Nonprofit Fundraising Results Show Decline According to Latest Blackbaud Index

Reporting on nonprofit fundraising results and trends is helpful for those in the industry regardless of the sector or size of the organization as they serve as a benchmark to measure results and also help determine future goals and efforts. Every month I look forward to reviewing the very reliable data coming from the Blackbaud Index and most recently I wrote about the Nonprofit Fundraising Report Card based on results from the previous Blackbaud Index. I was hoping that the latest Blackbaud Index reflecting August results would be better but that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Based on statistics compiled by 2,878 nonprofit organizations representing $8.4 billion in donor revenue collectively, the summer downward trend continued through the three month period ending in August 2012 with an overall result of -3.4%. Digging deeper, it’s evident that the results are similar across the board regardless of organizational size. For example, although Smaller Organizations (with revenue less than $1 million) had the only increase in results (+2.0%) in the three month reporting period in comparison to the same period in 2011, all organization sizes saw a decrease from July’s results ranging from a -5.7% decrease to -7.2%.

When analyzed by nonprofit type, only Public & Society Benefit had a minimal increase of 0.3% compared to last year. However, (surprisingly) Healthcare and Environmental & Animal Welfare organizations saw the most improvement from the previous month of +2.0% and +0.6% respectively. This is surprising as these subsectors have not performed well within the past year.

International Affairs took the biggest hit in comparison to the same period last year and compared to July’s results with a decrease of -23.5% and -16.8% respectively. When reviewing the statistics of the past year, it’s quite evident that results have been very unpredictable in this subsector as they will experience an increase or decrease for 3-4 consecutive months at a time.

Blackbaud also has a separate index which measures strictly online giving comprised of 1,978 nonprofit organizations with a combined annual giving of $406.5 million. Although still showing a +2.4% increase over 2011, the results still represent an overall summer downturn for a second consecutive month and a decrease in 3 out of the last 4 months when results are compared month to month. Similarly to last month, large organizations (with giving revenues of over $10 million) experienced the only decrease in online giving of -5.9% compared to last year, however the decrease represents only -4.8% when compared to July’s results and are also similar to that being experienced by small and medium sized organizations -4.7% and -3.7% respectively.

Human Services had the highest increase in online giving of +11.4% compared to the previous year and they were the only organization type to have an increase of +3.3% from the previous month. Hardest hit overall seems to be International Affairs as it was the only organization type to decrease by an incredible -27.0% compared to 2011 and -15.0% compared to the previous month.

Now that autumn is upon us I am cautiously optimistic that the summer downward trend will end and September through to the last quarter will post stronger results to balance out what has been a very erratic year. Stay tuned for the next update.

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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery services, donation caging, donation processing and other donor management services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all contact centre services and mail house operations and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.