Connection Café: Hot Off The Presses: Convio Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmark Index™ Study

	Hot Off The Presses: Convio Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmark Index™ Study
	Posted by Jill Ward at Mar 14, 2011 03:07 PM CDT Categories: Advocacy, Email Marketing, Fundraising, Nonprofit Trends, NPtech

Downtime may be hard to come by with SXSWi, NTC and AFP International activity this week, but just in case you have a few minutes to burn waiting for a flight, train or a panel to start, I’m arming you with some exhilarating reading 2011 Benchmark Cover material — the Convio Online Marketing Nonprofit Benchmark Index Study.

Well, maybe “exhilarating” isn’t the right word, but if you’re a research nerd like me, or if you’re wondering how well other orgs performed in 2010 (i.e. website traffic and registration, email communications, online fundraising and advocacy) look no further. This year’s report looks at online trends for nearly 600 Convio clients across 16 verticals (like Animal Welfare, Arts & Humanities, etc.), but it's also representative of online trends across the nonprofit sector. Key findings of the study include:

Online fundraising continues to grow. Overall, 79 percent of organizations included in the report raised more in 2010 than 2009, while 21 percent saw declines in their online fundraising. All but three verticals (Association & Membership, Public Broadcasting Stations, and Team Events) had a growth rate greater than 10 percent.
Advocacy continues to play an important role. Total number of advocates on file increased by 20 percent, and 6.4 percent of advocates on file were also donors, up from 5.9 percent in 2009.
An increase in gift count and average gift size primarily drove fundraising gains. Of those that grew fundraising in 2010, 88 percent saw an increase in the number of gifts and the average gift size grew more than $8 in 2010. This indicates more people are moving online to give even if inspired through other channels.
Email files continued to grow strongly. The median total email file grew 22 percent to 48,700 constituents. The increase in people engaging online means organizations need to ensure their communications and fundraising asks match the channel preferences for their constituents if they hope to maximize the value of each relationship.
What about Haiti relief? While events such as the Haiti earthquake certainly had an impact on online fundraising in 2010, the efficiency and timeliness of online and other digital forms of engagement is creating more opportunity for organizations to reach people and engage them in a deeper relationship. Giving around Haiti relief efforts accounted for approximately 20 percent (or $250 million) of the $1.3 billion raised online by Convio clients. The vertical most impacted by the Haiti event was the Disaster & Relief vertical, growing 38 percent from 2009 to 2010. Independent of the Haiti event, however, Disaster & Relief still grew at a healthy 23 percent from 2009 to 2010.

Get the full report www.convio.com/2011benchmark