Convio's 2010 Online Nonprofit Benchmark Study Reveals Some Bright Spots for Event Fundraisers

Author: Jono Smith on 30 March 2010 | 0 Comments

Tags: online marketing

Convio is getting ready to release it's 4th annual Online Nonprofit Benchmark Study, which includes some bright spots for online fundraisers and marketers. The study looked at nearly 500 nonprofit organizations’ online marketing results and compiled a series of benchmarks for evaluating fundraising, email, advocacy and marketing success online.

The report reveals the following:

• Online giving grew 14% despite a difficult economy. Overall, 69% of organizations raised more in 2009 than 2008, while 31% saw declines in their online fundraising.
• An increase in gifts drove fundraising gains. Of those that grew fundraising in 2009, 92% saw an increase in the number of gifts in 2009 compared with just 43% of organizations seeing an increase in their average gift amount.
• Donors were still giving, but giving smaller amounts. 61% of all organizations saw their average gift drop in 2009.
• Regardless of mission, online fundraising continued to grow. The only exception was Disaster & International Relief organizations, for which 2008 was a year with more significant disasters than 2009.
• Small organizations grew fastest. Organizations with fewer than 10,000 email addresses on file, many of which are participants in the Convio Go! program, grew online revenue by 26%, and gifts by 32%.
• Email files continued to grow strongly. The total email file grew 27% in 2009 to 39,100 constituents.

Specific to event fundraising, the study revealed:

• At just over $1.3 million raised online, the Team Events segment raised the most money due in part to the large number of events and broad recognition of many of the causes these events support.
• The value of an email address within the Team Events vertical also was high, mainly because a large proportion of new email addresses captured were those of friends and family members making a donation to a participant.
• Team Events achieved an open rate that was higher than the sector-wide benchmark.
• At 15%, the registration rate for the Team Events vertical is nearly eight times that of the sector as a whole. This is due to the large number of first-time visitors to the organization’s website who either entered their email address in order to register for an event or made a donation in support of an participant in that event. As a result, Team Event organizations had a very high number of registrants converting to the email file, but for many of these registered constituents, their engagement with the organization was limited to the event itself.
• Compared with the previous year, the total number of email addresses grew by 27% on average. In general, organizations that are growing are proactive in collecting email addresses at events and at their facilities, if appropriate.

Coupled with Event 360 and Convio's recent Event Fundraising Analytics Guide, this benchmark study is a good way to understand why metrics are important, and which metrics and drivers can have the biggest effect on your online marketing programs.