Engaging Younger Donors with Howard Pearl of CARS

This week, your host, Matt Barnes, sat down with Howard Pearl, the CEO of Charitable Adult Rides & Services (CARS), to explore how to engage younger donors today.

Who is cars?

CARS is a nonprofit organization that exclusively works with other nonprofits. Although they offer many programs, their main focuses are their unique car and real estate donation programs, where they connect with both small and large nonprofits to process donations that come in the form of vehicles or real estate assets.

They also have a sister organization, On The Go. This is a national transportation service for communities across the USA, helping to solve the transportation issues that cause barriers to dignity in aging and quality living.

meeting donors where they are

Younger people like to try new things, and as they age, they will find the things they like and stick to them. For nonprofits, this means that younger donors will often only be linked to you for a short time before moving on to something else. This isn’t a bad thing. By engaging with them when they do show interest, they are more likely to come back when they are ready to settle down.

So, how do you go about catching their interest?

It all comes down to meeting them where they are already at.

There are different methods for this, but Howard shares an example from St. Jude’s Children's Research Hospital, which uses influencers to engage with the younger generation. They specifically partnered with a gamer last year, who would bring some of the children from St Jude’s into his videos, encouraging his followers to donate to the hospital. He ended up getting lots of small donations of between $5 and $25, which all add up. Followers were now aware of St. Jude’s, and they are more likely to donate to the hospital when they are more financially capable.

“So [influencers are] turning out to be a very, very good way to attract younger people for a period of time, and they follow these guys, and as long as they're involved there, and at a certain point they separate from that and then become donors on their own.”

Ultimately, the current younger generation is interested in social causes, and it is likely that they will continue to volunteer and donate throughout their lives. To Howard, the future is bright for nonprofits.

“They're interested in everything, and they're very interested in social causes. As we know, they're very interested in the environment. They're very interested in helping. They're very interested in making the world better.”

Want more on engaging younger donors?

Listen to this episode of the Nonprofit Connect podcast to hear the rest of Howard’s insights into the younger generation’s views on social causes!