How does your church fare when it comes to financial support from your members? Across the nation, churches find themselves largely sustained by donations from older generations. How can we better engage the generosity of younger generations to sustain our nation’s churches?
You can begin with a broad examination of the financial habits of each age group.
Reports show that Boomers (born between 1946–1964) are carrying the largest load of the nation’s charitable contributions. They make up 23.6 percent of the population and are responsible for 43 percent of all benevolent giving.
Millennials (born between 1980–1997) make up the largest percentage of the U.S. population (25.9 percent), and a larger percentage of them give (84 percent of Millennials vs. 72 percent of Boomers). But in the end, Millennial giving only makes up 11 percent of total U.S. giving.
These two demographics receive a lot of attention, but wedged in between them (and often forgotten) is Generation X. Born between 1965–1979, this generation makes up 20.4 percent of the population and regularly contributes 20 percent of all charitable giving. The only problem is that only 59 percent of Gen Xers are actually giving—a smaller percentage than either Boomers or Millennials.