The best snapshot survey of online giving to nonprofits I’ve seen this year

Online giving to nonprofits is a rapidly growing component of a professional fundraising strategy. Today I wanted to point you in the direction of the fascinating survey that is presented in full by ‘The Online Giving Study.org’ that provides so much more depth to the widely understood changes in giving via the online forum. The report does more than tell you what you probably are aware of (online giving continues to soar) and breaks it down into far more digestible data is both broken down into subsector of the fundraising industry but is also a deeply (seven year time span) historic look at the trends of the industry online. The study captures data from more than 1.8 million unique donors, over 65,000 different nonprofits representing in excess of $380 million of donations. My personal obsession with statistics is long-standing but I learned years ago in college that the deeper the analysis goes in looking at duration the more tangible the numbers are in terms of application. That’s the primary reason I highly recommend downloading the report in full and begin to digest the information contained within.

Included in the data is an in-depth look at daily, monthly and annual online giving habits with a particular amount of attention devoted to December which is increasingly becoming the cornerstone of success for many nonprofits. Professional estimates suggest that between 30 and 40% of all donations are received in the final month of the year and this report reaffirms that over a seven-year span showing that exactly 1/3 of donations are reported in December. Perhaps even more remarkably 22% of all December donations occur on the final two days of the month, I’ll save you from grabbing the calculator – that means that just over 7% of all donations for the year are received on December 30th and 31st. That equates to about four weeks worth of donor activity in just 48 hours if giving was at a constant level throughout the year.

There are a number of key visuals with the report that I think you’ll find informative but also thought-provoking as it applies to your own nonprofit. In the interest of space on today’s blog I will highlight some of the findings I thought were most impactful to my own understanding and hopefully yours as well.

There are a host of other valuable reports and charts contained within the full report compiled by www.onlinegivingstudy.org just follow this link to download your copy. Registration is required but well worth the brief time it takes. For a quick and thorough understanding of online giving today I find that this report answers many questions as well as evaluating the key trends.