Those stingy baby boomers

Regular readers will recognise myself and Walsall's Fat Prophet in the picture on the right. We were at a party in West Bromwich in the late 1960s. We were having a great time. We are the "baby boom" generation.

Baby boomers see ourselves as relaxed, socially aware, caring sorts. Now it seems we are not as open hearted as we once thought, in fact we are a bit tight.

So church treasurer's beware: the next generation to fill the pews adjacent to heaven are stingy!

Third Sector magazine reports:

Forty to sixty-year-olds 'don't respond to requests for small monthly donations'

People from the ‘baby boom' generation hate requests by charities for £3 a month and do not respond to emotional campaigns, according to Kevin Kibble, director of fundraising agency Whitewater.

In a seminar at the Institute of Fundraising Scotland annual conference in Glasgow yesterday, Kibble discussed the results of focus groups he had held with people aged between their mid-forties and their mid-sixties.

He said the generation had "invented marketing" and could see through charities' advertising campaigns.

"They hate our £3-a-month asks," he said. "They know we can't change the world with £3 a month and they wonder why we keep telling them we can."

Kibble said the age group valued trust, individualism and tangibility, and wanted to know charities were spending donors' money wisely.

But he warned that many had what he called worrying misperceptions about charities. In one focus group, he said, a baby boomer had claimed the NSPCC spent 81 per cent of its income on administrative costs.

"The baby boomers have got money, but you're going to have to ask them for it in the right way," said Kibble. "We need to be better at communicating how effective we are."