Online donations to nonprofits increased dramatically in 2020, particularly in certain sectors, according to the new M+R Benchmarking report, which also includes new data on email marketing open rates and text messaging campaigns.
Some sectors saw their online donations more than double, while other sectors were more modest.
More from the report:
- Total online revenue grew by 32% in 2020.
- Hunger and Poverty groups reported a stunning 173% increase in online revenue over the previous year.
- Revenue from monthly gifts increased by 25%, while revenue from one-time gifts increased by 37%. Monthly giving accounted for 19% of all online revenue in 2020.
- Nonprofits that engaged in COVID-19 response saw noticeably higher growth in one-time giving revenue than those that did not.
- The average nonprofit donor made 2.03 gifts and contributed $167 in 2020. Both of these per-donor metrics are slightly lower than 2019 — the increase in overall was largely driven by more people giving rather than people giving more.
- Overall, 41% of 2019 online donors were retained to make another online gift in 2020. The retention rate for new online donors was 25%; for donors with a previous giving history the retention rate was 63%.
