2011 Online Giving Grows 13%, Except …
Blackbaud released its 2011 Online Giving Report yesterday, revealing some significant findings and adding new features that most readers should find quite helpful.
The 2011 Report is packed with useful data that should help any organization – large, medium or small – uncover opportunities and improve performance. On pages 9-10 there’s a helpful worksheet that will help you analyze your own organization’s results.
The data used for the Report are drawn from 24 months of online giving from 1,895 nonprofits, online major gift input from 2,397 nonprofits, and both online and offline giving representing $5.1 billion in total fundraising from 1,560 nonprofits.
Here’s my summary of what I found particularly noteworthy:
First, there are two factors you should be aware of that significantly affect any overall view of online giving: 1) the severity (or lack of it) of natural disasters, and 2) year-end seasonality.
- Online giving to humanitarian/disaster organizations (labeled as “International Affairs” in the Report) dropped by 55% in 2011 compared to 2010. This skews the growth rate in overall online giving to a paltry .03% increase in 2011 over 2010. However, this masks what is really a 13% growth over 2011 when international disaster giving is excluded.
- The seasonality of year-end giving continues to be quite significant. 34.8% of all online giving happened in October, November and December, with December alone representing a 20.3% slice of the year-end pie. I can only hope Agitator readers were advantaged at year-end by Tom’s admonition to pay attention to the quality of your landing and giving pages.
Second, online giving for Small and Medium sized organizations (< $1 million and up to $10 million) increased more — 12.8% and 13.1% — than than Large organizations ($10+ million) which saw an 8.5% rise. Blackbaud has some interesting speculation about why this is the case in its Report. See page 8.
Third, in terms of growth by sector, “Education” had the highest growth (26.3%) and Higher Ed the second highest (21%). Arts/Culture/Humanities up 13.1% … Environment/Animals up 10% … Human Services up 12.5 % … Healthcare up 5.6% … Public/Society Benefit up 6.0% and International Affairs down 55.5%.
Fourth, just as in the offline world, RETENTION is a major problem. The Report’s authors warn: “As online giving becomes more ubiquitous and overall growth of the channel slows, it will be critically important for all organizations to have an effective retention strategy in place.” Amen!
Finally, in the “Facts You Can’t Use, But Fun to Quote” department: The largest online gift made in 2011 was $260,000 vs. the largest in 2010 of $100,000.
With thanks to Steve MacLaughlin, Jim O’Shaughnessy and Allison Van Diest over at Blackbaud. You deserve a raise.
Roger
P.S. You can monitor online giving on a monthly basis through The Blackbaud Index of Online Giving.
3 responses to “2011 Online Giving Grows 13%, Except …”
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Is retention the problem or reactivation?
If you are talking about one-off online donors I take the view that the issue is the former.
Unlike a committed giver, I take the view that a cash donor lapses after each gift and that the challenge is to reactivate them.
They are both challenges. I would say that the data suggests retention is the bigger problem. If given the choice, then nonprofits should focus on that.
The donorCentrics multichannel report (http://www.blackbaud.com/multichannel) shows that single channel Internet donors continue to be less loyal than traditional offline donors.
The silver lining is that multichannel donors are a lot more loyal, reactivate at better rates, and provide better long term value than single channel donors.
2011 online giving also shows there’s volatility in performance, especially because of the tremendous spikes created by episodic disaster relief giving. Online giving is less than 10% of all fundraising so these spikes have a lot more impact.
There are valid reasons to include and exclude the international/disaster relief funds in the totals.
It seems similar to reports that would include bequests, for example. On the one hand, it’s money, and all income should be reported, of course. On the other, bequests are sporadic and unpredictable, just as income from natural disasters are. Reporting totals without these figures allows for an “apples to apples” comparison year to year.
I would hope that retention becomes less of a problem for online giving than it has been for direct mail as these programs become more sophisticated over time. For one thing, adding, “Would you like to make this a monthly gift?” is much easier to market and implement online.
— Valerie Lambert
Bilou Enterprises