COMPASSION
CAP volunteer Nathaniel Tennant and his sister, Angelica, on a YouthFest site in April.
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n 2008, the nonprofit community experienced that while young people are interested in helping a shocking decrease in revenue: a loss of over nonprofits, they’d rather do it their own way: through $17 billion from individual donors. Since volunteering. then, donations have been slow to return According to the report, over 93% of teens say they to their 2007 figures with most nonprofits want to volunteer, but just over half (54.2%) do. saying that the recession isn’t over yet. In Their reasons for not doing so include: fact, researchers at Giving USA are calculating that • Their friends don’t want to do it it will take at least six more years for giving patterns • The time commitment is too long to return to • They pre-recession just weren’t levels. “meant” to be The most volunteers By Cindy Butor & Rayann White obvious • There reason for aren’t any this sudden decrease and slow return is the economic volunteer opportunities in their area recession, which resulted in over 30 million people The number one factor influencing a young person’s being unemployed and a national debt of over $16 volunteering habits is whether or not their friends do trillion and climbing. Lack of job security and less so regularly. The report recommends that nonprofits upward employment mobility forced many individuals create volunteer activities that are mobile, flexible, and to withhold their generosity. above all, social. It concludes that, “Volunteering, like Nonprofits are continually trying to find innovative everything else, is about blending in, making friends, ways to spread their message to new generations, and having a good time.” through methods such as email solicitation, The Christian Appalachian Project (CAP) has always downloadable apps, and social networking. A strived to understand what a volunteer program should recent report from DoSomething.org has shown offer its volunteers, what it should accomplish, and
Philanthropy, The Next Generation
CHRISTIANAPP.ORG | FALL 2013
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