Blackbaud Index for September 2012

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 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.

Overall Fundraising Trends

The Blackbaud Index of Charitable Giving is a broad-based fundraising index that reports total revenue trends of 2,931 nonprofit organizations representing $8 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.

The Blackbaud Index of Charitable Giving reports that overall revenue decreased by 3.1% for the 3 months ending September 2012 as compared to the same period in 2011.

Continuing uncertainty about the economy and the outcome of the fall elections appear to be having a large impact on charitable fundraising. “The recession is continuing to hurt people,” said Chuck Longfield, Blackbaud’s chief scientist and founder of The Blackbaud Index. “Things are challenging now across most nonprofit sub-sectors, with most nonprofits doing the best they can to hold their own and donors doing the same.” Nonprofits also are finding it “very difficult to find new donors,” he said. “Most organizations are not finding new donors but doing a decent job holding onto the donors they have.”

Online Fundraising Trends

The Blackbaud Index of Online Giving is a broad-based fundraising index that reports online revenue trends of more than 1,926 nonprofit organizations representing $379 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 2.7% for the 3 months ending September 2012 as compared to the same period in 2011.

The Index found that three-month online revenue for small organizations (prior year revenue of < $1 million) increased 9.6% in September, while online revenue at medium organizations (prior year revenue of $1 – 10 million) increased 6.7%, and online revenue at large organizations (prior year revenue > $10 million) decreased 3.3%.

K-12 Independent School Trends

Blackbaud introduced a new specialty index this month, focused on the K-12 independent schools, which will be updated monthly going forward.

The Blackbaud Index of Charitable Giving reports that K-12 independent schools had an overall charitable revenue increase of 3.1% for the three months ending September 2012, as compared to the same period in 2011. This trend is based on $499 million in 12 month revenue from 321 schools.

The Blackbaud Index of Online Giving reports that K-12 independent schools had an online revenue increase of 17.6% for the three months ending September 2012, as compared to the same period in 2011. This trend is based on $30 million in 12 month revenue from 132 schools. For historical charts, visit www.blackbaud.com/blackbaudindex.

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, 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 Network (NTEN), Institute of Fundraising National Convention, Civil Society Conference, Resource Alliance’s Fundraising Online, and a keynote speaker at such events as the Crescendo Practical Planned Giving Conference.

Steve serves on the Nonprofit Technology Network (NTEN) Board of Directors and supports its focus on both the growth and professionalism of the nonprofit technology field as well as building knowledge and information sharing capacity throughout the sector.

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.