Nonprofit Fundraising Downward Trend Continues According to Latest Blackbaud Index

Regular review of industry reports is a common practice of directors, board members, decision makers and other nonprofit fundraising professionals regardless of organization size or sector. Understanding the current trends helps strengthen on-going marketing and engagement strategies. Blackbaud is a reliable source of this type of information with its monthly Index and other reports like the 2012 Charitable Giving Report and the Online Marketing Benchmark Study for Nonprofits. The monthly Blackbaud Index releases results in overall and online charitable giving and the results last month reflected a slight decline in nonprofit fundraising when compared to the same reporting period in 2012. Unfortunately, the latest Blackbaud Index results indicate that downward trend has continued this month.

courtesy of blackbaud.com

The latest overall Index is based on data from 3,200 U.S. based nonprofit organizations that collectively raise $10 billion in donation revenue for the three-month period ending April 2013. These results show a marginal increase of 0.4% over the same period in 2012 but they also represent a decline of 1.8% from the previous period ending in March 2013. The first quarter of 2013 did show promising results as each month’s results represented more than double of an increase compared to results in the first quarter of 2012. However, April is the first month of 2013 where results were less than half of 2012’s 0.8% increase.

Overall results were varied by organization type or classification as Arts & Culture had the largest increase with 6.5%, followed by K-12 Independent Schools 5.2% and Public & Society Benefit rounding the top three with 3.8%. When compared to the previous three-month reporting period ending March 2013 the same three organizations placed in the top three spots, although in a slightly different order. On the other side of the spectrum compared to 2012 Human Services had the largest decrease of -4.7% followed by International Affairs with -4.6% and Environment & Animal with -2.2%.

There was an increase of 10.2% in online giving compared to 2012 based on data from 2,500 organizations raising $2 billion in online donation revenue. This increase was similar to that posted the previous reporting period ending March 2013 which consisted of a 10.4% increase, representing a decrease for 5 consecutive months. The top three subsectors included K-12 Independent Schools with an increase of 18.6%, Environment & Animal Welfare with 14.2% and Public & Society Benefit with 13.5%. Those on the lowest end but still with a significant increase were International Affairs with 6%, Human Services 7.1% and Art & Culture, Medium and Large sized organizations tying for third with 9.8%.

If the trends of the first half of 2012 continue to play out in 2013, then an upswing lies ahead in the coming months. To help track your progress, Blackbaud released a new calculator with this month’s Index that “will allow users to easily chart their own results against the Index, historical data to provide a fuller view of charitable giving.” An excellent tool for nonprofits who may be “trying to determine if it was strategy, implementation, economies of scale, or donor behavior that drove results.”

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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.