Latest Blackbaud Nonprofit Fundraising Report Reflects Slight Growth

The Blackbaud Index releases valuable monthly statistics on the state and trends of nonprofit fundraising in both an overall and online sense. These stats are beneficial to charitable organizations when analyzing and assessing how they are performing in comparison to overall results and to nonprofits of similar size and scope. Recently I wrote about the last edition of the Blackbaud report, and although there was a slight increase in overall giving over the same period in 2010, there was still a decline in previous months leading to November 2011.

Traditionally performance is strongest in the last quarter and therefore the 1.7% growth seen in November 2011 compared to November 2010 was met with cautious optimism. It seems that this trend continued as the statistics reflected an increase of 1.8% in overall giving for the period ending December 2011 versus December 2010. The same holds true for online giving, where a growth of 12.9% was seen for the period ending December 2011 in comparison to 12.7% in November 2011.

These results are still positive, as despite the uncertainties of the current economic climate nonprofits are managing to consistently maintain the same levels of growth from month to month. The previous report indicated that overall growth had returned to the pre-recession levels experienced back in 2007, but does this mean that our sector has reached a plateau and further growth is not possible? Or are donors still weary of increasing their support due to financial conditions? These questions never have a clear answer, however it is up to the individual organization to determine how they can better engage its supporters to maintain and grow donor revenue.

Interestingly, the Environmental & Animal Welfare and International Affairs sectors continued to see a decline in donation growth over the previous year and now the Healthcare Organization sector can also be added to this list as they also saw a decrease in December 2011 of 3.0%. In terms of online giving, only the Healthcare Organization sector saw a decline of 4.4%, while all other sectors maintained increased online giving levels.

Following our last post reviewing the November 2011 quarterly report, I had an enlightening exchange with a fundraising professional that had many years of experience in the animal welfare sector. He made some valid points that may be contributing to the decline in giving including:

• Does the public feel that pet overpopulation and animal cruelty issues seem unsolvable?
• Can animal welfare charities do a better job of providing timely progress/impact reports to their supporters?

The same could be said of all three sectors that have experienced a decline as they share the commonality of dealing with larger issues that may seem insurmountable. Certainly something could be done about the decline that is being experienced by these underperforming (but important) sectors. I will dig into this issue further in the future including exploring ideas on how to re-engage lapsed supporters and maintain their interest and the interest of new supporters. I am curious to see how these sectors and overall donations in general perform in next month’s nonprofit fundraising index which will reflect post-holiday giving and the start of 2012. Stay tuned!
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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.