The Blackbaud Institute Releases Annual Benchmarking Data to Empower Social Good Organizations

Eighth annual Charitable Giving Report reveals continued growth of online and mobile donations

Charleston, S.C. (February 18, 2020) — The Blackbaud Institute, a research division of Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB), the world’s leading cloud software company powering social good, today releases its eighth annual Charitable Giving Report, offering benchmarking data based on the largest analysis of overall and online giving statistics for social good organizations. Through the Charitable Giving Report, the Blackbaud Institute is equipping organizations with resources to inform their strategies by enabling them to compare their organization to peers – across size and subsector – and identify areas of strength and opportunity heading into the new year. While this year’s report offers year-over-year statistics on giving consistent with past reports, it also includes deeper analysis of the largest data set of donations and more context around the numbers than ever before to help social good organizations navigate and thrive in the ever-changing charitable giving landscape.

Additional new features to the Charitable Giving Report, include:

• Insight into how to use trend data to benchmark.
• Highlights of the practices organizations should be using to ensure they can continue to attract, engage and retain donors to achieve greater success in 2020 and beyond.
• More data by subsector to provide organizations with a clearer picture of how they’re benchmarking against similar organizations, such as the average gift size and the average online gift size by subsector.
• A view of the three-year trends in overall and online giving by organization size and subsector to uncover long-term trends.

“We created the Blackbaud Institute to lead groundbreaking research and insights to equip a thriving social good sector for impact. The Charitable Giving Report isn’t just a compilation of interesting statistics, tables and charts—it provides an opportunity to see where giving is—and more importantly where it can go if leaders use this data to inform their decisions,” said Steve MacLaughlin, Blackbaud’s vice president of product management and senior advisor to the Blackbaud Institute. “This year, we’ve taken a broader view of giving trends to provide a more representative perspective of what is happening with charitable giving, and it reveals charitable giving is continuing to evolve with our changing world. In the last year alone, online donations have increased nearly 7% and more than a quarter of those online donations come from a mobile device.”

The 2019 Charitable Giving Report includes giving data from 8,210 nonprofit organizations representing $36.3 billion in fundraising revenue as well as online giving data from 5,204 nonprofit organizations representing $2.7 billion in online fundraising revenue.

Key Giving Trends from the Charitable Giving Report:

• A 3-year view of fundraising from the same organizations reveals a 5.1% growth in overall giving and an increase of nearly 10% for online donations.
• Online giving in 2019 grew 6.8% year-over-year for the 5,204 nonprofit organizations in the analysis, while overall giving in 2019 grew 1.0% for the 8,210 nonprofit organizations included in the report.
• The percentage of fundraising from online giving continues to grow with 8.7% of total fundraising stemming from online giving in 2019. Additionally, small nonprofits continued to show the largest year-over-year growth in percentage of total fundraising stemming from online giving.
• In 2019, an estimated 26% of online donations were made using mobile devices. This has grown steadily since 2014 when it was just 9% of online donations.
• While the median donation amount for gifts below $1,000 in the U.S. has remained steady at $20 for years, the median donation amount for gifts above $1,000 in the U.S. has more than doubled since 2016, now clocking in at $2,500.
• The average donor age in the U.S. remains largely unchanged at 63, which has been consistent since 2016.

Read the full 2019 Charitable Giving Report at BlackbaudInstitute.com/CharitableGiving. In addition to this report, view additional resources from the Blackbaud Institute, including The Explorer, the premier online knowledge base for information and statistics about social good. The Explorer gives users the ability to easily and quickly search and access the social good statistics and best practices that matter to them by pulling the latest data and trends from the sector’s most credible sources. The content is regularly updated and is available free, like all Blackbaud Institute resources, as part of Blackbaud’s give-back philosophy.

About The Blackbaud Institute

The Blackbaud Institute drives research and insight to accelerate the impact of the social good community. It convenes expert partners from across the philanthropic sector to foster diverse perspectives, collective thinking and collaborative solutions to the world’s greatest challenges. Using the most comprehensive data set in the social good community, the Blackbaud Institute and its partners conduct research, uncover strategic insight and share results broadly to drive effective philanthropy at every stage, from fundraising to outcomes. Knowledge is powering the future of social good, and the Blackbaud Institute is an engine of that progress. Learn more, sign up for our newsletter, explore our knowledge base of social good best practices and trends, see the latest quarterly statistics on giving and check out our most recent resources at BlackbaudInstitute.com.

About Blackbaud

Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB) is the world’s leading cloud software company powering social good. Serving the entire social good community—nonprofits, foundations, companies, education institutions, healthcare organizations and individual change agents—Blackbaud connects and empowers organizations to increase their impact through cloud software, services, expertise and data intelligence. The Blackbaud portfolio is tailored to the unique needs of vertical markets, with solutions for fundraising and CRM, marketing, advocacy, peer-to-peer fundraising, corporate social responsibility, school management, ticketing, grantmaking, financial management, payment processing and analytics. Serving the industry for more than three decades, Blackbaud is headquartered in Charleston, South Carolina, and has operations in the United States, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica and the United Kingdom. For more information, visit www.blackbaud.com or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

Media Inquiries

media@blackbaud.com

Forward-looking Statements 

Except for historical information, all of the statements, expectations, and assumptions contained in this news release are forward-looking statements that involve a number of risks and uncertainties, including statements regarding expected benefits of products and product features. Although Blackbaud attempts to be accurate in making these forward-looking statements, it is possible that future circumstances might differ from the assumptions on which such statements are based. In addition, other important factors that could cause results to differ materially include the following: general economic risks; uncertainty regarding increased business and renewals from existing customers; continued success in sales growth; management of integration of acquired companies and other risks associated with acquisitions; risks associated with successful implementation of multiple integrated software products; the ability to attract and retain key personnel; risks associated with management of growth; lengthy sales and implementation cycles, particularly in larger organization; technological changes that make our products and services less competitive; and the other risk factors set forth from time to time in the SEC filings for Blackbaud, copies of which are available free of charge at the SEC’s website at www.sec.gov or upon request from Blackbaud’s investor relations department. All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud, Inc.