Marketing Study Reveals Rise in Online Giving

The annual Convio Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmark Study in the US reveals that online giving grew steadily in 2009 despite the difficult economy. 

 

The study was designed to help Not for Profit professionals evaluate beneficial online marketing metrics, evaluate the effectiveness of their organisation compared to similar organisations and determine strategies for future success.

 

The study focused on key marketing areas related to online success, including:

 

Key findings of the study include:  

 

Online giving grew 14 percent despite a difficult economy. Overall, 69 percent of organisations raised more in 2009 than 2008, while 31 percent saw declines in their online fundraising.

 

An increase in gifts drove fundraising gains. Of those that grew fundraising in 2009, 92 percent saw an increase in the number of gifts in 2009 compared with just 43 percent of organisations seeing an increase in their average gift amount.

 

Small organisations grew fastest. Organisations with fewer than 10,000 email addresses on file, grew online revenue by 26 percent, and gifts by 32 percent.

 

Web traffic growth continued for most, but at a slower rate. 60 percent of organisations grew their website traffic from 2008 to 2009. Web traffic growth in 2009 was in the single digits at 6 percent compared with double digit growth seen in previous years.

 

Web traffic was strongly correlated with email file growth. 38 percent of an organisation’s success building large email files could be directly attributed to the amount of traffic to the organisation’s website.

 

This year’s study analyzes data compiled from 499 Not for Profit organisations that have at least 24 months of data to compare. The study aggregates results into benchmarks that NFPs can compare against their peer group and the industry as a whole. 

 

Convio is a leading US systems provider for Not for Profit organisations to more effectively raise funds, advocate for change and cultivate relationships with donors, activists, volunteers, alumni and other constituents.

 

The full Convio study is available at www.convio.com/2010benchmark