April 17, 2003 | Read Time: 3 minutes
Major charities that rely heavily on direct mail for their incomes had weak fund-raising results last year, according to a new survey.
Of the 28 organizations that provided donor totals in 2002, the median change, compared with totals in 2001, was a decline of 3.6 percent, meaning half saw bigger losses and half saw smaller drops or gains.
The results contrast sharply with the year before, when 24 organizations reported a median increase of 5.6 percent.
Target Analysis Group, a Cambridge, Mass., company that researches nonprofit fund-raising trends, conducted the survey. Analysts at the company looked at each donor transaction at the charities to discover giving trends. Participating charities included the American Cancer Society, the Nature Conservancy, the American Civil Liberties Union, CARE, Covenant House, and the Humane Society of the United States. To prevent unusually large gifts from skewing the fund-raising results, donations of more than $5,000 were not included in the survey.
Total giving to the charities declined slightly in 2002, compared with 2001, to $775-million. The median revenue per donor was $47.21, down 1.3 percent from the median reported for 2001.
“The combination of declining incomes and declining sense of wealth due to an erosion in retirement savings and the general level of anxiety meant that fewer people were increasing gifts,” said John Mastrobattista, vice president of marketing at Target Analysis Group.
The survey found that charities were relying more heavily on their loyal donors than new donors or those who give sporadically. The number of “lapsed donors” who renewed their giving dropped by a median of 2.6 percent last year. Such donors have not given in the past year to five years.
Mr. Mastrobattista said many charities put more emphasis on past donors in poor economic times because doing so tends to be less expensive than pursuing new donors. But the 2002 results suggest that charities had to reach deep into their lists of lapsed donors, to those who had not given in many years, he said.
However, the study found that the median number of donors who renewed their gifts in 2002 inched up 0.4 percent.
Since the largest group of charities surveyed specialized in health, the study provided specific information about donors to those organizations.
The size of the median gift made to health charities increased 1.7 percent, the survey found. In addition, health charities were more successful at raising money from lapsed donors, and did not see as significant a decline in attracting new donors, compared with all the charities in the survey. The median number of lapsed donors who decided to give again increased by 2 percent among health charities, while other charities saw a decline of 2.6 percent. The median decline in new donors was 0.7 percent among health charities and 7.8 percent among all charities.
“People are living longer and have a lot more sensitivity to health issues and are perhaps inclined to put them higher on their list of giving priorities,” said Mr. Mastrobattista.
The survey, “donorCentrics Index of National Fundraising Performance,” is available on Target Analysis Group’s Web site, http://www.targetanalysis.com or by contacting Kathy Gallagher, 1030 Massachusetts Avenue, Cambridge, Mass. 02138; (617) 583-8610.
