2017: “The year charitable giving bounced back.”
The other day The Blackbaud Insitute for Philanthropic Impact released its 2017 Charitable Giving Report and the news is good.
In brief….
- Overall giving grew approximately 4.1% in 2017—fueled by a 5.1% increase in the last three months of the year.
- Online giving grew 12.1% in 2017 compared to 2016
- Online donations made up 7.6% of all fundraising in 2017
- #GivingTuesday online donations were up 28% in 2017
- 21% of online donations were made on a mobile device in 2017
The Charitable Giving Report covers $30 billion in giving to all types and sizes of organizations. According to the report, international affairs organizations had the largest growth in overall fundraising… faith-based organizations experienced the largest growth in online giving in 2017 compared to 2016…only arts and culture and K– 12 education institutions experienced minimal year-over-year declines in overall fundraising.
All sectors experienced growth in their online giving programs in 2017. Online giving to small nonprofits grew 10.7%, medium organizations grew 14.9% and large organizations grew by 11.0%, Download the full Report here.
With the Report in hand I reached out to Steve MacLaughlin, Blackbaud’s VP of Data & Analytics and author of what I consider a fundraising classic Data Driven Nonprofits.
Although 2017 was a year of extraordinary political turmoil, massive hurricanes, earthquakes, floods and general uncertainty Steve was anything but uncertain: “2017 was the year where charitable giving bounced back from relatively flat growth in 2016. There’s no single cause, but instead a combination of economic, political, meteorological, and technological events all coming together.”
Steve continued…” what stood out [in the Report] are signs that we’re now living in the new normal of charitable giving. For years, we’ve talked about the importance of digital, mobile, and engaging passionate supporters.”
“The data suggests the future has arrived with online giving reaching record highs and mobile surpassing 20% of online gifts.”
Thanks to the Blackbaud Institute. Thank you, Steve.
How was your 2017 giving?
Roger
P.S. You can compare your organization’s performance with overall 2017 results with this easy-to-use Blackbaud calculator.
10 responses to “2017: “The year charitable giving bounced back.””
Behavioral Science Q & A
Integrating an individual giving appeal with other communications from a charity can have both positive and negative effects, and the outcome largely depends on how it’s executed. Advantages of Integration Brand Consistency: Maintaining a consistent appearance and messaging across all communications can reinforce the org’s brand identity and strengthen brand recognition and trust among your […]
Read Full Answer
I’m not aware of any in-market tests specifically comparing recurring vs. gift frequency language. I suspect the answer might not be the same with all gift frequencies, nor with all people. It sounds like a great opportunity for you to test and find out what works for your audience. Based on the literature, here’s a couple […]
Read Full Answer
Based on what we know from existing data, those renewal notices can actually be pretty effective in getting people to donate. They tap into our psychology – creating a sense of urgency, reminding us of past support, and using personalization to make the message hit home. They’re playing on our natural tendencies to feel obligated […]
Read Full Answer
Interesting question. I had a quick look at the testing done on this topic. On the positive side, in all cases, over half of donors decide to cover the fee. In some cases, it goes as high as 65%. Not a negligible percentage at all. Here’s another test from iRaiser showing consistent results (see point […]
Read Full Answer
There’s just one thing to consider when designing a supporter journey: the supporter. More specifically, you need to take into account: Who the supporter is i.e. their identity, which is the reason they support this cause, and their personality, which describes the way they “see” and process the world. These will determine the kind of […]
Read Full Answer
I’m not an expert in this but a quick search surfaced this article on the effect of tax reforms on 2019’s charitable giving. The researchers didn’t find a reduction. Actually, they observed an “increase in charitable contributions in 2019, even with the lower tax rates and the dramatically smaller number of taxpayers who itemize their […]
Read Full Answer
Hey, Roger…Increase in online giving. Is this paying for gifts online … but solicited in another way? Or actually soliciting on line and paying on line.
I think this distinction is important and I find that most organizations stare at me when I make the distinction.
Hmmm……
Simone… Your point is an important one. No question that some of the increase in online giving is attributable to donors using the online channel as an e-commerce mechanism for responding to, for example, direct mail appeals.
In the analysis I’ve done that amount is somewhere between 20% and 50% depending on the organization. Unfortunately, most organizations don’t track this accurately. Partly because of organizational silos, partly due to data systems issues and partly because of pure inertia.
Because online is increasingly used for transactions it’s important that the online giving process — donation forms and payment processing–be as fast and simple as possible. And that’s why The Agitator puts so much emphasis on feedback and understanding the problems/frustrations donors have when they attempt to make an online contribution.
