Online giving grew just 1 percent in 2018 — not even keeping pace with the 2.4 percent inflation rate — according to a new study released today.
After back-to-back years of record online giving, 2018 saw the smallest increase in digital donations in 13 years.
One explanation for this poor showing, according to the annual study by M+R, a nonprofit communications consultancy, is that donors didn’t increase their giving after an exceptional 2017 when online giving grew 23 percent.
This change in donor behavior was likely the result of a mix of factors, according to Will Valverde, author of the study. Donors who gave in 2017 in response to certain causes, such as civil-rights organizations that made aggressive pitches after the election of President Trump, likely slowed their giving in 2018. According to the study, contributions to civil-rights organizations grew 88 percent in 2017, but such groups saw donations drop 14 percent last year. Many donors may also have held back their giving while waiting to see how the new federal tax law, passed in December 2017, would affect them.
The study included data from fundraising and advocacy communications at 135 nonprofits.
Even as overall online giving stalled, monthly giving revenue increased 17 percent from 2017. The average monthly gift was $23.
Charities are finding it easier to persuade people to give monthly because they pay that way for things like video streaming services, Valverde said. Many groups are doing a better job of promoting such donations, he added. These recurring contributions give charities a predictable revenue stream and continued financial support from donors who “set and forget” their monthly gift, he said.
Devising a smart email strategy has long been a challenge for nonprofits, and last year was no exception. “It feels like they’re on this treadmill that keeps on going faster,” he noted. “For a lot of nonprofits, it’s hard to know what to do.”
The data show that charities sent 8 percent more emails last year, including an average of 25 fundraising appeals per person. in 2018, While the number of fundraising emails sent grew, the share of gifts made through donation forms embedded in those emails did not. The rate of donors who completed a gift when they reach a donation page through a fundraising email declined 18 percent in 2018, compared with the previous year.
“Sending more email that nobody wants to respond to is not going to help anybody. We actually need to make sure that the content is good and useful and relevant and makes people want to respond. But that’s hard!” said Valverde.
Forty-four percent of traffic to nonprofits’ websites comes from mobile devices. But the study found that 63 percent of donors are still giving from desktop computers. They are apparently opening emails from nonprofits and visiting those websites on their phones or tablets but waiting to donate until they’re in front of a desktop.
“If a mobile user is less valuable, but more of our new users are coming from mobile sources, that is something to figure out,” Valverde observed.
As far as social media is concerned, Facebook is still top dog. But nonprofits are attracting followers more slowly on Facebook than they are on Twitter and Instagram. Nonprofits have seen their Instagram fans increase 34 percent since 2017, while their Facebook fans increased just 6 percent.
Another trend to watch, according to the study’s results, is Facebook Fundraiser, a tool that allows Facebook users to collect donations for a cause of their choosing from their network on the social-media site. The charities that participated in the study received donations from an average of 56 Facebook Fundraiser campaigns, with an average gift size of $31.
While it’s too soon to say just how significant those fundraising efforts will be in the future, Valverde says they could be one component of a winning online-fundraising strategy. “The real story of digital programs is increasing complexity,” he said.
Correction: A previous version of this article referred to M+R as a fundraising consultancy instead of a nonprofit communications consultancy.
