Shake Off the Blues and Bring on the Boomers

Per Target Analytics in the chart at right, revenue trends look bad (down 1.3 percent) and donor trends look worse (down 8.8 percent) over the last five years. In fact, according to Target Analytics, the number of new donors is down a whopping 15.1 percent over the same time period (see Figure 1).

So how bad is it really? As it turns out, it's historically bad — and in a big way! Per Giving USA in the chart at right, total individual giving has dropped 13 percent in inflation-adjusted dollars from five years ago and has not yet even returned to 2001 levels, making this the worst giving decade on record by far (see Figure 2).