December 31 Is Big Day for Online Donations

December 18, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute

Data from the online fund-raising company Convio confirm what many nonprofit groups have long suspected: Donors make more online gifts on December 31 than any other day of the year.

The Austin, Tex., company processes more than 13 times as many gifts on December 31 than the daily average for the rest of the year, and more than 22 times as much money.

During the last week of the year, December 25-31, donors make nearly five times as many contributions as they do during an average week. And those gifts are 57 percent larger.

Officials at the company said that the top 10 percent of organizations using their system saw 10 times as many donations during the last week of the year and 15 times as much money donated.

They suggest this might be a helpful benchmark for organizations trying to assess the success of their year-end online fund-raising efforts.

About the Author

NICOLE WALLACE

Features Editor

Nicole Wallace is features editor of the Chronicle of Philanthropy. She has written about innovation in the nonprofit world, charities’ use of data to improve their work and to boost fundraising, advanced technologies for social good, and hybrid efforts at the intersection of the nonprofit and for-profit sectors, such as social enterprise and impact investing.Nicole spearheaded the Chronicle’s coverage of Hurricane Katrina recovery efforts on the Gulf Coast and reported from India on the role of philanthropy in rebuilding after the South Asian tsunami. She started at the Chronicle in 1996 as an editorial assistant compiling The Nonprofit Handbook.Before joining the Chronicle, Nicole worked at the Association of Farmworker Opportunity Programs and served in the inaugural class of the AmeriCorps National Civilian Community Corps.A native of Columbia, Pa., she holds a bachelor’s degree in foreign service from Georgetown University.