Blackbaud Data Signals Flat Giving in 2018
By Emily Haynes
Senior Editor, Nonprofit Intelligence
February 20, 2019 | Read Time: 2 minutes
Title: “2018 Charitable Giving Report”
Organization: Blackbaud Institute
Summary: Overall giving flatlined in 2018, increasing just 1.5 percent, according to a new report from the Blackbaud Institute, a research project of the software company Blackbaud.
From 2016 to 2018, charitable giving grew 9 percent. But modest gains in 2018 show that this growth trend is slowing down: In 2017, overall giving was up 4 percent, year over year.
Online giving, for example, grew by just 1.2 percent in 2018, compared with the previous year, when it rose by 12 percent. At 8.5 percent, the portion of all funds raised online stayed about the same as 2017 levels, when they represented just under 8 percent of all donations. The average online gift size, however, increased from $132 in 2017 to $147.
The report, which comes from analyzing three years of data from more than 9,000 of Blackbaud’s clients, shows a return to typical fundraising levels in 2018, signaling that 2017 growth was exceptional, not sustainable.
Giving in 2018 “is trending things back towards where giving normally would be,” said Steve MacLaughlin, vice president for data and analytics at Blackbaud. He expects growth to remain below 10 percent this year.
The more than 9,000 organizations whose data was analyzed for the report raised an overall total $31.9 billion in 2018. Blackbaud also studied more than 5,500 of its clients to identify trends in online giving. These groups raised upwards of $2.7 billion online.
Among the findings:
- 24 percent of all online donations were made on a mobile device — up from 21 percent in 2017 and 9 percent in 2014, the first year Blackbaud began collecting data on this source of giving.
- The average gift size for donations under $1,000 stayed steady at $20 in 2018, while the average gift size for donations over $1,000 increased slightly, to $2,049.
- Arts and culture organizations saw the biggest fundraising increase in 2018, growing by 5.5 percent over 2017 levels.
- 29 percent of funds raised on Giving Tuesday were donated to organizations with annual operating budgets of $1 million to $10 million.
