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This story is part of the New Boom series on millennials in America.

Millennials are spending — and giving away their cash — a lot differently than previous generations, and that's changing the game for giving, and for the charities that depend on it.

Scott Harrison's group, Charity: Water, is a prime example. Harrison's story starts in New York's hottest nightclubs, promoting the proverbial "models and bottles."

"At 28 years old, I realized my legacy was going to be just that. Here lies a guy who got people wasted," Harrison says.

So he changed his story. Harrison volunteered to spend the next two years in West Africa. What he found when he first got to Liberia was a drinking water crisis. He watched 7-year-olds drink regularly from chocolate-colored swamps — water, he says, that he wouldn't let his dog drink.

Most childhood diseases in the developing countries he visited could be traced to unsafe drinking water, so everything changed for Harrison. He got inspired to start raising money for clean water when he returned to the states, but his friends were wary.

"They all said, 'I don't trust charities. I don't give. I believe these charities are just these black holes. I don't even know how much money would actually go to the people who I'm trying to help,' " Harrison recalls.

So his one cause became two: He started Charity: Water to dig wells to bring clean drinking water to the nearly 800 million people without access to it around the globe. But he also wanted to set an example with the way the organization did its work.

"We're also really trying to reinvent charity, reinvent the way people think about giving, the way that they give," he says.

“ That sense of 'I need to give out of obligation' — I don't know that it's going to be around 20 years from now.

- Amy Webb

Demographic change is a huge reason for rethinking this. With around 80 million millennials coming of age, knowing how they spend their cash on causes is going to be critical for nonprofits. And their spending patterns aren't the same as their parents.

"Our culture is changing pretty dramatically," says Amy Webb, who forecasts digital trends for nonprofit and for-profit companies. "That sense of 'I need to give out of obligation' — I don't know that it's going to be around 20 years from now."

One piece of advice she gives on appealing to younger donors? Don't even ask them to "donate," because younger donors want to feel more invested in a cause. Choose a different word, with a different connotation: investment.

"It may seem something simple. It's just semantics: donation vs. investment. But I think to a millennial, who's grown up in a very different world, one that's more participatory because of the digital tools that we have, to them they want to feel like they're making an investment. Not just that they're investing their capital, but they're investing emotionally," Webb says.

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The Manhattan-based headquarters of Charity: Water. Elise Hu/NPR hide caption

itoggle caption Elise Hu/NPR

The Manhattan-based headquarters of Charity: Water.

Elise Hu/NPR

And there's the tech part. She says any philanthropy without a smart digital platform — not just for donations but for empowering a community of givers — will be left behind.

Which brings us back to Charity: Water. Designers spend most their time finding ways to save their donors time, trimming as much lag time or obstacles to giving online as possible.

"There are a lot of people who are more willing to be generous with 20, 30 and 50 dollars, but their time is actually worth something. And the thought of pulling out their credit card and fighting through a two- and three- and four-page form is just too much," Harrison says.

On its site, giving is as simple as a couple of clicks. And Charity: Water's big tactical success, the approach for which it's earned notoriety, is getting young people to call on their own real-life social networks for help. It's the same approach that made this summer's Ice Bucket Challenge for ALS so unavoidable.

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"We're always taking selfies, we're sharing details about our lives. So why not do a little social narcissism for a good cause," Beth Kanter, author of Measuring the Networked Nonprofit, told NPR in August.

Charity: Water stokes that by building campaigns around birthdays.

"One of the big ideas that the millennials embraced," Harrison says, "is this idea that we sorta stumbled into, when we asked people to give up their birthday for clean water. So I went around asking everyone I knew to give $32 for my 32nd birthday."

Soon, tech CEOs were raising tens of thousands of dollars per campaign by giving up their birthdays for water. This spring, NFL safety Kam Chancellor joined in. And the generation that comes after millennials — the children today — are getting into it, too.

"We had 7-year-olds in Austin, Texas, go door to door asking for $7 donations. We had 16-year-olds in Indiana asking for $16 donations," Harrison says.

The group's focus on social networks and simple design means 4 million more people, in 22 countries, now have access to clean drinking water.

But you don't have to take our word for it. Charity: Water's latest tech improvement is putting remote sensors on wells — so donors can see just how much water flows from what they helped build.

"We think this is just going to be game changing," Harrison says.

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All around the country, gasoline prices have been falling for weeks, down to an average of about $3 a gallon. Those lower prices are helping restrain inflation across the board.

On Wednesday, the Labor Department said its consumer price index barely inched up 0.1 percent last month. Over the past 12 months, the CPI has risen by 1.7 percent, roughly half of its historical average rate of increase.

That sounds great for consumers.

