Nonprofit Industry Reports

To help the social good community prepare for and respond to any impacts of the coronavirus, we have compiled a list resources. This information is meant to address some of the unique concerns facing the social good community and empower you to deal with this situation while continuing to support your critical mission. While this situation is a challenging one, it can also strengthen the community as we all commit to doing what we can for the greater good.

We encourage you to explore the information and visit the additional resources to stay armed with the insight you need. The page will be continually updated as new information arises.

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From unprecedented global events to incremental initiatives like strategic planning, organizations near and far are grappling with how to navigate change. At the heart of it all, leaders must think progressively about the human element of these changes.

This white paper explores how your organization can address the human element of your next change initiative. As you grow your awareness of how to define change, analyze potential impacts, and set expectations, you can lay the foundation for success in managing your next change.

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This annual report is one of the most highly sought after and credible resources on fundraising performance in the social good community. Helping organizations stay on top of the trends and make informed, strategic decisions, this year’s report includes more insight than ever before!

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Today’s employees place increased significance on a company’s philanthropy and engagement opportunities when considering career development and job opportunities, making corporate social responsibility (CSR) a valuable tool for companies and employees. In our new report, we explore what happens when you look at CSR from a human lens with a focus on employee engagement.

Start reading to discover:

• The value of human-centered programming in employment trends
• Current CSR program trends, including employee giving and statistics
• How company participation affects investments, strategies, and barriers to success

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In Part 1 of the Supporters In Sight series, we identified what personas are and how you can use them to connect with supporters. In Part 2, we’re examining how they can help determine your best major and midlevel giving prospects. Uncovering your major givers’ unique motivations, this report explores the key indicators you should be looking for and the ways you can use affluent donor personas to connect with your highest-impact supporters.

Start reading to discover:

• Key wealth indicators that demonstrate a donor’s capacity to make a major gift
• Profiles of the core donor groups in your constituent population
• How to segment persona-driven messaging that benefits your major, midlevel, and annual fund campaigns

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In this toolkit, you’ll find curated insights to help you evaluate the state of your organization’s privacy framework. By proactively implementing best practices in privacy and security, you can not only enhance your organization’s risk management, but also bolster constituent relationships.

Start reading to access:

• Best practices in guarding programmatic, marketing, and fundraising data
• Insights into current and emerging privacy legislation in the United States and beyond
• Secure methods for managing your organization’s aging and usable data

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In this white paper—created in partnership with NetHope and NTEN—we’ll explore the value of collaborative benchmarking to comparatively measure your performance against peer organizations. By understanding your position in the sector, you can:

• Prioritize resources according to your organization’s strengths and weaknesses
• Ensure that you invest in programs which will lead to organizational growth
• Enhance collaboration across the social good sector for stronger mission delivery

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In this eBook, you’ll get a tactical guide for every area of your organization—from executive leadership to the board of directors, grants to programs, finance to IT, and everything in between—to show you how these teams can partner more effectively and operate as one connected organization.Start reading to reveal:

• The role each department plays in fostering constituent-driven relationships
• Best practices for engaging constituents in a 360-degree experience
• A special look at how your board of directors can support change management and motivate cross-departmental partnerships

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Your donors are more than dollars. This report examines what personas are and how you can use them to connect with your highest-impact supporters through personalized engagement strategies. Discover:

• What data-driven persona models can do for your organization
• Key demographic and inclination indicators that you can use to segment your donors
• Recommendations for using personas across your entire organization—not just in the development office

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Tracking over $31 billion in U.S.-based charitable giving from the Blackbaud Index, the 2018 Charitable Giving Report is one of the most credible resources on fundraising performance in the social good community. In the report, you’ll receive a firsthand look at how charitable giving performed in 2018. By remaining aware of the trends shaping philanthropy, you’ll have the insight you need to make informed, strategic decisions for your mission.
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When it comes to the different nonprofit sectors, diversity of income sources varies significantly. You may think that you have to stick to one traditional type of funding mix at your organization, but this isn’t the case: Dependence on one source of giving could affect your financial security and ability to retain individual donors. Your organization could achieve greater success by diversifying its revenue streams and aligning marketing and fundraising to better communicate your mission and impact.

