Online giving to nonprofits faltered at the end of 2022, but that decline from the highs achieved during the Covid crisis may signal a return to pre-pandemic giving patterns, according to a new report. Over all, digital revenue dropped 4 percent from 2021 to 2022, the study, released last week by the digital marketing and fundraising firm M+R, found. The report examined revenue that 215 nonprofits had earned from email marketing, social media, digital ads, texting, and website traffic. It also looked at how much these organizations spent on digital ads and how frequently they contacted their supporters.
The decline masks a conflicted year, when some nonprofits saw healthy growth and others raised far less than the previous year. Online revenue for hunger and poverty groups fell 14 percent from 2021 to 2022 and dropped 13 percent for cultural organizations. Also during that time, disaster and international aid groups upped their online revenue by 8 percent and wildlife and animal welfare groups increased theirs 6 percent.
What’s more, the year’s most charitable days — GivingTuesday and December 31 — were lackluster in 2022, compared with the previous year. Donor behavior at year-end drove home the message that, as Will Valverde, senior creative director at M+R, put it, “everything is complicated and hard.”
In 2022, the nonprofits in the study saw revenue collected on GivingTuesday fall 13 percent from 2021 levels. Many nonprofits have started appealing for GivingTuesday gifts well in advance of the Tuesday after Thanksgiving, which Valverde says could have spread out the dollars given to mark the day.
Revenue also fell by 13 percent on December 31, which could be due, in part, to the day falling on a Saturday, Valverde says. Online gifts are still overwhelmingly made on desktop computers — 75 percent of the revenue measured in this report came from a desktop device — and the fact that people were more likely to be away from their computers on a holiday weekend could have depressed giving somewhat.
And then there was the economy. “When there are fears or the reality of entering a recession in December,” Valverde says, “that can have a big drag on end-of-year fundraising.”
A Return to Normal
Global events continued to make an impression on digital fundraising revenue last year. The report attributes the spike in giving to disaster and international aid groups and wildlife and animal-welfare organizations to cataclysms like the outbreak of war in Ukraine and the months of devastating flooding in Pakistan. The news media’s drift away from wall-to-wall pandemic coverage, Valverde says, could explain the drop in giving to hunger and poverty organizations. The same goes for cultural institutions, which were able to resume regular operations in 2022 and may have lost some donors to ticket sales.
“We are maybe starting to return to what might pass for normal after some very volatile years,” Valverde says. He likens it to the way giving leveled off in 2019 after the 2016 presidential election touched off the “Trump bump,”’ a tidal wave of giving to civil-rights, environment, and immigration groups.
In 2020, the growth in giving to hunger and poverty organizations was so large — 390 percent over 2019 levels — that Valverde isn’t worried that those groups raised 35 percent less from 2020 to 2021 and 14 percent less last year.
“The declines we’ve seen in the last two years are nowhere near the scale of the increase in support they got in 2020,” Valverde says. “They’re still doing very well over that long-term view.”
Still, the demand for — and cost of — services remain high for hunger and poverty organizations, so they’ll need to keep their donors close.
Retention Challenges
Across all causes, 29 percent of donors who gave in 2021 gave again in 2022, according to the report. Among donors whose 2021 gift was their first to a particular nonprofit, just 16 percent made a second gift the next year. That says more about how difficult it is to hang on to donors than it does about how smart fundraisers’ strategies are, Valverde says.
Even so, he encourages fundraisers to try new approaches to keep donors engaged. Valverde suggests developing a special communication cadence for first-time donors to keep them in the fold. “That’s an important time in the relationship when they’re really paying close attention,” he says, and a powerful time to show donors why their second gift matters.
Converting first-time donors to monthly donors is another winning strategy. In 2022, the average monthly gift was $25 — $1 more than it was in 2021. And while that’s smaller than the average one-time gift — $121 in 2022 and $115 in 2021 — the overall value of those sustainer donors is higher than that of one-time donors.
Those who gave as part of sustainer donor programs made an average of 9.8 gifts per year, while those who made one-off gifts gave an average of 1.2 donations per year. Individual monthly donors contributed an average of $287 in 2022, whereas individuals who made unique gifts at their own pace contributed an average of $192, according to the report.
When it comes to retaining donors, Valverde says, “the most valuable thing you can do is get a donor to make a monthly gift instead of a one-time gift.”
Among the other findings:
- 28 percent of all online revenue came from monthly gifts in 2022, an 11 percent increase that was due, in part, to every cause increasing its sustainer dollars, and most reporting growth over 10 percent.
- The share of email recipients who gave through an emailed donation link declined 18 percent from 2021.
- While email lists had been growing for the past two years — 8 percent in 2021 and 9 percent in 2020 — they fell 2 percent in 2022.
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