But some economists see possible trouble ahead. They worry that if energy prices were to keep sliding, the process could contribute to deflation — a brutal cycle of falling prices last seen in this country during the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Economists consider deflation to be the nightmare scenario. To understand why, imagine you own a factory. To make your product, you first must purchase parts and raw materials. You promise workers a certain wage. You borrow money to expand.

All of these transactions are based on the idea that you will be able to sell your goods at a particular price. But what if prices start falling?

Suddenly, you can't afford to repay your loan or live up to your contract with workers. You can't afford the parts that already are sitting on your inventory shelves. You have to start selling products at a loss, even as your competitors are slashing their prices.

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The downward pressure creates a vicious cycle that quickly leads to a broad plunge in the value of businesses, homes and other investments. While inflation can be painful and corrosive over time, deflation can crush an economy like a boulder out of the sky.

So where is the downward price pressure coming from today? Look overseas.

In both Europe and China, growth is weak. When consumers and companies in other countries start cutting their purchases of energy and goods, then global prices fall.

All over the world, central bankers and policymakers are trying to stimulate growth to keep prices from falling further. In this country, the Federal Reserve, which sets the direction of interest rates, wants to see the inflation rate hold steady at 2 percent.

"Given the deflationary winds blowing our way from Europe, the Fed is going to want to see CPI much higher" before boosting interest rates, Jonathan Lewis, the top investment officer at Samson Capital Advisors, said in an analysis.

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@officialdavet shared this image from Lake Orion, Mich., as part of our callout for photos of gas prices across the country. @officialdavet/Instagram hide caption

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@officialdavet shared this image from Lake Orion, Mich., as part of our callout for photos of gas prices across the country.

@officialdavet/Instagram

For most Americans, here's what all of this means: Wages and prices are not moving much, and interest rates are remaining low. There may be a danger of deflation lurking just over the horizon, but so far, the drop in energy prices has been a boost for consumers.

Many are applauding the pleasures of low inflation. For example, they can buy a car with a cheap loan and then fill it up with cheap gas. That can help stimulate the economy in this country by increasing travel and consumer purchasing power.

"I'm on a very tight budget," said Macy Gould, a Lexington, Ky., resident who graduated from college in May. She was thrilled this past weekend when she was able to refuel for about $2.83 a gallon. "Spending less on gas is a real help to me," she said.

Earlier this year, a driving trip she wanted to make to St. Louis "just wasn't doable," she said. Now that the cost of gas is down so much, "I'm hoping I can get that back on the calendar."

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To clamp down on health care costs, a growing number of employers and insurers are putting limits on how much they'll pay for certain medical services such as knee replacements, lab tests and complex imaging.

A recent study found that savings from such moves may be modest, however, and some analysts question whether "reference pricing," as it's called, is good for consumers.

The California Public Employees' Retirement System (CalPERS), which administers the health insurance benefits for 1.4 million state workers, retirees and their families, has one of the more established reference pricing systems.

More than three years ago, CalPERS began using reference pricing for elective knee and hip replacements, two common procedures for which hospital prices varied widely without discernible differences in quality, says Ann Boynton, who helps set benefits policies at CalPERS.

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Working with Anthem Blue Cross, the CalPERS set $30,000 as the reference price for those two surgeries in its preferred provider organization plan.

Members who get surgery at one of the 52 hospitals that charge $30,000 or less pay only their plan's regular cost-sharing. If member choose to use an in-network hospital that charges more than the reference price, however, they're on the hook for the entire amount over $30,000, and the extra spending doesn't count toward their annual maximum out-of-pocket limit, Boynton says.

"We're not worried about people not getting the care they need," says Boynton. "They have access to good hospitals; they're just getting it at a reasonable price."

In two years, CalPERS saved nearly $6 million on those two procedures, and members saved $600,000 in lower cost sharing, according to research published last year by James C. Robinson, a professor of health economics at the University of California, Berkeley, and director of the Berkeley Center for Health Technology. Most of the savings came from price reductions at expensive hospitals.

The agency recently set caps on how much it would spend for cataract surgery, colonoscopies and arthroscopic surgery, Boynton says.

Those who have studied reference pricing say it is most appropriate for common, non-emergency procedures or tests that vary widely in price but are generally comparable in quality. Research has generally shown that higher prices for medical services don't mean their quality is higher. Setting a reference price steers consumers to high-quality doctors, hospitals, labs and imaging centers that perform well for the price, proponents say.

Others point out that reference pricing doesn't necessarily save employers a lot of money, however. A study released earlier this month by the National Institute for Health Care Reform examined the 2011 claims data for 528,000 autoworkers and their dependents, both active and retired. It analyzed roughly 350 high-volume and/or high-priced inpatient and ambulatory medical services that reference pricing might reasonably be applied to.