The continuing increase in giving via mobile phones makes simplicity and ease-of-use even more important.
Amazon and other e-commerce pioneers have set the bar for transactional simplicity and our sector ignores this to its detriment.
Simone and Roger…
For years, I’ve repeated this phrase like a meditative chant: “Do not confuse the channel of engagement with the channel of transaction.”
Do analog engagements lead to digital gifts? Yes.
Do digital engagements lead to analog gifts? Yes.
Do we need both channels to drive giving? Yes.
From a statistical standpoint, this is something that Target Analytics has been measuring through its donorCentrics benchmarking program for many years now.
In 2017, 97% of new offline acquired donors renewed offline. That means about 3% of them switched channels when they were retained.
By contrast, 82% of new online acquired donors renewed online. That means about 18% of them switched to giving offline when they were retained.
Given actual data, one might argue that offline giving is cannibalizing online giving. This sounds silly because it is silly.
One reason some fundraisers want to know which channel “caused” the gift is because they want to get credit it. This is disguised by words like “attribution” and managed through arcane source coding practices.
The wise modern fundraising is more focused on what sequence or combination of channels produces the best results. They care a lot more about which channels drive higher conversion, retention, average gift, and LTV measurements.
Does this help?
Thanks Steve. Makes sense indeed.
The issue of “attribution” is a dangerous but little understood barrier to growth among nonprofits. In a post some time ago (http://www.theagitator.net/nonprofit-management/the-rest-of-the-retention-story-part-2/) I noted:
“One reason for the mistaken use of myopic metrics stems from a fundamental misunderstanding of the term ‘attribution’. In reality it means assigning results or performance to various actions or sources. As in, what factors — message, donor service, communications, thank you’s, donor recognition, frequency , etc — contribute in what proportional way to increasing or decreasing the Lifetime Value of a donor base.
For too many organizations, ‘attribution’ is little more than the annual or semi-annual internal battle over who gets credit for the proceeds from various campaigns.
“The online silo battles it out with the direct mail silo, arguing that their great work is a major attribution to the organization’s multi-channel efforts.
“Meanwhile, the major gift silo largely ignores the other two, believing that direct mail and online activities are mere noise, not substantive signal, when it comes to their big gift program.”
Yes, Direct Mail still rocks! Simone, Roger, Steve, thanks for that clarification. I deal with so many organizations who are just chomping at the bit to start appealing all online because it’s so much ‘cheaper’ (!?) and board members especially think that nobody reads mail… and myths start circulating…
Fortunately, they still get their appeals out and they still raise boat loads of money through good old checks at returns on investment much better than the stock market.
Thanks for these great stats… numbers speak volumes.
cheesr, eica
I second what Erica just said. I’m running across too many organizations who want to ditch print altogether and go digital.
Great post – thanks, Roger.
Thanks everyone. Thanks Steve for the research.
“Direct mail is dead!” Oh get a life people. Really? Just stop it. Electronic is so cheap that we should migrate there. Oh please. Cheap? Ha! Migrate? Stop with the migration. Could you please collect the right information!!
“But we just don’t have the time…To read research or challenge our assumptions or insist upon best practice. Just no time because we’re too buy doing our mission well. We need to do our mission well and serve our beneficiaries well. The other stuff…. like great governance and marvelous fundraising and and and … We just don’t have time.”
Oh please. Just stop it. Yes, I’m grumpy. I’m sitting in CDG/Roissy airport in Paris. Awaiting the flight back to the USA. Ah tristesse.
If this is for calendar year 2017, I’m wondering how much of the growth may have been caused by the hubbub of tax cuts and public attention on charitable deductions?
Do we know from whom (donor wealth ) the growth resulted?
Unfortunately, not that I could see from the report. However, that could be a factor. I’m on hotel WiFi, so I can’t verify, but I believe Blackbaud’s report said giving in 2017 was more skewed toward December than previous years. Also, we’ve seen some donor feedback from people who say they were making their gifts early (at the end of 2017 instead of the beginning of 2018) to get the tax breaks.
For me, the concern is donations grew by 4.1%. Inflation grew by 2.1%. The number of nonprofits (if the growth is consistent to last year) grew by 3%. So we grew, but was it enough to grow per organization?
Gayle…
There is no evidence in the data that the tax law changes had a measurable impact on giving in 2017. Keep in mind that the new tax bill was not signed into law until December 22nd, 2017.