Rocco Basile

Link: http://www.roccobasile.net

This just in from Washington D.C. at the Nonprofit Technology Conference taking place this week … The Journal of Philanthropy blog noted a new study called the “2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study” which analyzed online fundraising at 40 national charities, determining that last year in 2010 there was an increase in charitable giving on the Internet due to the Haiti earthquake.

There was a 14 percent increase in the total amount of money the study groups collected online was 14 percent higher in 2010 than in the previous year. As could be expected there were more gifts given online, with an increase in numbers at seven percent as opposed to the size of the donations, at just two percent.

This study also found a connection between higher open and response rates from emails with higher unsubscribed rates was simply because of more people on the lists.

Last they determined that although the social media marketing aspects of fundraising online has potential, the channel it is too early stage to be a big contributor – with an average of only 110 Facebook fans and 19 Twitter followers for every 1,000 mailing list people. However the rate of growth of the social-media groups at the nonprofits was far better than that of their e-mail lists, at a median growth rate of 14 percent per month for Facebook, compared to email list growth at only 20 percent annually.

Source: The “2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study” was published by M+R Strategic Services and the Nonprofit Technology Network.

-- Rocco Basile