March 18, 2009 | Read Time: 2 minutes
While the Internet has become an increasingly significant instrument for recruiting new donors, online contributors appear to be somewhat less loyal than more traditional mail donors, according to a new study.
The review of 24 national nonprofit groups found that many people who make a first-time gift to charity through the Internet often don’t go online to make another. Some of them do continue to give, but through other ways.
The study, conducted by Target Analytics, a research division of the fund-raising software company Blackbaud, found that, despite rapid growth in Web-based fund raising over the past two years, online giving is still “dwarfed” by direct mail and more traditional fund-raising methods.
Revenue from online giving for the groups in the study continued to see especially big gains.
Crises like Hurricane Katrina or the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami created huge spikes in Internet donations to humanitarian-relief and animal-welfare organizations. But even without such major disasters, data collected from 12 organizations that reported fund-raising results in January showed that the number of online donors to those groups grew by a median of 39 percent from 2007 to 2008.
Even so, online donors made up only a median 9 percent of all donors to those groups in 2008 and contributed a median 11 percent of all revenue.
Online donors are attractive prospects because they tend to be younger, have higher incomes, and make larger gifts than traditional direct-mail donors, said the report.
One-time Internet donors to the 12 organizations gave a median of $27 more than those who made single gifts by mail.
But, according to the study, such figures could be masking the costs charities incur because people who give online don’t give again.
While the relatively small numbers of online donors who continue to give via the Internet give high sums and therefore contribute more over the long term than the average direct-mail donor, the study found that online donors tend to give again far less frequently than direct-mail donors. And while some donors who make a first gift online later give through other means, particularly direct mail, when they do they tend to give smaller sums than they did online.
For the group in the January survey, a median 33 percent of new donors who were recruited online in 2007 gave offline in 2008.
By contrast, donors recruited via direct mail rarely migrate to the Internet, said the report.
Target Analytics researchers say the findings suggest that nonprofit groups would do well to integrate their online and offline fund-raising programs.
Analysts found, for example, that donors who provide e-mail addresses to nonprofit groups tend to give more per year and renew at higher rates than others, even if they donate only by mail.
To read the report: Go to http://www.blackbaud.com.
