Just released. Invaluable, as always. Get it here.

Looks at 719 Convio clients who raised more than $1.2 billion online in 2011.

Two findings are stressed by Convio major domo Vinay Bhagat:

1. Increase in online monthly giving — now accounts for 6.9% of online revenue. Vinay is enthusiastic about the 40% growth in this figure (up from 5%). I think this percentage is appalling. If there’s one thing the online medium should excel at, it seems to me it should be launching and reinforcing monthly giving programs. Performing Arts is the vertical with the best online sustainer average gift, at $63.22 per month.

2. Robust percentage of online ‘first-time givers’ — 37%. I agree. That’s an impressive number, given that the focus of most online fundraising is working the house file. However, it’s still not entirely clear to what extent these are net new donors to their organizations, as opposed to donors switching over from mail or other channels. And to me, that’s the million dollar question.

Here’s what Convio says: “This benchmark represents gifts from new online
donors that are not necessarily net new donors to the organization. Anecdotally, we
have observed that a majority of these new online donors are net new, so the metric
represents a good proxy for overall donor acquisition via the online channel and
illustrates that online marketing can serve as a strong source of new donor acquisition.”

I’m not at all knocking Convio, but when will the online fundraising industry — and/or individual nonprofits — produce some definitive information on true acquisition via the online channel?

And related to that point, of all the rich data in this report, the benchmark that most interests me is what Convio calls “Registration Rate” — the percentage of website unique visitors who provided their email addresses to the organization for email updates or by taking an action online.

That number for all groups in the study is 1.9%. The highest rates are secured by the National Nonprofit Mailer vertical (essentially groups with more than 750,000 email addresses), at 6.0%, and Team Events, at 10.4%. The highest sector conversion goes to Hospitals, at 3.6%.

Nonprofits need to get sooo much better at website conversions if we’re ever to see real growth in online acquisition.

In any event, if you’re a serious online fundraiser, you need to study this report.

Tom

P.S. For a quick topline, view Vinay’s video report.