Twelve Percent

At a conference this summer, I was asked to speak about “why and how to use direct mail.”

I began with the following statistic (from Blackbaud):

Last year the percentage of charitable giving donated through online sources was 12%.

The 12% figure was a total surprise to a significant portion of the audience.  I heard one person say, “Wait, WHAT?”

It’s easy to understand why so many people were surprised; the fundraising world is mainly populated with people under 40, and people under 40 do almost everything online.  Plus, most of the people were from smaller nonprofits so they didn’t have the context that comes from working in larger, mature fundraising programs.

If you, too, are incredulous that just 12% of funds are coming in online for most organizations, let me share some helpful thoughts for you and your organization.

• If your organization is raising more than 12% of your revenues online, that’s fantastic, you’re ahead of the curve.  Online fundraising is growing (though not as quickly as everyone assumed it would), so it’s a strength to be getting good at raising money online.
• If you’re doing well raising money online, it almost certainly means you could successfully raise money offline.  This will give your organization another regular, dependable stream of income.
  • Note: if you’ve tried raising money offline and failed, it most likely means the campaign wasn’t executed well, as opposed to meaning that “offline donors don’t like us.”
• You actively want to have an online fundraising program and an offline fundraising program because they reinforce each other.  It’s a “1 + 1 = 3” situation.  An offline program reaches people who aren’t reached by email.  An online program reminds people that they forgot to give to the piece of direct mail they set down when the phone rang.    

So, what percentage of your organization’s revenues come in online?

And regardless of your percentage, we recommend developing both strong online and offline fundraising programs.  The average age of a donor in the U.S. is around 68, so you need both programs if you want to reach both today’s donors and tomorrow’s.