More Donors Made One-Time and Monthly Online Gifts in 2020
By Emily Haynes
Senior Editor, Nonprofit Intelligence
October 6, 2021 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Charities’ revenue from one-time online donations grew more than 15 percent in 2020, according to a new report from the fundraising technology company Blackbaud.
Before the coronavirus outbreak, revenue from one-time online donors declined 1 percent from 2019 to 2020. But as nonprofits moved the bulk of their fundraising apparatus online during the pandemic, the average size of those gifts grew to $169.59 — a more than 3 percent increase.
The study tracked online giving revenue among 908 of Blackbaud’s nonprofit clients from January 1, 2018, to December 31, 2020.
Food banks, faith-based organizations and congregations, and public broadcasting posted the biggest growth in revenue from one-time donors — with most of it coming in March and April of 2020. “They were ones that were able to get communications out to raise money early in the pandemic, and that really drove their big spikes,” says Mike Snusz, one of the authors of the report.
More Clicks, More Donors
Fundraising emails moved more donors to give last year. The charities in the study recorded 43.2 percent more gifts in response to a fundraising email in 2020 than in 2019. Revenue from these transactions grew by more than 42 percent.
This growth in donors and revenue is especially notable because, although nonprofits increased the volume of emails they sent nearly 14 percent, the volume of readers who clicked on links in the emails jumped 29 percent.
The number of one-time donors who gave online also grew by nearly 16 percent in 2020, despite declining in 2019. Monthly donors were the real standouts, boosting their giving 18 percent from 2019 to 2020. That’s largely because that revenue stream grew consistently — 14 percent to 20 percent each month — while one-time donations had two big spikes and deep declines in between. Revenue from one-time donors only grew from May to June and at year end.
Charities grew the ranks of their monthly donors by 18 percent last year. Not only were more recurring donors giving to the charities in the study last year, they were making slightly larger monthly gifts — about $1 more in 2020 than in 2019, boosting the median monthly gift to $38.61. A typical average gift for a successful recurring donor program ranges from $20 to $25 per month, according to Blackbaud.
Food Banks Saw Biggest Gains
Eleven of the 12 causes measured in the study saw revenue grow from one-time online gifts. Food banks saw the biggest gains. Together, the food charities included in the study recorded a 453 percent increase in revenue from one-time donors, most of it in April 2020.
The only cause that received fewer dollars from one-time online gifts was health services and research, where collective revenue fell nearly 19 percent.
Still, these groups saw a more than 8 increase in revenue from monthly donors. “In some cases, it may be OK if those single gifts don’t come back if you continue to retain those recurring donors,” says Steve MacLaughlin, vice president of product management at Blackbaud. “Over the long haul, they’re much more valuable to the organization than the single gift donor.”
Monthly donors made up a smaller median share of all online gift revenue in 2020 — 9 percent compared with 11 percent in 2019. That’s likely due to a surge in one-time donors responding to public-health emergencies and racial-justice protests, the report’s authors say.
Among the other findings:
- One in 40 donors now makes a monthly recurring gift.
- Growth in revenue from sustaining donors has now outpaced growth in dollars from one-time donors for nine straight years.
