Google for Nonprofits Blog: Grow Your Gifts: Trends in Online Giving

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Grow Your Gifts: Trends in Online Giving

Tuesday, September 11, 2012

It’s hard to believe fall is almost here and with it the holiday season. While shoppers in many parts of the world begin to look for the next great toys and other memorable gifts, donors are starting to look for non-profits to support with end-of-year charitable gifts.
To help you get ready for the upcoming fundraising season, our team will be sharing tips and best practices on how to use Google tools to plan and organize your fundraising strategy. Check our blog and Google+ page over the next few weeks through our Grow Your Gifts series.
Kicking things off, we’ll take a look at three things to know about online giving as you plan your fundraising strategy:
1. Online giving is growing. While the majority of giving is done offline, mainly through direct mail, the sixth annual eNonprofit Benchmarks Study, released by M+R Strategic Services and Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN), showed that growth in online giving from 2010 to 2011 was up 20%.
2. New donors and young donors give online. According to Blackbaud’s 2011 donorCentrics Internet & Multichannel Benchmarketing Report, it’s become increasingly common for new donors to give their first gift online. In fact, new donors between the ages of 18 - 64 are more likely to give online than by mail.
3. Online donors give more than offline donors. According to the same Blackbaud report, online donors tend to have higher household incomes than mail-acquired donors. Those online-acquired donors also tend to give much larger gifts and to give more in total revenue each year. And in aggregate, online-acquired donors have much higher cumulative value over the long term than traditional mail-acquired donors.
So now that we know that online giving is on the rise, our next post will explore when people actually start thinking about end-of-year giving.
Posted by Katie Kellogg, Google for Nonprofits team