Blackbaud Releases Nonprofit Fundraising Report that Focuses on Healthcare Sector

I regularly cover the Blackbaud Index as it’s a reliable source of statistical information relating to the state of nonprofit fundraising along with their other reports like the 2012 Charitable Giving Report  and the Online Marketing Benchmark Study for Nonprofits. With the latest index results, Blackbaud released an analysis of the giving trends specifically for Healthcare organizations through April 2013.

image courtesy of levantium.com

The Healthcare sector has been facing the most challenges based on Index results and this is what led Blackbaud to split this sector into two separate categories: 1) Healthcare, which includes hospitals, nursing and psychiatric facilities and other healthcare centres; and 2) Medical Research which includes organizations that raise money to fund medical research, medical education and advocacy. It will be interesting to see how the results change based on this split, whether they remain on par or if there really is a difference between the two with one outperforming the other. Either way, organizations that fall within these now two sectors can better compare their fundraising results against organizations most similar to their own.

The latest overall results for the three month period ending April 2013 and based on 483 Healthcare organizations that raised $1.72 billion annually and 103 Medical Research organizations that raised $563 million both had a decrease in fundraising revenue of -1.7% and -5.9% respectively. When it came to online results, 503 Healthcare organizations raising $154.50 million in annual online donations and 242 Medical Research organizations that raised $475.5 million each grew by 11.7% and 1.9%.

When looking back at the results over the past year it seems that Healthcare reported a decline throughout the second quarter of 2012 and started posting increases from September 2012 to March 2013. Medical Research on the other hand had inconsistent results fluctuating throughout the same period. Chuck Longfield, Blackbaud’s Senior Vice President and Chief Scientist gave some insight into the reasons for the marked difference between both sectors: “trends differ largely due to the type of fundraising these organizations do. Hospitals tend to do a lot of major gift fundraising, while research organizations tend to do a lot of direct marketing and events, which is evident in the results.”

The report included a case study for each of these two sectors, providing details on strategies used to improve their fundraising results. Dignity Health who operates more than 40 nonprofit hospitals in the states of California, Arizona and Nevada implemented several strategies including: promptly responding to the recession; investing in the right infrastructure and donor management tools; and working smart overall. The American Diabetes Association, a Medical Research Organization, focused their efforts in growing their fundraising through special events and strategically used online support to manage them. They also provided donor support for their online tools and focused on VIP participants and corporate sponsors. For more information on these case studies, read the Index as it goes into great detail and it’s a very worthy read.

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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.