Online Giving Grew 13 Percent in 2011

Posted in Fundraising on Feb 16, 2012

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According to Blackbaud’s 2011 Online Giving Report, online giving was up 13% on a year-over-year basis when large International Affairs organizations are removed from the analysis. International Affairs is the only sector that didn’t experience positive growth in 2011, due to the tremendous amount of online giving in 2010 in response to the Haiti earthquake.

With the exception of International Affairs and Public/Society Benefit, all other sectors increased online revenue as a percent of total revenue.

"2011 did not have the 35% year-over-year growth rate in online giving that happened in 2010, but online fundraising did not lose its mojo," said Steve MacLaughlin, co-author of the Report and Blackbaud’s director of Internet solutions. "Every sector in the analysis has had double-digit growth since 2009, but as with all large numbers, the bigger the overall percentage gets, the slower it tends to grow."

Large Online Gifts to Nonprofits
In 2011, 87% of organizations had at least one online gift of $1,000 or more. The median online gift of $1,000 or more was $1,200 and the largest amount given online in the analysis was $260,000.

43% of online donations were between $1,000 and $5,000.

End-of-Year Giving
According to the Report, end-of-year giving continues to account for most of all online donations. 34.8% of online giving happened in October, November, and December of 2011. December represented 20.3% of this total and was up on a year-over-year basis.

MacLaughlin advises nonprofits that even given the trend, there is risk in relying too much on year end giving. "It is possible to build an online giving program that avoids the make-or-break end of year fundraising crunch," he said. "This is evidenced by the education and healthcare sectors that have benefited from concerted online fundraising efforts during other parts of the year."

Growth by Organization Size
There were differences between how organizations of different sizes performed in 2011.

Large nonprofits, with annual total fundraising greater than $10 million, grew their online fundraising 8.6% on a year-over-year basis.

Medium-sized nonprofits, with annual total fundraising between $1 million and $10 million had a year-over-year increase of 13.1% in their online fundraising.

Small nonprofits, with annual total fundraising less than $1 million, had online giving grow 12.8% on a year-over-year basis.

"Medium organizations accounted for more than 40% of all online giving in 2011," said MacLaughlin. "They had the most room to grow since they had the slowest growth rate in 2010, but matured in 2011, most likely due to the ability to efficiently execute multichannel campaigns."

Giving by Sector
The report also looks at giving by sector, including Arts, Culture, and Humanities; Education (and Higher Education as a subset); Environment and Animals; Healthcare; Human Services; International Affairs; and Public and Society Benefit.

Education organizations had the biggest year-over-year growth in online fundraising. Online giving to the Education sector is up 40% since 2009. Higher Education groups had the second largest increase in online giving during 2011.

International Affairs organizations had the biggest decrease in year-over-year online fundraising. These organizations were down 55% from 2010, but are still up over 75% from online giving in 2009. Annual Growth in online giving for both the Environment and Animals and Human Services sectors slowed in 2011 when compared to 2010 but nonetheless showed positive growth of 10% and 12.5% respectively.

Read more about the methodology and learn how to use the data to assess individual organization performance by downloading the report at blackbaud.com.

Tags: Blackbaud 2011 Online Giving Report Online Giving Fundraising Nonprofits

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