Giving Rose 14% Last Quarter, Mainly Due to Big Gifts

Title: 2018 Third Quarter Report

Organization: Growth in Giving Initiative/Fundraising Effectiveness Project

Summary: Dollars raised by nonprofits increased 2.6 percent in the first nine months of 2018 compared with the same period last year, according to a new report.

The spike was driven by a surge in charitable dollars in 2018’s third quarter — from July through September — when giving rose 14 percent compared with the same three months in 2017. The growth comes after a sluggish first half of the year: Charitable dollars were down 2.1 percent through June compared with the first half of 2017.

Big contributions drove the third-quarter growth. By midyear, donations of $1,000 or more declined 2.1 percent over the first half of 2017. By the end of September, however, such donations had grown by 3.1 percent. (See more about big donations in our free database of gifts of $1 million or more.)

“At this point, there’s one major reason giving is increasing, and that’s money raised from donors giving larger gifts,” said Elizabeth Boris, chair of the Growth in Giving Initiative, a project that seeks to increase charitable giving in the United States, in a statement. The report is based on an analysis of data from the Growth in Giving database, which includes information from national charities and large fundraising-software firms. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project, which conducted the report, is a partnership between the Urban Institute and the Association of Fundraising Professionals.

Small Donations Fall

The report, however, highlights a concerning trend for nonprofits that other studies have also found:

The amount charities are raising from small donors is dropping.

Money generated from contributions under $250 dipped 0.3 percent through September, while money from gifts of $250 to $999 dropped 1.1 percent.

The number of donors over all was down 4.3 percent in the first nine months of 2018.

“What these figures show is the continuing trend of charities receiving more revenue from a smaller group of donors,” said Ben Miller, chief analytic officer of the research firm DonorTrends, in a statement.

Charities must do more to keep donors loyal and attract new ones, Miller said, because relying on a small pool of big donors is unsustainable.

Among the findings:

• Only about 14.4 percent of new donors in 2017 gave again during the first three quarters of 2018. Last year, 17.3 percent of donors who gave for the first time in 2016 donated once more in 2017.
• The number of donors who have given to the same organization for two years in a row grew nearly 1 percent through September, compared with the same period in 2017.