insightfulphilanthropy.com/ebook. Phil, you have devoted so much of your career and at this point, a good portion of your life to this type of research. Why is it important?
Bill Jarvis:Well, that's a deeper question, Jennifer, to me, the numbers we've been talking about are just proof statements for a narrative for a story that is a story that needs to be told. And whether that's a story about how a college university's endowment gets invested and why or how a private foundation gets invested and how they distribute and why or what is driving a Community Foundation's distributions and why or here in this case, flipping to the other side, what is driving the inflow of funds to these organizations, these types of organizations and why these are our stories that I would propose need to be told and need to be internalized. And so from that point of view, this work to me is very satisfying. I feel as if it's not simply gathering of data that data are proof statements for the points that we make, that we can then bring out whether they appear to be there or not, and hopefully enable the sector as a whole To be better actors in fulfilling the social mission that is very unique to this country in the United States, we, we don't really think about this as much as we should. In many other countries around the world, charitable work is done by the government or by other institutions. Here in the US from the 19th century, when the visiting French aristocrat Alexis de Tocqueville wrote his book Democracy in America, he said, Americans are associated, they get together, they solve these problems by themselves, there is not much intervention by the state. And that is still true here in this country, despite the fact that we do have government programs. In many cases, for example, just to give a single example, Jennifer, social service charities, family relief, children's relief charities, are contracting with the state government or with local governments to provide services that the government would like to provide that recognizes that the social sector, the nonprofit sector, is more dynamic and better able to be close to the problem, and to be more innovative and effective in solving that problem. So this is an important part of strengthening the nonprofit sector, which after all accounts for 10% of jobs in this country for a substantial proportion of assets, work that otherwise would have to be done, either have to be done by government would not get done. And that would be that would be a very bad thing. So in that sense, to me, it's a way of doing work that is useful, and personally very satisfying.
Jennifer Trammell:Thanks for sharing that with us, Bill. I think so many people in nonprofits share that sentiment of this is how we do good in the world. One more question, what do you think two years from now will appear in that report any predictions for us?
Bill Jarvis:Well, as the old joke goes, it's difficult to make predictions, especially about the future. But let's think about this generationally, certainly one thing that will continue to happen is, as I said, Greatest Generation leading into baby boomers will retire from the scene or be removed from the scene leave the scene. And that means that the preferences of the less numerous Gen X population but preeminently, the millennials and Gen Z population, millennials, particularly very numerous, will increasingly dominate the scene in terms of what they're interested in, what they want to give to. And remember, the image is still and this is kind of popular media image of millennials are sort of oh, they're their kids. They're in their parents basement, no, no, leading into the millennial generation is about to turn 40. So these are people who are out they've had work experience. And one of the themes that our CIO office at Bank of America has identified is, in fact, later than for the baby boomers, but it is occurring, this economic motor of household formation, of buying houses, buying things for the houses, forming families, having children and having to educate and clothe and so on children. This is all driving economic activity. But bearing in mind, again, these people in this generation are the ones who are much more interested in issues and organizations. So they're skeptical, right, they are going to come in and say I want to solve or I want to give to this particular issue. So the nonprofit is going to have to say, Oh, we can help you with that, not to simply say, look at our brand, look at our record in terms of being in the community for so long, they're going to have to prove themselves again, and perhaps continue to prove themselves. So that that's one thing that I would say is going to continue to occur. And then the other that is certainly driven by generational change would be this rise in the use of digital giving. Certainly, particularly if you think about the Gen z's. These are people who were born after after the turn of the millennium, the turn of the century, they're totally digital natives. And so their instinct is to use digital means to do various things. And I think that's something that nonprofits to the extent that they can afford to are going to have to rise to in order to be able to capture not only dollars, but attention span. And that will be something that it's not going to be more than simply having a website, it's going to be this this torrent of social media, these other ways that we think and spend our time these days, and particularly that this generation thinks and spends their time. So I think that's something that's worth examination, investing in, not only by those organizations, but also by nonprofit fundraising professionals and others that are trying to serve them. So those are the two big ones. And I would say just as an asterisk, the use of the giving vehicles and particularly I would I would highlight there the donor advised fund. Historically, donor advised funds, were sometimes referred to a little condescendingly as the sort of private foundation for the middle class or the less affluent person's private foundation. No more what we see actually is, in many cases with our clients, they may have a private family foundation, but each of the adult members of that family they have a donor advised fund as well. Why? Because it enables them to give to their own issues, often anonymously, much more flexibly, and of course there's less of them. burden of reporting and so on that you'd have with a private, a private foundation. So I do think that that is something that will continue to advance, we certainly see our own charitable gift fund here at the private bank advancing in terms of assets, from sometimes fairly substantial families that say, this is a kind of vehicle that really works for us. And I would think that across this app will include you're going to see that as well.
Jennifer Trammell:All good predictions, we'll have to wait for the next report to see how many come true, I think you might be looking at 100%. correct and accurate there. Fingers crossed. Thank you. Bill, it's been a pleasure to talk with you to learn about this research among high net worth families and their charitable giving. Thank you for sharing it with us.
Bill Jarvis:A pleasure, Jennifer.
Jennifer Trammell:So great to learn from Bill and the research that's been done at the Indiana University lily family School of Philanthropy. Let's recap some of those key takeaways for you and your team. Number one, remember, volunteers tend to give more. So how can you get potential donors engaged with your mission? First, as a volunteer really knowing your work, then making a contribution? Number two, we're seeing generational shifts. For example, younger donors want to know more about the impact of their gift and return on investment. We saw a doubling in impact investments since the last survey really driven by younger donors. So how are you preparing to work with groups like millennials? Number three, think about your organization's digital investment. Are you set up to use the tools to capture dollars and attention from digital natives? For help donors understand the importance of unrestricted giving and how that fuels your organization. We saw a trend to unrestricted giving during the pandemic, and Bill Jarvis thinks that could continue. And lastly, number five, because two thirds of donation decisions are made jointly, make sure you know who in the family is part of that decision. Thanks for joining us for no more, raise more. I'm your host Jennifer Trammell. And don't forget to download insightful free ebook, just head to insightfulphilanthropy.com/ebook. Our next episode launches in a week we talk with Lisa Simpson, CEO of the Global Fund for forgotten people. She shares the strategy behind making the Order of Malta, an organization that's been around since the Middle Ages relevant today and how they get unmatched levels of engagement in their work around the world from seven figure donors. That's coming up next week.