The Latest Blackbaud Index Reflects Post-Holiday Nonprofit Fundraising Results

Last month I reported on the previous Blackbaud Nonprofit fundraising Index results which reflected a slight growth of 1.8% in December 2011. Well now that the holidays are behind us and we are firmly into a brand new year, I was anxiously awaiting the results of the next index. Typically January is a tougher month than most as holiday expenses catch up with consumers but in spite of that, the results from the latest Blackbaud Index are encouraging, with the exception of a couple of concerning areas.

Image courtesy of blackbaud.com

Reporting on 1,275 nonprofit organizations, representing $2.76 billion in fundraising revenue the index shows that there was an increase of 3.3% in the three month period ending January 2012 over the same period in 2011. This represented an increase of more than double from December 2011 which reported a revised increase of 1.4%. Also encouraging is that small organizations with revenue of under $1 million had the largest increase of 5.9% over the same period in 2011. These results may certainly indicate a renewed confidence and some improvements in the economic climate. However it would be important to maintain a cautiously optimistic outlook.

In digging a little deeper into the index’s results, it’s evident that the overall growth is not being experienced equally by all subsectors. As previously reported in the latest index, organizations in the same three sectors continued to experience a decline in giving, these being Environmental & Animal Welfare (-7.0%), Healthcare Organizations (-5.1%) and International Affairs (-7.7%). Considering that overall fundraising seems to be experiencing steady gains, this trend is worrisome. As I mentioned, the post-holiday period will generally see a decline in giving as donors tighten their budgets and wallets; however the question remains why some subsectors continue to experience a decline over others? A solution to this cannot easily be defined and ultimately it is to each individual organization to assess what has affected their donor revenue and how they can recapture their supporter’s attention to see improved results.

On the other hand online giving continues to experience growth of 12.9% in the reporting period, which represented a decline of 0.8% from the previous period ending in December 2011 (13.7%). Not a surprising post-holiday result, but still encouraging that online giving is seeing steady growth. I anticipate that compared to overall results, online giving will continue to see growth as nonprofits build and develop their online marketing and engagement strategies.

Despite the growth of overall online giving, Healthcare Organizations was the only subsector to continue to see a decline of -4.7%. Coupled with their decline in overall giving, organizations in this subsector should have concerns and take a closer look at their strategies to determine if there are ways to challenge the decline they are experiencing. The answers are never simple and clear cut, as the reasons for the decline and possible solutions differ from nonprofit to nonprofit, but the downward trend should really be an alert for organizations to take action.

It will be interesting to see what giving trends are reflected in the next edition and how they compare to the trending thus far.
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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.