How The Chronicle Conducted Its Annual Survey of Donations Made Online

The Chronicle of Philanthropy’s fifth annual survey of online fund raising is based on data provided by 204

of the nonprofit organizations that are the most successful fund-raising groups in the United States.

The United Way of Metropolitan Atlanta received the most donations online in 2003, raising $11-million by such means. Heifer Project International, in Little Rock, Ark., raised the second-most online, with $8.2-million in donations, which accounts for 15.2 percent of the group’s total contributions in 2003.

Rounding out the top five were the American Heart Association, in Dallas ($5.8-million online); the Salvation Army, in Alexandria, Va. ($5-million); and the National Multiple Sclerosis Society, in New York ($5-million).

The Chronicle sought online-giving data from the 400 charities that were included in the 2003 edition of the newspaper’s Philanthropy 400, which ranks the nonprofit groups that raise the most money from private sources.

Of the 204 organizations that responded to the survey, 168 reported that they did some kind of online fund raising during the 2003 fiscal year. Eleven organizations were unable to provide a dollar amount.

Thirty-one organizations said that they do not raise funds online. Thirteen of those organizations have plans to start collecting online donations in the 2004 fiscal year. Another 11 are discussing the option of beginning online fund raising.

Seven organizations reported that they have no plans to start collecting funds online, while one organization, the Community Foundation Silicon Valley, in San Jose, Calif., said it stopped collecting online donations in 2001. Michelle McGurk, director of communications for the organization, said the foundation decided not to include an online-donation page when it redesigned its Web site because so few people had used the option when it was previously available.

The community foundation, however, does use the Internet for special-events registration.

Readers of the survey should take care when comparing organizations’ online fund raising from year to year.

Some figures reported for online donations may not represent a full 12 months of operation because some groups began accepting online gifts in the middle of the fiscal year. Some organizations provided online-giving data for their headquarters, but not for affiliates.

Four organizations had percentage increases of more than 1,000 percent. However, those organizations reported that their online fund-raising programs were relatively new, so their totals for 2002 were very small. Three of the four organizations began collecting donations online in 2002.

For example, the University of Oklahoma, in Norman, the organization with the highest percentage increase — 67,165 percent — started seeking gifts online at the end of its 2002 fiscal year. The university raised only $40 online in 2002, while it brought in $26,906 in its 2003 fiscal year.

Other organizations had relatively low totals, they say, because they had done little to promote online giving to donors. Many of those groups say they plan to step up solicitations this year.

The survey was conducted by Leah Kerkman and Stanley W. Krauze.