Nonprofit Fundraising Optimism Continues for 2012 According to Latest Blackbaud Index

I regularly write about the Blackbaud Index results as it gives an excellent overview of online and overall nonprofit fundraising activities. The most recent Index results were covered in the following posts: Blackbaud’s Nonprofit Fundraising Industry Survey Anticipates 2012, 2 Key Nonprofit Fundraising Findings of Blackbaud Index that Point to Promising 2012, Overall and Online Nonprofit Fundraising Results According to the Latest Blackbaud Index, Latest Blackbaud Nonprofit Fundraising Report Reflects Slight Growth and The Latest Blackbaud Index Reflects Post-Holiday Nonprofit Fundraising Results. The index created by Chuck Longfield a Chief Scientist for Blackbaud analyzed fundraising results from 2,515 nonprofits representing $7.4 billion in overall revenue and results from 1,889 nonprofits representing $424 million in online donations.

The latest results of the Blackbaud Index for the period ending February 2012 in comparison to the same period in 2011 saw small gains and could be pointing towards a year of steady growth which is encouraging for 2012.

• Smaller organizations continue to see the largest growth, with a 15.7% increase over the previous year. In addition, the increase represented a 6.1% over the results in January of 2012. There seems to have been consistent gains which started in December of 2011 and if last year’s pattern continues, then this will likely result in even larger gains over the summer period from May to August. Keep in mind that increases were not strong in the fall and smaller nonprofits should plan additional strategies to maintain momentum.
• International Affairs and Environmental & Animal Welfare are two of the four subsectors to rebound from a decrease in overall fundraising revenue with an increase of 2.0% and 7.8% respectively. In both cases, they experienced a decrease in their results in 2011 (Environmental & Animal Welfare -6.2% and International Affairs -29.5%).
• Healthcare Organizations maintained an overall decrease of -11.4% the same as was reported in January. Healthcare Organizations is also the only subsector that experienced a decrease in online giving with a decrease of 6.0%. These unfortunate are even more disappointing because they experienced increases for the most of 2011 (except December). They may want to refocus strategies to rebound from this downward swing they are experiencing and attempt to at least level off and match fundraising results from last year.
• The newest sector to have been added to the Blackbaud Index, Public/Society Benefit Organizations also experienced a decrease in overall giving at -8.4%. The summer months in 2011 were not strong months for these sectors and therefore immediate planning on maintaining or increasing their results this summer is of urgency.
• Online giving continues to perform strongly with a health increase of 13.8% in online fundraising, with medium organizations having the largest gains at 17.1% and Arts & Cultural Organizations, Human Services and Public & Society Benefit having increases of over 20% each. Online giving will continue to perform strongly and is not likely to plateau in the coming months or years, as this giving channel currently only represents 5.72% of the overall fundraising revenue and has not even neared its full potential.

While it’s encouraging to see that results in our industry seem to be improving, it still is concerning that some subsectors are still experiencing a loss. Although it’s nearly impossible to identify the reasons why, there have to be market conditions specific to these subsectors that are affecting their fundraising results that are not be being experienced by other nonprofits.

I anticipate March’s Index will continue to reflect an upward swing of fundraising revenue and hopefully the Healthcare Organizations subsector will rebound from what has been a rather bleak period.

_________________________________________________________________________________________
For nonprofit, nonprofit fundraising, CSR business and other news, connect with us on Twitter, Facebook and Linkedin or subscribe to our RSS feed.

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.