June 12, 2008 | Read Time: 2 minutes
The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s ninth annual survey of online fund raising is based on data
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provided by 234 of the biggest nonprofit organizations in the United States.
To compile the survey, The Chronicle requested online-giving data from all charities included in the 2007 edition of the newspaper’s Philanthropy 400, which ranks the American nonprofit groups that raise the most money from private sources.
The 197 charities that reported the amount of money they raised online in 2006 and 2007 collected $1.1-billion in 2007, a decrease of 20 percent from the $1.4-billion they raised online the previous year.
A significant portion of that decrease was due to the timing of Hurricane Katrina: The August 2005 disaster occurred in the 2006 fiscal year of five major organizations, including the American Red Cross.
When those five major charities are removed from the mix, the rest of the charities’ combined online fund raising increased 31 percent, to $1.1-billion.
Affiliates’ Data
Among the survey’s respondents, 22 said they did not raise money online in 2006.
Seven said they started, or will start, raising money online in the current fiscal year; two said they planned to start doing so in 2009; four said they were discussing whether to start an online fund-raising effort; and six said they had no plans to do so.
The Greater Houston Community Foundation said it stopped collecting online donations in 2007.
One organization, Silicon Valley Community Foundation, in Mountain View, Calif., reported data just for the 2007 year, the first year of its operations. It is the new entity created when the Peninsula Community Foundation and the Community Foundation Silicon Valley merged in 2007.
Some organizations that have affiliates provided data only for their national office, while others provided data that included their affiliates. The YMCA reported online fund-raising totals for its headquarters, in Chicago, and also total donations for its entire system, including 931 affiliates.
The survey asked groups to include information only for affiliates located in the United States, even though some organizations in the survey maintain affiliates outside of the country.
A searchable database of information from the survey, plus data from the previous years that the survey has been conducted, are online at http://philanthropy.com/extras.
The survey of online fund raising was compiled by Noelle Barton, Maria Di Mento, and Candie Jones.
