Online Fundraising Fun Fact

Guess what percent of total fundraising happens online? 5%?  10%?  20%?

How about 7%.  Yep. That’s it.

What does it mean?  To me, it means that most of the charitable contributions happen when a donation is personally solicited. Mail, phone, or in-person.  Interpersonal relationships rule when it comes to asking for money.   Once upon a time I worked on a couple of walkathons in the pre-online-giving days.  We raised over $3 million at each of those walks.  We raised the money by speaking to a person that has an interest in the issue.

During my final years of being a walk manager, online giving was introduced.  Everyone thought that the money would exponentially roll in.  Nope.  We had a small uptick, but nothing to indicate that the online giving was going to significantly replace humans speaking to other humans.  Even now, the walks I once managed have hit a financial plateau.  Online giving is not the financial savior.  I’ve written about this a bunch so I will not bore you with another speech.

I read this article that outlines the Blackbaud 2012 Charitable Giving report.  Blackbaud is the company that created the online giving program that most events use to raise money. Many of the answers are very surprising, especially the amount of money that is donated online.  I was shocked to see it is only 7% of total giving.  Single digit!

Now I’m not poo-pooing online giving.  It is a great tool to acquire new donors, just like a piece of direct mail.  I just hope that the organizations are staffed properly to cultivate the relationships with these online donors.  That way, the usual under-$100 online donations eventually progress to a major gift, a planned gift from the estate or hopefully – a building named after them.

93% of charitable giving DOES NOT happen online. Shocker!