The overall potential savings was 5 percent, the study found.

"It was surprising that even with all that pricing variation, reference pricing doesn't have a more dramatic impact on spending," says Chapin White, a senior policy researcher at RAND and lead author of the study.

Even though the results may be modest, a growing number of very large companies are incorporating reference pricing, according to benefits consultant Mercer's annual employer health insurance survey. The percentage of employers with 10,000 or more employees that used reference pricing grew from 10 percent in 2012 to 15 percent in 2013, the survey found. Thirty percent said they were considering adding reference pricing, the survey found. Among employers with 500 or fewer workers, adoption was flat at 10 percent in 2013, compared with 11 percent in 2012.

This spring, the Obama administration said that large group and self-insured health plans could use reference pricing.

The health law sets limits on how much consumers have to pay out of pocket annually for in-network care before insurance picks up the whole tab — in 2015, it's $6,600 for an individual and $13,200 for a family plan. But if consumers choose providers whose prices are higher than a plan's reference price, those amounts don't count toward the out-of-pocket maximum, the administration guidance said.

Leaving consumers on the hook for amounts over the reference price needlessly drags them into the battle between providers and health plans over prices, says White.

"You expect the health plan to do a few things: negotiate reasonable prices with providers, and not to enter into network contracts with providers who provide bad quality care," White says. "Reference pricing is kind of an admission that health plans have failed on one or both of those fronts."

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Besides electing lawmakers Tuesday, voters settled ballot initiatives affecting everything from soda-pop taxes to fracking to marijuana sales.

The outcomes varied, but there was one economic issue that united voters. Overwhelmingly, they approved raises for minimum-wage workers.

In Alaska, Arkansas, Nebraska and South Dakota, voters passed binding referendums to raise state minimums above the $7.25 an hour wage level mandated by the federal government. In each of the conservative-leaning states, opposition to wage measures was muted, and victory margins were wide.

In Illinois, voters approved a non-binding advisory question that calls on the state legislature to approve a $10 minimum wage.

The federal minimum wage has been unchanged since the depths of the recession in July 2009. Democrats have proposed legislation raising it to $10.10 an hour. Republicans have blocked it.

So unions and community groups have shifted focus from pushing Congress to act, and instead have turned to state initiatives. Those referendums have been enormously popular with voters. For example, in Alaska, the wage hike won 69 percent of the vote.

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As of January, when higher wages also take effect in Hawaii, Maryland and West Virginia, workers in the majority of states will have hourly earnings above the federal floor.

Alaska's minimum wage will ratchet up to $9.75 by 2016. Arkansas' minimum wage will rise to $8.50 by 2017, Nebraska's to $9 by 2016, and South Dakota's to $8.50 by 2015. An estimated 680,000 minimum-wage workers would get raises if Illinois were to join those four states in increasing minimum pay levels.

In addition, a number of cities and counties in California and Wisconsin also had wage-hike referendums. Those passed too.

"People understand that $7.25 is not nearly enough to make ends meet," Christine Owens, director of the National Employment Project Action Fund, said in a statement. "This is a clear mandate for minimum and living wage proponents to soldier on until we have fair wages throughout the country."

The Employment Policies Institute, a group that opposes wage-hike legislation, said the results showed conservative candidates could win in states where wage hikes passed. Michael Saltsman, research director for the organization, said in a statement that candidates "who bucked labor union pressure and expressed skepticism of a higher minimum wage still won last night, which means that acknowledging the economic realities of wage hikes is not a political loser."

Voters also weighed in on other economic matters, including:

Berkeley, Calif., approved a 1-cent-per-ounce tax on soda in an effort to discourage consumption of sugar. But a soda tax failed in San Francisco, leaving the beverage industry with a split decision in the pair of high-profile votes.

In Colorado, voters rejected a push to require packaged foods to be so labeled if they contained genetically modified organisms, or GMOs. Food and beverage companies say such labeling would drive up grocery costs. A similar outcome is expected is Oregon, but votes are still being counted and it remains too close to call.

The marijuana industry was lifted higher in Alaska, Oregon and the District of Columbia. In Oregon and Alaska, voters agreed to legalize recreational use of pot. In the District of Columbia, possession of up to two ounces of pot was made legal.

Fracking bans had mixed results. A number of cities and counties tried to prohibit the use of hydraulic fracturing, or fracking, for recovering natural gas or oil. In Northern California's San Benito County, voters approved a fracking ban, but a similar measure failed in Santa Barbara County. In Denton, Texas, voters banned fracking, but in Youngstown, Ohio, they rejected a ban for the fourth time.

In Massachusetts, voters rejected an effort to keep out resort casinos.