Gen Z prioritizes purpose
Gen Z alumni are leaning into purpose, well‑being, and flexibility—willing to trade pay for balance and favoring impact‑first causes over legacy appeals, a trend highlighted in recent coverage of young workers’ values. That shifts the playing field for giving and engagement: campaigns that foreground tangible, local impact and offer flexible participation are more likely to land with younger grads. (fortune.com) (thestar.com.my)
KPMG’s Winter Intern Pulse found Gen Z interns would accept an average $5,000 pay cut to secure daily “log off at 5” boundaries, while 92% reported ambitions for senior leadership roles. (aol.com) The Blackbaud Institute’s “Gen Z at the Table” report surveyed more than 1,000 Gen Z respondents and documents strong preferences for transparent, impact-first giving channels and digital-first donor experiences. (institute.blackbaud.com) Indiana University’s Lilly Family School of Philanthropy — in its joint “Next Generation of Philanthropy” study with DAFgiving360 — found Gen Z and Millennial donors prioritize issue-specific causes, technology-enabled giving, and volunteer/advocacy options over legacy-brand appeals. (businesswire.com) Ruffalo Noel Levitz’s 2025 National Alumni Survey aggregated responses from over 50,000 alumni across 21 institutions to benchmark motivations, communication-channel preferences, and what increases alumni’ likelihood to give. (ruffalonl.com) Peer campaign examples show the playbook: Dickinson College ran a Young Alumni Giving Challenge offering a $50,000 donor match tied to 1,000 young-alumni gifts; Quinnipiac executed 90 strategic alumni events (31 regional events in 21 cities) using GiveCampus tools; UCF’s 2025 Day of Giving raised $14.8 million from 10,450+ gifts; William & Mary’s 2025 “One Tribe One Day” raised more than $4.4 million from 13,004 donors. (give.dickinson.edu) Vendors are shipping AI-personalization into advancement stacks: Gravyty (merged with Ivy.ai and Ocelot) promotes AI-driven outreach across 2,000+ institutions and reports metrics such as ~4x more donors engaged via AI-powered outreach, while GiveCampus offers “GC Intelligence” for predictive modeling and personalized content generation. (ocelot.ai) Multiple industry reports recommend concrete tactics that align with Gen Z: prioritize local/tangible outcomes, offer micro-gift and volunteer pathways, deploy matched young-alum challenges and short giving-day windows, and automate personalized invites and video outreach using CRM-integrated AI to scale one-to-one touch. (institute.blackbaud.com)
