Network For Good Online Giving Study

 

Network For Good, the online giving portal, just released The Online Giving Study covering 3.6 million gifts totaling $381 million from nearly 1.9 million unique donors to 66,470 nonprofit organizations from 2003 to 2009.  The study only covers giving made through Network For Good’s system.

The study is full of great stats, interesting charts, and some lessons for fundraisers and nonprofit organizations considering fundraising tools and portals.  Here are some of the findings that I find most interesting:

  • 64.1% of donations are made through nonprofits’ websites, 25.5% through giving portals and 10.4% through social giving.
  • Donations made through an organization’s website are larger, significantly, than hose made through giving portals, or social giving, and giving habits seem to be formed by the first giving experience. Thus if your first giving experience is through a portal, and you give 33% less than you would of had you given through the charity’s website, you will also give less in the future than if you had first given through the charity’s site because your baseline is lower.
  • Giving through social networks is lowest. This comes as no surprise, anyone who has read accounts of Facebook causes raising less than a dollar per supporter could tell you this.  

These 3 statistics are important, especially in light of the recent launch of Jumo, a social network for good, that I blogged about yesterday.  Jumo uses Network For Good’s donation processing system, so hopefully in the future Network For Good will be able to tell us something about giving habits through Jumo.  But in the mean time, if Jumo is helping move people along the engagement latter toward giving to an organization, and that giving takes place through the Jumo website, not only will Jumo take 15% off the top, but they will likely deliver a donation that is lower than it would be if the donor made it directly on the nonprofit’s own website.

It will certainly be interesting to see how this shakes out in the coming months. Organizations using Jumo to actively solicit donations would be well served to try to direct people OFF of the Jumo website and to their own for giving, not only because people may give more, the organization will also get more of what they give!