Online Giving to Nonprofits Grew 13 Percent in 2011

Small and medium-sized organizations leading the way

CHARLESTON, SC – February 16, 2012 – Blackbaud, Inc. (Nasdaq: BLKB) today released its annual 2011 Online Giving Report featuring the most comprehensive analysis of online giving trends in the nonprofit sector.

Download the report at www.blackbaud.com/onlinefundraising.

“2011 did not have the 35% year-over-year growth rate in online givingthat happened in 2010, but online fundraising did not lose its mojo,”said Steve MacLaughlin, co-author of the Report and Blackbaud’s director of Internet solutions. “Every sector in theanalysis has had double-digit growth since 2009, but as with all largenumbers, the bigger the overall percentage gets, the slower it tends togrow.”

In 2011, online giving was up 13% on a year-over-year basis when largeInternational Affairs organizations are removed from the analysis.International Affairs is the only sector that didn’t experience positivegrowth in 2011, due to the tremendous amount of online giving in 2010in response to the Haiti earthquake. When these organizations areincluded in the analysis the overall online fundraising growth ratedrops to 0.3%.

The percentage of total fundraising that comes from online givingdecreased to 6.3%. The decrease is directly related to the drop inonline giving to International Affairs organizations in 2011 compared to2010.

With the exception of International Affairs and Public/Society Benefit,all other sectors increased online revenue as a percent of totalrevenue. Fueling the growth in online giving is an increase of largeonline gifts to nonprofits. In 2011, 87% of organizations had at leastone online gift of $1,000 or more. The median online gift of $1,000 ormore was $1,200 and the largest amount given online in the analysis was$260,000. 43% of these donations were between $1,000 and $5,000.

According to the Report,end-of-year giving continues to account for most of all onlinedonations. 34.8% of online giving happened in October, November, andDecember of 2011. December represented 20.3% of this total and was up ona year-over-year basis.

MacLaughlin advises nonprofits that even given the trend, there is riskin relying too much on year end giving. “It is possible to build anonline giving program that avoids the make-or-break end of yearfundraising crunch,” he said. “This is evidenced by the education andhealthcare sectors that have benefited from concerted online fundraisingefforts during other parts of the year.”

Growth by size and sector
There were differences between how organizations of different sizesperformed in 2011. Large nonprofits, with annual total fundraisinggreater than $10 million, grew their online fundraising 8.6% on ayear-over-year basis. When large International Affairs organizations areincluded in this group, the year-over-year trend shows a 15.5% drop inonline giving further illustrating the impact of Haiti relief givingduring 2010.

Medium-sized nonprofits, with annual total fundraising between $1million and $10 million had a year-over-year increase of 13.1% in theironline fundraising. Small nonprofits, with annual total fundraising lessthan $1 million, had online giving grow 12.8% on a year-over-yearbasis.

“Medium organizations accounted for more than 40% of all online givingin 2011,” said MacLaughlin. “They had the most room to grow since theyhad the slowest growth rate in 2010, but matured in 2011, most likelydue to the ability to efficiently execute multichannel campaigns.”

The report also looks at giving by sector, including Arts, Culture, andHumanities; Education (and Higher Education as a subset); Environmentand Animals; Healthcare; Human Services; International Affairs; andPublic and Society Benefit.

Education organizations had the biggest year-over-year growth in onlinefundraising. Online giving to the Education sector is up 40% since2009. Higher Education groups had the second largest increase in onlinegiving during 2011.

International Affairs organizations had the biggest decrease inyear-over-year online fundraising. These organizations were down 55%from 2010, but are still up over 75% from online giving in 2009. AnnualGrowth in online giving for both the Environment and Animals and HumanServices sectors slowed in 2011 when compared to 2010 but nonethelessshowed positive growth of 10% and 12.5% respectively.

About the 2011 Online Giving Report
The intent of the Report is to provide data that is useful in helping nonprofits understandtheir online giving performance and to drive conversations and analysesamong organizational leadership that uncover opportunities to improveperformance. The 2011 Online Giving Report includes 24 months of onlinegiving data from 1,895 nonprofit organizations from The Blackbaud Indexof Online Giving, online major giving data from 2,387 nonprofits, andboth online and offline data representing $5.1 billion in totalfundraising from 1,560 nonprofits. Read more about the methodology andlearn how to use the data to assess individual organization performanceby downloading the report at www.blackbaud.com/onlinefundraising. 

To stay up-to-date on the latest fundraising trends as reported by The Blackbaud Index, visit www.blackbaud.com/blackbaudindex where you can sign up for monthly email and text alerts.

About Blackbaud
Serving the nonprofit and education sectors for 30 years, Blackbaud(NASDAQ: BLKB) combines technology and expertise to help organizationsachieve their missions. Blackbaud works with more than 25,000 customersin more than 60 countries that support higher education, healthcare,human services, arts and culture, faith, the environment, independenteducation, animal welfare, and other charitable causes. The companyoffers a full spectrum of cloud-based and on-premise software solutions,and related services for organizations of all sizes including:fundraising, eMarketing, social media, advocacy, constituentrelationship management (CRM), analytics, financial management, andvertical-specific solutions. Using Blackbaud technology, theseorganizations raise more than $100 billion each year. Recognized as atop company by Forbes, InformationWeek, and Software Magazine andhonored by Best Places to Work, Blackbaud is headquartered inCharleston, South Carolina and has employees throughout the US, and inAustralia, Canada, Hong Kong, Mexico, the Netherlands, and the UnitedKingdom.