January 5, 2011 | Read Time: 1 minute
Online donations rose sharply last year, say three big organizations that handle Internet gifts.
Convio, the fund-raising software company, says online donations to its 1,300 clients topped $1.3-billion, a more than 40-percent increase. That’s up from a 34-percent rise in 2009.
Giving to 5,000 charity clients of Blackbaud, another fund-raising software company, grew by more than 10 percent in December alone, though the company wouldn’t give the precise increase. The company said it was preparing a fuller report on 2010 results to release within the month.
And Network for Good, a nonprofit giving portal that enables people to give online to any charity in the United States, says it processed 20 percent more in charitable donations last year than it did in 2009.
Convio’s results demonstrated that people are putting off their giving until later and later in the year: December 31 produced the largest one-day total (other than right after the Haiti earthquake), with almost $30-million contributed, much of it in response to more than 136 e-mail solicitations from the charities in the final week of December.
Convio said that aside from the earthquake gifts, donations were relatively slow in the first months of the year. In January, February, and March of last year, Convio reported that online donations had increased by 20 percent over the same period in 2009—half of the eventual percentage increase by the end of 2010.
The largest one-day totals raised came on the second and third day after the Haiti earthquake in January, when the company’s clients reported some $32-million raised each day online.
Tad Druart, director of communications at Convio said his clients now raise 5 to 15 percent of all donations online, on average, but that some groups are raising half of all their contributions that way.
