January 15, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
Two Internet giving sites saw increases in donations in 2008, while another took in less money than it did in 2007.
Online donations made through Network for Good continued to grow in 2008, but at a slower rate than in previous years.
The Bethesda, Md., charity processed $71.2-million in online gifts in 2008, up from $53.4-million the year before, a 33-percent increase.
In contrast, the amount of money processed in 2007 was a 51-percent increase over 2006, and the 2006 total was 37 percent higher than the previous year (the figure excludes donations made in 2005 to aid victims of the South Asia tsunamis and Hurricane Katrina).
Approximately three-quarters of the money Network for Good collected in 2008 came in through individual charity sites that use the service to process their online gifts. The other quarter came in through Network for Good’s giving site or other portals.
The rate of growth in 2008 was 47 percent through the end of September, but with the sharpening of the economic downturn in the fall, it dropped to 26 percent for the last three months of the year, says Bill Strathmann, chief executive of Network for Good.
The charity published a free guide to online fund raising in a down economy, and soon plans to publish a manual to help nonprofit groups create e-mail campaigns.
In 2008, donors gave $8.8-million through GlobalGiving, a site that matches visitors with grass-roots economic-development projects in the developing world, up from $2.9-million in 2007, a more than 200-percent increase.
Contributions through JustGive.org, however, were down. The site collected $21-million in 2008 compared with $25-million in 2007, a 16-percent decrease.
The San Francisco charity attributed the decrease to the slowing economy and to the fact that its corporate supporters were not able to offer the year-end charity promotions in 2008 that they did in 2007.
