We know that age and life stage influence how people support charities. Older people are generally more likely to give money, volunteer and make longer-term commitments. But how are charities and member organisations adapting to the changing wishes and behaviours of the generations coming through? Should we be thinking harder that a non-cash-based show of support today can still become a financial contribution tomorrow?

The latest government data makes the age gap in charitable giving fairly clear. In England, 46% of 16–24-year-olds and 55% of 25–34-year-olds had given money to charitable causes in the previous four weeks, compared with the larger figures of 79% of 65–74-year-olds and 82% of people aged 75 and over.

It would be easy to look at those numbers and conclude that younger people are less generous. But this is just one particular measure of generosity: whether someone has given money. The true picture is more varied – and increasingly so.

‘The generosity gap’

In 2025, research by Our Media found that 85% of young adults were supporting charities or non-profits in some shape or form. That finding initially appears difficult to reconcile with research from the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF), which found a significant decline in the proportion of younger people making charitable donations.

The apparent contradiction is partly explained by what each piece of research is actually measuring. CAF's figures focus on charitable giving, while at Our Media we looked more broadly at the ways young adults support causes and organisations. Those behaviours can include actions that generate income, but also those that create awareness, participation, advocacy or a relationship that may lead to financial support later.

The government's research shows that buying goods from a charity shop or catalogue was the most common method of giving money to charitable causes in England in 2025/26. Giving, in other words, already happens through a variety of behaviours that sit somewhere between a conventional donation and an everyday transaction.

For charities and membership organisations, this raises a more useful question than simply asking who is donating and who isn't: What, if not just money, are people prepared to give, and what makes them want to give it?

Conventional giving is under great pressure

Generosity is difficult to put into a database. It’s not a demographic characteristic, nor does it sit particularly comfortably alongside age, income, location or household composition.

But it may be one of the more useful things for charities to understand better – because it’s a common trait across all supporters.

Someone can give money, certainly. But they can also give time, attention, expertise, influence or social capital. They might volunteer for an hour, take part in a sponsored challenge, buy from a charity shop, share a campaign, attend an event, persuade a friend to get involved or become part of an online community.

Some of these behaviours produce an immediate financial return; others don't. Some may be more valuable as indicators of future commitment than as sources of immediate income. The difficulty is that charities have traditionally been much better at recording the transaction than understanding the inclination behind it. A donation is easy to count, generosity is not.

The latest CAF research underlines the pressure on conventional giving. The public donated £14bn in 2025, while one in five people said they could not afford to give to charity.

When disposable income is under pressure, a person's willingness to support a cause may become visible in other ways before it becomes visible as a donation. A person may not be in a position to commit £10 a month, but they may still volunteer, buy something, fundraise for a friend or give an organisation their attention.

Those behaviours shouldn't automatically be treated as substitutes for donations. They aren't all equal in financial value, and pretending otherwise would be unhelpful. They are, however, signals.

Is it time to stop asking everyone for the same thing?

This is where audience segmentation needs to become more sophisticated – the conventional approach is to identify an audience, select the appropriate channel and adapt the creative. Older audiences might receive direct mail; younger audiences might be reached through social platforms. The channel changes, but too often the underlying proposition remains essentially the same: donate, join us, sign up.

But if motivations and circumstances change across different audiences, then the opportunity is not simply to find a different way of delivering the same ask, it’s to reconsider what the ask should be in the first place.

For one supporter, membership might represent a long-standing commitment to an organisation and its mission. For another, it might provide access to expertise, experiences or a community of people who share their interests. For someone else, particularly someone earlier in their adult life, the relationship may begin with participation rather than formal membership.

Our Media's research into young adults points towards precisely this broader understanding of engagement, with younger people describing relationships with organisations that don't necessarily fit neatly into traditional definitions of membership or support.

That doesn't mean abandoning the donation or membership proposition. It means recognising that they may be destinations rather than starting points.

From a donor funnel to a generosity economy

The familiar supporter journey tends to look something like this: prospect, donor, regular donor, member, advocate, legacy donor.

Real behaviour is rarely so tidy, especially in this ever-fragmented mediascape. People move in and out of organisations. They may volunteer before donating, donate before joining, share something without ever becoming a member, or discover a cause through a friend and only develop a financial relationship with it years later.

There’s an opportunity to think about this less as a funnel and more as a ‘generosity economy’: a wider network of ways in which people can contribute to a cause, with different behaviours carrying different forms of value.

That doesn't require charities to monetise everything. In fact, trying to put a financial value on every interaction would probably destroy some of the things that make participation meaningful. It does, however, require us to become better at recognising patterns.

The government data offers a useful reminder here. While younger adults are less likely to give money than older adults, 16–24-year-olds were found to be more likely than the population average to take part in informal volunteering, with 29% doing so at least once a month. Overall, 38% of 16–24-year-olds took part in either formal or informal volunteering each month. This shows that different forms of contribution are becoming more or less prominent at different stages of life.

Work commitments, family responsibilities, disposable income, social networks and available time all influence what someone can realistically give. A good supporter strategy needs to account for those realities rather than simply categorising people according to their age.

What does this mean for charities?

First, measure more of the behaviours that surround giving. Donation value and conversion remain essential, but they shouldn't be the only signals of a developing relationship. Engagement with content, event attendance, volunteering, advocacy, purchasing and referrals can all tell us something about interest and commitment.

Second, give people more meaningful ways to participate. ‘Donate’ and ‘Join us’ will always have their place, but they shouldn't be the only doors into an organisation. If someone wants to learn, contribute their expertise, spend time outdoors, meet other people, campaign, make something or simply take part, there should be a credible way for them to do that.

Third, segment according to motivation as well as demographics. Age can tell us something about people's circumstances, but it’s much less reliable as an explanation of why they care. Someone in their twenties and someone in their seventies may have entirely different lives but share a motivation to protect nature, improve their community or pass something on to future generations.

And finally, build products and experiences around the different ways people are prepared to contribute. If volunteering is important, make it easy to volunteer. If community matters, build something worth belonging to. If people want to participate before they donate, give them a meaningful way to participate.

The objective isn't to turn every interaction into a fundraising opportunity. It’s to create relationships in which financial support can become one natural expression of a much broader commitment to your cause.

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Images: Unsplash/Raj Tuladhar, Susan G Komen, iStock/Getty Images

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