March 26, 2009 | Read Time: 1 minute
Online giving was up 14 percent last year, according to an analysis of data from nearly 600 clients by Convio, an Austin, Tex., company that provides Web-based software to charities. But the rate of growth was down from 2007, the company found, when online fund raising had jumped 26 percent from the previous year.
It slowed even more toward the end of last year when online gifts grew by 3 percent in the fourth quarter, compared with 18 percent for the rest of the year.
The 204 charities for which the company had the most information raised a median total of more than $235,000 in online gifts in 2008, up from about $207,000 the year before.
Among the charities that were the heaviest online solicitors — groups with more than 250,000 e-mail addresses — the median total for online gifts in 2008 was $1.54-million, meaning half raised more and half raised less.
Larger organizations may be weathering the economic storm better than smaller groups.
The median total amount of money raised online by the biggest e-mail senders in the fourth quarter of last year was 11 times greater than the median total for all other groups — up from a sevenfold lead during the first three quarters of the year.
To read an executive summary of the report: Go to http://www.convio.com/benchmark2009.
