More generalizations on Millennials

There’s good statistics and some broad generalizations on Christianity.ca about the no-longer-upcoming Millennials. I did enjoy the remark, “They have no problem believing in God; their problem is believing in Christians.” Hopefully the Church is up this generation’s aspirations.

Read it here.

Millennials are good donors

The Center on Philanthropy at Indiana University reports that the Millennial generation is just as generous as previous generations when it comes to philanthropic giving. Any suggestion that Millennials are less giving than other generations is not tied to their generation, but correlated to any number of other factors.

This is good news for anyone involved with young adult ministries!

Here’s a lengthy quote before you go read it all:

The study of more than 10,000 individuals across five generations examines differences in giving trends, including motivations for giving, types of causes supported and amount donated. While those in the Millennial generation (born after 1981) are generally less likely to give and tend to give less when they do make a donation, the study found that this trend is associated with income, education level and religious attendance, rather than generation. All other factors being equal, the average giving level of Millennials was roughly equivalent to that of other generations.

“There’s a perception in the nonprofit world that young people aren’t as philanthropic, so this is great news,” says Shaun Keister, Ph.D., annual giving consultant with Campbell & Company. “A lot of the members of the Millennial generation are still in school or have lower salaries because they’re at the beginning of their careers, so this suggests that their giving may rise along with their earning power.”

Other key findings of the Center on Philanthropy study included:

• Members of the Millennial generation are more likely than any other generation to cite the “desire to make the world a better place to live” as a key motivation for their philanthropic giving.
• Members of the Silent generation (born between 1929 and 1945) are more likely to cite “need to provide services that the government can’t or won’t” as one of their most important motivations for giving.

Individuals in all generations who attend religious services at least once a year are more likely than those who never attend to support both religious and secular organizations.

A Preferential Option for Young Adults

From the editorial blog of America magazine, referring to Dean Hoge et al., Young Adult Catholics: Religion in a Culture of Choice ( University of Notre Dame Press, 2001):

Hoge ended his book with a strong plea for a “preferential option for young adult Catholics.” For such an option to be real and not just empty rhetoric, it needs to be translated into diocesan and parish budgets, ministerial personnel, imaginative programs. Resources and energies should be directed toward helping young adult Catholics feel wanted, welcomed and actively involved. Being welcoming to young adults must mean more than hospitality at the parish level (they are not there, anyway!) but entail a vigorous outreach beyond the parish. In the Hoge sample, young adult Catholics complained of the absence of programs and activities for single young adults.