Fundraising Remains Flat in Q2, Says Target Analytics
- Thu, October 07 2010
- Filed under: Fundraising essentials
It’s hardly breaking news, but this is a tough time to raise money.
According to Target Analytics, the 81 organizations it tracks had essentially flat revenue and donor growth from the first half of 2009 to the first half of 2010.
Fundraising, like our economy, is stalled. Giving is not growing - except online. Religious groups are faring okay but the the arts/cultural and health sectors are seriously hurting.
My friends at the Agitator did a nice job analyzing the report here. Read their post for the best summary and advice on what this means to us. They point out:
• Donor declines continued in the first half of 2010, but were smaller in magnitude than were in 2009, partly because of the Haiti-related giving.
• For 4 years the Index reported a steady decline in the number of donors, but in the first half of 2010, new donor numbers rose for the majority of organizations in the Index. Six of the eight sectors in the Index had new donor increases.
• Don’t celebrate too fast unless your group is disaster-related. Disaster-related fundraising accounted for most of the increases in sectors with the highest growth rates. But the authors do note that “for many other organizations across the Index new donor increases in the first half of 2010 are likely at least partially a rebound from severe declines in previous years.”
• Both First Year and multi-year retention rates declined in the first half of 2010, although per-donor revenue rates finally rose again in the first half of 2010 after a decline that lasted throughout 2009.As Agitator points out, “new donor rates have been dropping over the past six years – at an annual rate of 2.2%. And in the now-ending recession the rate of decline accelerated to an annual rate of 5.5%.”