A Different Way to Look at Online Giving

To the Editor:

Your report on an American Express-sponsored study that found that online and offline gifts were the same size (“Online Donations Similar in Size to Gifts by Cash or Check, New Study Finds,” November 15) doesn’t square with research that we have done over the last year.

Target Analysis Group’s recent Internet-giving benchmarking report looked at the online and offline donation records of 24 national nonprofit organizations. For all participants, online gift amounts were consistently higher than offline gift amounts. In fact, for 75 percent of these organizations, average online gift amounts were at least twice as much as offline donations.

We found, as did American Express, that online donors tend to be significantly younger than offline donors. But we also found that:

• The average online gift was significantly larger than the average offline gift for all participating organizations.
• Online donors tend to have higher household incomes, but still give larger gifts even when controlling for income.
• Both annual and long-term revenue per donor for online-acquired donors was far higher than for offline-acquired donors; however, when controlling for acquisition gift amount, offline (primarily direct mail) donors yield higher long-term revenue.

The difference in average gift findings between the two studies may be due to their methods of data collection.

The American Express study was based on a telephone survey that asked donors to report on the sizes of their most recent gifts. In our experience, it is difficult for donors to report reliably on their giving history through surveys. We believe that direct analysis of transaction records is more likely to give an accurate picture of giving behavior.

Nick Allen
Managing Director
Donordigital
San Francisco