Online giving is alive and growing, but it is not the only game in town. It also has some limitations that need to be understood. The better you understand the trends in online and offline giving, the better you will be able to build an appropriate fundraising strategy for your profit organization.
Target Analytics, a Blackbaud company, has been collecting online giving data from several major nonprofit organizations for a few years. Their latest report 2008 donorCentrics™ Internet Giving Benchmarking Analysis has recently been released and should be of interest to any nonprofit organization, whether or not online techniques are currently a part of the fundraising strategy.
Some of the key findings in the report are:
- Online giving continues to grow rapidly in 2007 and 2008, even in the absence of major disasters which fueled the growth of online giving for relief and animal welfare organizations in previous years.
- Even with this growth, online giving is still dwarfed by direct mail giving.
- Online donors are younger and have higher incomes than traditional, primarily direct mail donors.
- Over the past few years, online giving has become an increasingly significant source of new donor acquisition.
- Online donors have slightly lower retention rates overall than traditional donors.
- Online giving is not a strong renewal channel; every year, large numbers of online donors migrate away from online giving and to other channels, primarily direct mail.
I will be discussing some of these findings in future blog posts.
You can get the full report and register for a special analysis review webinar at http://www.blackbaud.com/targetanalytics/benchmarking/dcinternet.aspx.
Excellent article. Im very surprised at the rate people are giving to charity – thought I am sure next years numbers will look vastly diffrent! unfortunately.
dion
amp3pr.com