• A discussion of the benefits and pitfalls of different funding mixes
• Strategies for thinking outside the box
• Recommended approaches for building strong donor relationships

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We’re more networked and connected than ever. This is reshaping how supporters engage with philanthropy—and how fundraisers steward them. In the newest npEXPERTS eBook, get 360-degree advice from the pros on how to take advantage of this changing landscape and find out more on:

• How technology can help us understand supporter connections and measure their distribution
• How organizations can generate and sustain donor activism
• The importance of encouraging your organization’s volunteers, staff, and donors to build relationships throughout

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Finance and development are both on your organization’s financial front lines, but each department’s role is often a mystery to the other. You’ll drive greater mission impact with both teams working together as true strategic partners. The latest installment in the Blackbaud Institute’s toolkit series leverages the collaborative efforts of 12 experts in the sector to share financial best practices, helping you tackle touch topics like:

• Revenue Strategy
• Cross-team collaboration
• Sustainer giving
• Cyber security

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How much money are you leaving on the table because of bad data? Data health is a key part of fundraising success. Fundraisers need to clean data and keep it up to date, so they can use it to develop more meaningful relationships with existing donors. This report reveals the true dollar value of good data practices.Key findings include:

• Online giving is growing, but on average, 53% of records in a nonprofit’s database are missing email addresses
• The average nonprofit could be wasting thousands of dollars on each mailing thanks to bad addresses
• Using an automated credit card updater service can help nonprofits retain thousands of dollars that might otherwise be lost on declined transactions for sustain gifts

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A lot happened in 2017! Download Vital Signs Part 2 to understand how civic engagement in 2017 impacted nonprofit fundraising, and get ideas, steps and perspective on how to address and increase retention figures in the midst of changing market forces. Key insights include:

• New donors disproportionately come from the pool of supporters who are already donating to other organizations
• Giving is not a ‘fixed pie’ — households that make new gifts are willing to expand their philanthropy to accommodate new organizations
• Increased civic engagement in 2017 showed a potential reversal of the declining number of new donor households trend

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The first step to building meaningful relationships with supporters is to learn about them at a fundamental level. The Next Generation of American Giving helps you do that by revealing preferences, beliefs, and charitable habits of Generation Z, Millennials, Generation X, Baby Boomers, and Matures. Key insights include:

• Fewer Americans give, so understanding and retaining the donors you have is more important than ever
• Baby Boomers remain the most generous generation, and the number of Boomers saying they’ll give is increasing
• Giving is distributed across more channels than ever before and younger generations are open to a wider range of solicitation channels
• Generation X is approaching prime giving years, and more than 20% expect to increase their giving in the coming year

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This new eBook examines both all the ways in which corporate social responsibility (CSR) has been evolving, and also what companies will need to do in the next few years as expectations continue to increase. Read insights on topics such as employee engagement, cause marketing, human social responsibility, the responsibility of business to give back, shared value, impact measurement, the SDGs and more from nine leading CSR experts who have successfully charted a course through these areas and are helping inform the continued paths forward.

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How can you tell if your organization kept up with the rest last year? By checking out the Blackbaud Luminate Online™ Benchmark Report 2017! After 11 years highlighting nonprofit fundraising trends, we’re not done yet. The latest report reveals insight to help your nonprofit compete with the best!

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Our playbook for the mission-focused CFO offers practical advice for how you can implement strategies to elevate your business office and support your entire organization. Discover the essential connection between mission and finance and how this connection can help you define strategies that lead to organizational success in 2018.

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The donor marketplace is changing in dramatic ways. Fundraisers need to challenge the status quo and embrace the fundraising tactics that work today, instead of holding on to what worked yesterday.

This report examines giving patterns in the sector and how organizations can respond to this dynamic market.

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Find everything you need to take advantage of your data, all in one place. Our 2017 Analytics Toolkit is a comprehensive, step-by-step guide designed to help you take your mission further by evolving your culture around data. With it, you’ll have access to resources helping you achieve higher donation levels, increased donor program efficiency, stronger supporter relationships, and so much more!Get the Guide

