Donor Giving Trends for Today and Tomorrow, Part 4

Online giving
Lynch said he recently came across his notes from the 2005 Association of Fundraising Professionals conference, and he shared some of the stats from six years ago:

• At that time the total amount of money raised online was $2.6 billion — 1.1 percent of total giving to U.S. nonprofits.
• E-mail was the second most powerful online fundraising tool behind the website.
• Two-thirds of American adults were using e-mail and the Internet, though only a third of the 65-plus demographic.
• The big buzz at the time was the excitement over the Internet and text on phones.
• The perception was that kids texted, not adults, and they were using this social network called MySpace. Facebook just came out at Harvard.
• There was a ton of tweeting going on … from birds, Lynch joked. Twitter did not exist yet.

“What a difference six years make,” he said.