How Nonprofits Convince Millennials to Give: Customize the Cause

By Victor Luckerson

Scott Harrison understands what young people like. As a former nightclub promoter in New York City, he openly admits that he used to get people drunk for a living. But a two-year stint as a photojournalist in Liberia opened his eyes to the suffering happening in other parts of the world, particularly due to a lack of access to clean drinking water. Now he’s using his penchant for slick marketing to get young people to do something else: donate money to build wells in impoverished countries.

“There was a real jaded view towards charities,” Harrison says of the sentiment among his twenty-something friends when he first entered the nonprofit world. “I thought maybe a new model could bring some of these disenchanted people that are potential givers back to the table of giving.”

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