This report dives deep into data from the Census Bureau’s 2014 Consumer Expenditure Survey to determine which discretionary spending habits and characteristics are signals of propensity to make charitable gifts. It explores the key indicators of Age, Education, Household Composition, Income, and Household Spending to determine which characteristics correlate with giving habits.
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In the newest npEXPERTS eBook, 10 of the brightest minds from across the nonprofit sector share their unique perspectives to help you create a culture of philanthropy—one in which executives, board members, accountants, marketers, and everyone in between understand the importance of your organization’s fundraising success and how they can contribute to it within their unique roles.
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Sustained donors, monthly giving, or recurring giving—whatever you call it—is an important, yet often overlooked, tactic in a fundraising portfolio. Initiating such a program can cause internal strife across teams, necessitate multiple marketing agendas tailored to steward elusive givers, and create technical issues. With this study, learn how expanding recurring revenue can impact your bottom line.
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This highly anticipated Part 2 of the Sustainers in Focus series from the Blackbaud Institute uncovers research-backed best practices for marketing, promoting, soliciting, and fulfilling a sustained giving program. Discover six easy-to-follow strategies proven to produce significant results for organizations across the nonprofit sector.
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Now in its fifth year, the 2016 Charitable Giving Report leverages The Blackbaud Index—which tracks approximately $23 billion in US-based charitable giving—to provide one of the most credible resources on fundraising performance in the social good community. As you’re working day in and day out to make an impact for your cause, we hope this report can help by arming you with the information you need to benchmark your performance and guide your fundraising strategies this year and beyond.
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This report is our 10th year of publication. Find detailed analysis and year-over-year comparison data on the performance of nonprofits using Luminate Online. Scroll down to find key takeaways from the report and to use our interactive benchmarking tool to see exactly how you stack up.
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The Blackbaud Peer-to-Peer Fundraising Study analyzes performance of traditional peer-to-peer fundraising events between 2013 and 2015. This year’s Study combines event performance data for 186 organizations using Blackbaud’s TeamRaiser® fundraising solution.
Overall, 2015 was another great year for fundraising. We dug into the data to analyze performance and highlight key trends.
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In this latest npEXPERTS eBook, 11 of the best and brightest minds in philanthropy speak up about what’s happening in the sector today and how these trends are shaping the future. Page by page, they get down to the nitty gritty to reveal the full story behind what they’re seeing in nonprofit leadership, sector diversity, peer-to-peer, advocacy, and more.
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Wondering how donor support will fare in the face of federal and presidential political campaign competition? This report dives deep into data from the 2012 presidential race to provide fundraising insight you can use during the 2016 election year, including:

• The charitable giving habits of 400,000 political donors
• How they were changed by the 2012 election cycle
• Surprising demographics to target for outreach in 2016
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In our latest eBook, our team of experts has come together to give you tips and pointers for making over your peer-to-peer fundraising. We’ll help you create strategies that turn heads, grab the attention of your donors, and put all the focus on your mission.
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Board members and executive leaders look to you for guidance on what technology solutions are needed to further your organization’s mission. But with everything else on your plate, it can be hard to keep up with the latest technology trends and clearly articulate why investment is critical.
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Is your database telling you everything it should? What if it could tell you the best prospects to target for major gifts, the right target ask amounts, or which donors are most likely to respond to your campaigns? In our eBook Analytics-Driven Fundraising: Everything You Need to Reach Financial Success, we give you all the information you need to become an analytics-driven organization.
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A Guide to the Nonprofit Web Design Process is about creating websites to serve real people, based on digital behavior today. Lacey Kruger, along with a team of Blackbaud¹s web design experts, shares a process proven to help nonprofits build websites that drive support for their missions.
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The eBook includes real-world examples of successful fundraising appeals, as well as a complete workbook and checklist that will walk you through everything from creating your fundraising campaign theme to tracking your progress and reporting the results.
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Leading experts have come together to share fundraising ideas, best practices and years of experience in helping nonprofits boost donor retention. Download the eBook and be sure to put their ideas into practice!
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Leading experts have come together to share fundraising ideas, best practices and years of experience in helping nonprofits boost donor acquisition. Download the eBook and be sure to put their ideas into practice!
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Nonprofit experts share practical fundraising ideas and online marketing tips. Download the free eBook today to start soaking in the knowledge.
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To get where you want to be, you need to know where you are today. The 2013 Online Marketing Benchmark Study for Nonprofits can tell you where you are in relation to your peers, what you can be doing better to speed your journey, and provide you with new fundraising ideas for the online space.
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In this eighth installment of the Blackbaud Desktop Reference series, you’ll learn the four stages of the donor lifecycle and strategies to connect with and engage supporters in today’s digital world.
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