2015 Half-time Fundraising Score
The Atlas of Giving, the resource that combines both past results along with forecasts of charitable giving in the U.S., recently issued its 2015 Mid-Year Report.
The news is good.
- Giving in the first half of 2015 was “exceptionally (and unexpectedly) strong—up a total of 7.6% to $238.88 billion compared to $222.03 billion for the same period in 2014.
- Atlas’ updated forecast for all of 2015 projects the year will finish 5.6% higher than 2014 for a total of $482.27 billion.
According to The Atlas here are some factors contributing to this growth.
- Foundation grants are up thanks to 6 years of strong portfolio gains. This trend expected to continue for 2-3 more years.
- A record amount of Donor Advised fund contributions and grants to nonprofits
- Increasing adoption of technology that makes fundraising more effective and less expensive. E.g. Crowd funding, online event support, donor relations management technology, better predictive and analytic tools.
- More nonprofit. New, sharply focused ‘niche nonprofits’ are bringing in new money.
- Boom in mega gifts—more than $4 billion so far in 2015. Mega gifts represented nearly 2% of all giving in the first half of this year.
Good and bad news by sector?
- Growth sectors—Environmental Organizations, Human Needs Organizations, Education, especially higher ed and Donor Advised Fun
- Lagging sectors– Churches and Health. Church membership and participation continues to decline. In the case of the Health sector The Atlas of Giving attributes this to implementation of the Affordable Care Act with many donors under impression that government is now taking care of the health needs of the less fortunate.
Atlas of Giving Advice for Practitioners
- “Stay the course…don’t make any drastic strategic or tactical changes at this time.”
- Focus as much of your resources as possible on gifts from Individual donors and from foundations and donor advised funds
- Plan budgets based on 3-4% growth in giving over the next 12 months.
You can read the full Atlas of Giving report here.
How does the first half of your year compare to these national averages and trends reported by The Atlas of Giving?
Roger
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