Nonprofit Fundraising Report Card Shows Fall in Results According to Latest Blackbaud Index

Working within the nonprofit fundraising sector, I am interested in the many reports, surveys and studies on current trends to gain greater insight for the purpose of planning and benchmarking. I often write about a variety of reports like the Global Social Media Check-Up 2012 Report and the 2012 Nonprofit Communications Trends Report. Another report I write about monthly is the Blackbaud Index which measures overall and online giving from nonprofit revenue of thousands of organizations across the US. The index breaks these results down by size and type of organization and last month’s results pointed towards inconsistencies in nonprofit fundraising.

The latest Blackbaud Index reports on the fundraising revenue of 2,845 nonprofits that generate over $8 billion annually and reflect the results for the three month period ending July 2012. These results reflect an overall decline of -2.7% from the previous month (June 2012) and an increase of 0.2% in overall giving from the same period in 2011. These results continue the downward trend that many were anticipating during the summer months as they are generally a more challenging period for nonprofits with donors distracted with vacations, children out of school and the warmer weather.

One key highlight of the index is that medium sized organizations experienced an increase with a modest 1.4% over 2011 results, joining small sized organization that have seen a consistent increase over the past year including an increase of 7.1% in this reporting period. On the down side, similar to last month’s results, all analyzed organization types once again experienced a decline in giving with the same three organization types holding the top spots: Healthcare (-14.2%), International Affairs (-12.4%) and Environmental & Animal Welfare (-6.3%).

The Index results for online giving were based on 2,178 nonprofit organizations that raised $445 million through online initiatives. In this latest report, online giving continued to see an increase of 5.3% over results from the same period last year where there was a decline of 5.0%, almost half from the index results in June of 10.3%. Unfortunately, large organizations (those with revenue exceeding $10 million) and those in the International Affairs sector experienced a decrease in online giving of -1.7% and -12.7% respectively. Interestingly, the Public and Society Benefit not only had the highest increase over the previous year of 17.1%, but they also saw one of the largest decreases of -8.9% over the previous month.

Although online giving results are stronger than the overall, online fundraising initiatives are still relatively new and will continue to show increases. A trend that reinforces the importance of a strong online presence. I recently wrote the posts 10 Website Tips to Maximize Nonprofit Fundraising and Engagement Opportunities and 5 Tips to Improve Engagement on Nonprofit Websites to help optimize your website efforts.

It’s a good idea to compare results from previous months, despite covering different fundraising periods, as this definitely helps identify fundraising trends. I anticipate that next month’s results (reflecting August) will continue to reflect a decline, however I’m optimistic for a rebound in the following period (reflecting September). Hopefully the last quarter we’ll see results positive enough to make 2012 the strongest fundraising year since pre-recession days.

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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.