Steve MacLaughlin of Blackbaud shares results from his firm’s clients for the first half of 2009.
From a group of 1,274 clients, online giving is up 22% for the first six months of 2009 over the same period in 2008. Average online gift is currently running at $124.17.
That’s great. But what do you mean by "up"?
I can think of three other stats I’d like to see nonprofit fundraisers calculate if you want to benchmark against Blackbaud’s results or your own past performance:
1) If you limit your comparison to those online donors who gave in the first six months of 2008 to the giving of that same pool of donors in the first six months of 2009, what is the growth rate, if any?
2) If you add any direct mail and telemarketing gifts these same donors might have made during the two periods, what does your year over year comparison look like?
3) Comparing the two periods, what’s the dollar return per dollar spent on fundraising from your house file from these segments:
- the online-only contributors
- the online + direct mail contributors
- the direct mail-only contributors
And has that return on investment grown for any of these segments?
In other words, are you (or Blackbaud’s clients) actually improving the productivity of their fundraising programs? Or are you (and your donors) just putting the money in different jam jars?
Meanwhile, Convio … whatcha got?
Tom
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Tom, Thanks for asking.
Convio definitely understands the importance of providing timely and relevant information to help those in the nonprofit industry succeed. One example of how we’re striving to provide nonprofits more timely data is by offering updates to our annual benchmark paper on a quarterly basis. We’re working on results from the second quarter now, and will have them available in just a few weeks.
As in our Q1 update this information will focus on online fundraising metrics, but also provide insight into other core online constituent relationship metrics that our clients value. However, it is our sincere hope that as we have more and more organizations adopt products like Convio Common Ground we will be able to answer some of the insightful questions you posed around the integration of direct mail and online fundraising as well as other core relationship metrics.
Until then, look for our Q2 Benchmark Update in late July.