Today’s young philanthropists are a new breed — more focused on making an impact, and willing to roll up their sleeves and get involved. They’re also “high maintenance” for the organizations they give to. And they’re going to give like never before.

“The next generation of these big donors are at a stage in their life where they are developing their identity, and they’re going to be the biggest donors we’ve ever seen over the course of the next 20-30 years, given the amount of wealth transfer that’s happening,” said Michael Moody, professor of philanthropic studies at the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.

Moody, the author of “Generation Impact: How Next Gen Donors Are Revolutionizing Giving” with Sharna Goldseker, says academics generally shy away from dramatic words like “revolutionary.”

“But it really does fit here, because this generation of big donors are willing to change whatever is necessary about the existing practices and norms of giving in order to move the needle on issues which their parents and grandparents or other major donors of the past have been trying to fix for a long time,” said Moody at Next-Gen Giving: How Younger Donors Approach Philanthropy a webinar hosted by DAFgiving360 (formerly Schwab Charitable) and the Stanford Social Innovation Review.

Moody added that while these young philanthropists strive to help others, they need help themselves.

“They are very much amenable to engaging with advisors to help them understand the best way to achieve that impact — the how, the where, the when, the what — everything associated with embracing that legacy of philanthropy and charitable giving,” he said.

While the wealthiest young donors are changing the way giving is done at the highest levels, young Americans of more modest means are also evolving, according to another webinar panelist, Jon Bergdoll, associate director of data partnerships at the Lilly School.

‘Donors Down, Dollars Up’

The most notable trend among young donors — and all Americans — is “donors down, dollars up,” Bergdoll said. Fewer people are giving to nonprofit organizations, but the total amount of donations has increased. “About 2008, the Great Recession, we start to see a long-term decline begin across all generations’ giving, and it’s about 10 percentage points in every generation,” he said.

One theory is that as older people leave the potential donor pool, fewer younger people are giving, so that net population replacement is slowly dragging that overall incidence rate down, Bergdoll said.

Another theory is that as the general population trends less religious, religious-themed giving also should decline. But Bergdoll said that’s not exactly what has happened among younger donors.

Young Religious Donors Giving More

“While younger households in general are less religious, those who are religious are likelier to give,” he said. “And so, the pool of young donors is actually going to look a lot more religious than a pool of young people more generally.” In a trend Bergdoll called “a little troubling,” younger religious donors are becoming less likely to give to secular organizations. “You see with millennials and then with the early data on Gen Z, it’s very strong. We see it very starkly,” he said.

Read the full article about next-gen donors by Ed Prince at Rethinking 65.