New Report Says Overall Giving Was Flat in 2019, While Online Fundraising Jumped 6.8%

Charities saw another year of flat overall giving in 2019, according a new report from the Blackbaud Institute, the research arm of the software company Blackbaud. Overall giving at 8,210 nonprofits rose just 1 percent last year based on an analysis of $36 billion in giving data.

Researchers found more significant growth online, where giving jumped 6.8 percent at organizations in the sample. That’s better than the disappointing 1.2 percent growth in online giving in 2018 but far short of the 12 percent surge reported in 2017. Online giving represented 8.7 percent of all fundraising in 2019, about the same share of total giving as in 2017 and 2018.

Steve MacLaughlin, vice president for product management at Blackbaud, says the 2017 jump in online giving began after the last presidential election and spilled over into President Trump’s first year in office. “Those spikes don’t last forever. They eventually even out,” he says. “I think what we’ve seen on the digital side is that we’ve returned to more normal growth rates.”

Small Nonprofits Excel Online

The growth in online giving differed significantly by cause. Animal welfare and environmental groups, for example, both saw online fundraising increases of a little more than 10 percent. Digital gifts to medical-research nonprofits fell 0.3 percent from 2018 levels.

Charities with fundraising revenue below $1 million a year receive 14.1 percent of all gifts online, according to the report. MacLaughlin says this finding shows that small nonprofits are committed to raising money online. “They’re way beyond the tipping point,” he says.

Blackbaud has measured a 5.1 percent increase in overall giving over three years, mostly due to a 4 percent jump in total giving in 2017. In 2018, it increased just 1.5 percent.

Midsize nonprofits that raise $1 million to $10 million a year saw the most growth in overall giving last year, an increase of 3.2 percent over 2018 levels. Nonprofits that raise less than $1 million annually followed, posting a 2.2 percent increase. Meanwhile, nonprofits that raise more than $10 million a year saw almost no change compared with 2018.

Growth in mobile giving also continued last year. Researchers found that 26 percent of all digital donations in 2019 were made on a smartphone or tablet. Mobile donations peaked last August, accounting for 31 percent of online donations that month. January and December 2019, meanwhile, tied for the least popular months for mobile giving; 22 percent of online gifts came through mobile during those months. MacLaughlin says the reason mobile giving is so low in December, when overall giving is so high, may be because they are responding instead to the high volume of appeals through other means, like email or direct mail, during that period.

Nonprofits still need to think about mobile, MacLaughlin says. “Even though it drops down, it’s still high, and you need to pay attention to it.”