How to Live the Cause Lifestyle

It would be challenging to find one Millennial who has not been exposed to causes early and often in schools, congregations, stores, and through mass media. Cause-related activities and products have swirled around Millennials their entire lives, and the impact shows.

Social researcher Cynthia Gibson writes that service is “a deeply embedded value in American culture, based on the country’s strong religious and spiritual traditions that encourage ‘giving back,’ its vibrant nonprofit sector, and its consistently high levels of charitable giving and volunteering in comparison to other nations.”

Millennials are set apart from other generations by their cause lifestyle—a youth that is infused with giving and volunteering, eventually complemented by careers dedicated to causes.

We walk, run, shop, click, give, barter, solicit, and eat in support of an ever-increasing variety of heartfelt efforts. According to the National Center for Charitable Statistics, the number of operating public charities almost doubled between 1989 and 2004. This led to corresponding increases in the ways to give money, time, and attention to various causes. Cause affiliation has become de rigueur not just for students, but for retirees, celebrities, politicians, and for-profit companies.

The rising demand of causes intersected with the increased supply of student volunteers in the 1990s, when service-learning requirements became the norm in 83 percent of public high schools and 77 percent of middle schools.

According to the Corporation for National and Community Service, teenage volunteerism declined between 1974 and 1989 (20.9 percent and 13.4 percent, respectively), but more than doubled between 1989 and 2005 (from 13.4 percent to 28.4 percent). In addition, there has been a 20 percent increase in the number of college students volunteering between 2002 and 2005, meaning that volunteerism is sustained beyond high school.

Obligatory volunteering could have backfired and created a resentful group of young people. Instead, Millennials are set apart from other generations by their cause lifestyle—a youth that is infused with giving and volunteering, eventually complemented by careers dedicated to causes.

They are a generation defined by the fervent belief they can change the world one donation, one voluntary activity, or one purchase at a time. They are less interested in and adept at interacting with government agencies and shaping public policy, and more interested in hands-on ways of improving the lives of people domestically and internationally.

Millennials raise awareness and money for causes, bring causes to their corporate workplaces, start socially responsible businesses, eat sustainable foods, and buy green products. And they do all of these things by embracing—not rejecting—the overarching capitalist system as many of their parents might have done as part of the radical movements of the 1960s and 1970s.

The supersizing of philanthropy has also caught the attention and imagination of young people. We are living in an era of philanthropy, with leading entrepreneurs endowing foundations earlier and with much larger amounts than many of their predecessors.

With a projected endowment of more than $76 billion, and with the addition of Warren Buffet’s donations, the Gates Foundation will be larger than the gross domestic product of 56 out of 177 countries, according to 2005 World Bank statistics. The new philanthropists are a “who’s who” of tech legends from Google, eBay, Dell, AOL, and Intel.

Corporations are just as philanthropically visible and active, giving an estimated $1.3 billion through their cause partnerships with nonprofits in 2006.24 This does not include an additional $4.2 billion given by corporate foundations that same year.

Overall, young people today have the incentive, the capabilities, and the models in place to be involved. In many ways, it has never been easier.