New data demonstrates how the continued evolution of online giving aids nonprofit fundraising

As we’ve written before online fundraising continues to demonstrate excellent growth in the sphere of nonprofit fundraising and setting the bar for growth within the industry for the fourth consecutive year. While as recently as 2012 it seemed that online fundraising might be limited to certain event types or even specific sizes or sectors of the charity world new data continues to illustrate that online giving/online fundraising is appealing to an ever increasing cross-section of donors which ultimately can only be good news.

Today I wanted to share some more recent data pertaining to online fundraising which shows that the trends not only continue but in some cases the appeal of online donations are reaching new previously unseen paths.

Between 2012 and 2013 online giving increased by 13.5% and while remembering that this creates a difficult to match benchmark the data for 2014 shows that online donations have increased by a further 8% so far this year. Impressive enough data in its own right but even more so when compared with overall industry wide growth in fundraising  which is edging along with positive growth of between 1% and 2.5% so far in 2014. This continued growth is driven by a number of factors including new tools, better mobile support, effective implementation  and improvement of online tools, increasing public trust and acceptance of online giving and greater efficiencies for the donor. That last point which might be the most difficult to measure could well be the most important of all as our society seems to attracted to technology that saves us time.

Source: Waggener Edstrom

By way of comparison think about banking and how we bank – twenty years ago we visited our bank, a decade ago most people banked by phone and today most complete the vast majority of daily banking needs via online banking. This same progression is happening when it comes to donations and the acceleration seems to be set for continued growth for the foreseeable future.

It turns out that it is smaller nonprofits that are experiencing the largest growth in online giving having increased by almost 20% versus 2012, much of this can be attributed to lowered costs in developing online tools which have effectively allowed small organizations to compete on a more level playing field and online activities that provide quantifiable value for money/time spent for the charities concerned. It’s also safe to say that as a rule of thumb organizations that have developed strong online relationships and have fostered deep engagement are receiving not only the most donations per supporter but also the healthiest level of engagement.

Indeed the demographics are also showing rapid change with millennials (which I wrote about earlier here) not only being the most likely to have donated online at 47% but also say they are the most likely to do so in the future. However don’t let presumptions about age groups change your tactics, studies also show that donors aged 66 and above are now twice as likely to have donated online as they would have been four years ago. The blend of trust and technology means that the potential for online giving can continue to expand for all layers of your donor audience. We are likely only a year or two away from some fundraising initiatives being 100% funded by online donations, a concept that would have been absurd a few years ago. As it stands many organizations have seen online giving represent anywhere between 30% and 60% of all funding with some cases even surpassing the 75% threshold.

What is most important over the coming year or two is to invest time in researching new technologies, asking what works for your audience and compiling data about the impact of the changes you make as you experiment with improving the online giving experience. None of this is to suggest that onlive giving will ever be the default solution for all donors but as that audience develops it’s quite crucial to try and stay a few steps ahead.

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Miratel Solutions is a Toronto call centre, eBusiness, and letter shop mail house specializing in professional fundraising services including PCI compliant inbound telephone fundraising, outbound telephone fundraising, online fundraising, lottery fundraising services, donation processing and receipting and direct mail fundraising services. We are committed to our CSR business values in all our business decisions and advancing the missions of the nonprofits we proudly serve.