This report reveals that there is a strong motivation amongst younger city employees to support the work of charities and community groups through giving and volunteering. It presents the findings of the first London-wide research on employee involvement and attitudes around giving back to society.

Placing a spotlight on the aspirations of the ‘millennial generation’, it finds a distinct generational giving profile. Entering city employment from 2000 onwards, in the wake of 9/11, the millennial generation has experienced economic and social turbulence unknown to its predecessors who had enjoyed the heady growth of the ‘80s.

This research finds many millennial employees have high expectations of how they, their employers and the wealthy could make a bigger contribution to building a more equable and sustainable society. Moreover, the youngest employees are looking for opportunities not only to give money, but to apply their existing professional or business skills to help charitable organisations, in turn gaining new expertise which benefits their working and personal lives.

A distinct millennial profile has emerged. The desire to get more involved in giving and volunteering is most positive for the younger, millennial generation of employees and declines consistently across the older age-groups. This particular age-trajectory, or age-linked trend, showing strongest and most positive results for younger employees, is repeated across almost all the other aspects of philanthropy studied.

Motivation to give more, expectations of what employers can contribute, the desire for more philanthropic information and for workplace and other opportunities to give time or money are all highest in the younger age-groups, consistently tailing off across older age-groups. This is a strong indicator of the specific value of investing in the millennial employees’ willingness to give. With the pressures on London’s infrastructure growing daily, and a further era of spending cuts imminent, this philanthropic impulse is a potential asset for the voluntary sector which we cannot afford to neglect.