Blackbaud Index for September 2010

The Blackbaud Index of Charitable Giving and The Blackbaud Index of Online Giving provide fundraisers with up-to-date data on fundraising trends and to couple that information with valuable analysis by leaders in the sector.

Blackbaud updates these indices on the 15th of each month and they are based on a three-month moving average of year- over-year percent changes in revenue. This makes them less sensitive to small timing issues or large fluctuations over a short period of time. The latest Index data covers the 3 months ending September 2010 as compared to the same period in 2009.

Overall Fundraising Remains Positive

The Blackbaud Index of Charitable Giving is a broad-based fundraising index that reports total revenue trends of 1,376 nonprofit organizations representing $2.2 billion in yearly revenue on a monthly basis, both offline and online. The Index is based on actual revenue statistics from nonprofit organizations of all sizes representing arts, culture, and humanities; education; environment and animals; healthcare; human services; international affairs; public and society benefit; and religion sectors. Read more about the methodology.

The Blackbaud Index of Charitable Giving reports that overall revenue increased by 4.3% for the 3 months ending September 2010 as compared to the same period in 2009. This growth trend has been fueled by improving results from both large (+3.9%) and small (+15.1%) nonprofits. Medium sized organization, those with annual revenue between $1 and $10 million, continue to struggle with a decrease of 2.2% over last year.

Online Fundraising Continues to Grow

The Blackbaud Index of Online Giving is a broad-based fundraising index that reports online revenue trends of more than 1,669 nonprofit organizations representing $424.6 million in yearly revenue on a monthly basis. The Index is based on actual revenue statistics from nonprofit organizations of all sizes representing arts, culture, and humanities; education; environment and animals; healthcare; human services; international affairs; and public and society benefit sectors.

The Blackbaud Index of Online Giving reports that online revenue increased by 19.5% for the 3 months ending September 2010 as compared to the same period in 2009. Positive trends are being experienced by large (+23.4%), medium (13.4%), and small (24.5%) nonprofits.

Human Services Sector

The Blackbaud indices also look at the performance of specific areas of the nonprofit sector. Human Services organizations continue to have very mixed results. This subset of The Blackbaud Index of Charitable Giving looks at nonprofits serving the human services sector represents 438 organizations and $623.3 million in revenue. These organizations had a decrease of 14.7% for the 3 months ending September 2010 as compared to the same period in 2009

Representing 503 organizations and $65.2 million in online revenue, this subset of The Blackbaud Index of Online Giving looks at nonprofits serving the human services sector. These organizations had an increase of 30.5% for the 3 months ending September 2010 as compared to the same period in 2009.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Steve MacLaughlin

Steve MacLaughlin is the Vice President of Data & Analytics at Blackbaud and bestselling author of Data Driven Nonprofits.

MacLaughlin has been featured as a fundraising and nonprofit expert in many mainstream publications, including The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, The Boston Globe, The Chronicle of Philanthropy, USA Today, The NonProfit Times, Stanford Social Innovation Review, Bloomberg, and has appeared on NPR.

He is a frequent speaker at events including the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), Association for Healthcare Philanthropy (AHP), American Marketing Association (AMA), Council for Advancement and Support of Education (CASE), Direct Marketing Fundraisers Association (DMFA), Giving Institute Summer Symposium, National Association of Independent School (NAIS), Nonprofit Technology Conference (NTC), Institute of Fundraising National Convention (United Kingdom), Civil Society Conference (Netherlands), International Fundraising Congress (Netherlands), Ask Direct Fundraising Summer School (Ireland), and a keynote speaker at several conferences across the social good sector.

Steve previously served on the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) Board of Directors and is currently an adjunct faculty member at Columbia University.

He is a frequent blogger, published author of a chapter in the book People to People Fundraising: Social Networking and Web 2.0 for Charities, and is a co-editor of the book Internet Management for Nonprofits: Strategies, Tools & Trade Secrets. His latest book, Data Driven Nonprofits, became a bestseller in 2016.

Steve earned both his undergraduate degree and a Master of Science degree in Interactive Media from Indiana University.