Live From AFP: Getting the Younger Donor to Say Yes

Secondly, as all three presenters pointed out, the younger you can engage donors, the longer you can cultivate them and the earlier your organization is top of mind. That helps breed loyalty and, eventually, dollars. Still, Groves and Bartlett agreed that the goal for engaging younger donors isn't necessarily to raise dollars right away, especially from teens and young adults. A better, more easily attained goal, they explained, is building relationships that can be fostered over time, resulting in loyal donors who provide a steady stream of funds over the course of their giving lifetime.

Two approaches
The Human Rights Campaign makes a conscious effort to push out one integrated brand message across all its mediums, communicating with its younger audience through the mediums it frequents — Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, blogs, etc. PETA takes a slightly different approach, repurposing its content to fit the specific audiences it engages. For example, PETA launched peta2, aimed exclusively at the 13- to 21-year-old crowd, which sends out very different messages than its PETA Prime network, which targets more of the baby boomer generation.