Many of us are guilty of walking down the street and ignoring the people from Planned Parenthood or Doctors Without Borders who ask us for money. And many of us feel equally as guilty for changing our profile pictures on Facebook to fight for a cause when we know a donation would go further.
There are reasons we do it, though. According to a Wednesday article from The Boston Globe, many nonprofit leaders and experts believe that the best way to reach our generation, in terms of campaigning for money and volunteer work, is through social media. These people realize that our generation makes up only 11 percent of total charitable giving, yet they find it important to begin relationships with us so that we are more inclined to donate in the future.
These experts don’t disparage the charitable work millennials do. They instead acknowledge that we would rather apply our skillsets to charity work or volunteer for a cause, rather than write out checks to specific organizations.
But the Globe still highlights the “criticism of millennials by traditionalists — who dub it ‘slacktivism’ — as the conviction that driving awareness via social media, such as retweeting or sharing memes, is as valid a form of support as actually opening their wallets.”
“Will posting your avatar as a cartoon character to oppose child abuse really make a difference?” writer Melissa Schorr asks in the article. “Or turning your Facebook profile rainbow-hued to support marriage equality?”
It’s important to differentiate between donating to charity and having support or awareness for a cause. The Globe’s interviewees are correct in saying that most students our age don’t have the funds to donate to a cause. Although it may seem as though online campaigns don’t do much for certain causes, they still provide an outlet in which we can help even if we don’t have the means to donate.
However, many of our Facebook friends participate in social campaigns in exchange for donating money when they actually do have the means to donate. Or, they may participate for the sake of participating, so as to join the crowd or to look good in front of their friends. Take, for example, the ALS Association’s Ice Bucket Challenge that took over the Internet in 2014. In exchange for pouring buckets of ice water on their heads in front of a camera and nominating their friends to do the same, people could avoid donating $100 to ALS research.
It would seem that a campaign like this encourages the exact opposite of what nonprofit and charity foundations wish to achieve. Even still, Massachusetts Nonprofit Network CEO Jim Klocke argues that “for every 10 people who do that retweet, three of them are going to do something down the road.” Although Klocke was not directly referring to the Ice Bucket challenge, his theory can be applied. Those of us who participated and shared our videos brought awareness to the cause, which many celebrities and high-level officials then donated to.
This in turn leads us to believe that our sharing on social media influences those in higher power to donate to our most prevalent causes. As the Globe mentions, many people changed their Facebook profile pictures to a rainbow when the U.S. Supreme Court announced that gay marriage was legal, back in June. This act received backlash from many who argued that simply changing a profile picture didn’t do anything to help the cause. Others, however, said that just seeing their Facebook friends’ support of their decisions to marry made them feel appreciated and accepted, which is a good portion of what the LGBT community is fighting for.
On the other hand, it remains true that some causes don’t have the same social effects as others. Arguably, wearing pink throughout October doesn’t necessarily raise money or bring awareness to breast cancer, nor does it necessarily encourage more women to get tested. This again trails back to the argument that many people dress a certain way or participate in a social media movement simply for the fashion of it.
But this isn’t limited simply to the millennial generation. Plenty of our friends’ parents do the same — they share their ALS Ice Bucket Challenge videos on Facebook just as often as we do.
This whole issue depends on how much we wish to let capitalism infiltrate advocacy. Are we going to say that advocacy only serves a purpose if you have the financial stability to donate money? The fact is, just as the Globe pointed out, many of us will eventually have the means and financial stability to donate. At the moment, though, it is unfair to grade our generation on its ability to donate.
Awareness, on the other hand, is where we have the ability to affect change, and the Globe’s interviewees are correct in saying that later in life, these changes will be more tangible. But right now, many of us are stopped on the street, asked for money for a cause and guilt-tripped when we say we can’t donate. Trust us — we don’t doubt that children in Africa are starving or that animal shelters need support. We are just more likely to show that support on social media, and for us, right now, that’s OK.
All of this isn’t to say that every single person in our generation will grow up and donate, but just like all other stereotypes, millennials can’t be grouped into one giant category that is supposedly horrible and selfish all because we don’t currently give money to our favorite causes — and the Globe rightfully keeps from accusing us of this. For right now, we will stick to wearing purple for Autism Awareness and changing our profile pictures to support raising funds against animal cruelty. And one day, at the soonest possible time that we have the means to do so, we’ll transform our advocacy into a tangible contribution.
