Second-Quarter Fundraising Remains Flat, Report Finds

Both fundraising revenue and donor growth remain flat from the first half of 2009 to the first half of 2010, according to the 2010 Target Analytics donorCentrics Index of National Fundraising Performance: 2010 Second Quarter Results report. The report, which evaluates direct-response giving only, also shows that fundraising performance varied widely across different sectors.

International relief and animal welfare sectors had the greatest growth in the first half of 2010, largely due to fundraising surrounding the Haiti earthquake. The human services sector and societal benefit organizations also had revenue growth, while the environmental and religious sectors remained relatively flat. Arts/culture organizations and health organizations had the largest declines in revenue, overall donors and donor acquisition.

Relief, animal welfare, human services and religious organizations all had strong new-donor growth in the past year, while societal benefit and environmental nonprofits had moderate growth as well. On the flip side, arts/culture and health organizations saw declines in new donor acquisition.

First-year retention rates declined for every sector with the exception of animal welfare and relief organizations, which "benefitted" from disaster-related fundraising. Multiyear retention fared better, but most sectors still saw declines there as well.

Roger Craver has a terrific breakdown at The Agitator:

• 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.

Read Craver's full post here and download the full report here.