Online Charitable Giving Growing at Faster Pace

More and more Americans are choosing to make their donations to charities online, as opposed to in-person or mail-based giving, according to the latest Charitable Giving Report from Blackbaud, a developer of technologies for nonprofit organizations.

“Blackbaud’s analysis of over $16.2 billion in actual giving data found that charitable giving increased for the third consecutive year in the United States,” said Steve MacLaughlin, presenter of the Charitable Giving Report and director of Analytics at Blackbaud.” MacLaughlin added that, “we continue to see that donors are shifting to giving online at a particularly strong growth rate.”

The report, which has the latest data on overall and online charitable giving in 2014, also includes insight from industry experts and case studies. The Report includes overall giving data from nearly 5,000 nonprofit organizations representing $16.2 billion in total fundraising and online giving data from nearly 4,000 nonprofits representing $2 billion in online fundraising from 2014.

Key observations from the Charitable Giving Report include:

Overall giving grew approximately 2.1% in 2014
Online giving grew 8.9% in 2014 compared to 2013
Online donations were 6.7% of all fundraising in 2014
Small organizations had the greatest increase in overall fundraising in 2014
Higher Education institutions had the greatest increase in online giving during 2014

According to the Report, 2014 may represent the new normal in giving. Unlike 2013 and 2012, there was a noted absence of the high profile episodic events that previously drove an increase in giving. An accelerating economy fueled the stock market to new highs in 2014 and fears of changes to the charitable deduction never materialized.