50 fascinating facts about the US nonprofit sector
Howard Lake | 18 February 2014 | Blogs
Steve MacLaughlin, Director of the Idea Lab at Blackbaud, has pulled together 50 facts about the US nonprofit sector and presented them in Slideshare format.
My first thought on exploring the slides was that a UK version would be very helpful. If anyone fancies producing one, I’d be happy to share it here.
Although comparing the UK and the US charity sectors is far from straightforward, the slidedeck still offers plenty of useful information to UK organisations, fundraisers and of course researchers.
Mobile fundraising
A good proportion of the statistics cover mobile fundraising, which should remind charities of the significance of tackling this opportunity. At the same time, UK charities might be heartened that 84% of nonprofits still do not deploy donation landing pages that are optimised for mobile devices.
Online fundraising
There are snapshots of online fundraising e.g.
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- percentage increase in online fundraising during 2013 in the US: 13.5%
- percentage of overall fundraising from online giving during 2013 in the US: 6.4%
Fundraising communications
In addition to standard fundraising statistics, there are some that focus on fundraising communications, which might spark ideas amongst UK charities.
- What is the average number of content marketing techniques used by nonprofit professionals? 11.
- percentage of nonprofit professionals that have a documented content strategy: 25%
- percentage of donors that say that personalisation of thank you is more important than speed: 50%
Opportunities
The slide that stood out the most for me was:
Amount in donations not loyal to an organisation and switchable to new charities: $25 billion. I have no idea if there is a comparable figure for the UK, but whatever it is, it should remind us that there are still opportunities out there for skilful fundraisers.
What can you learn from this slidedeck?
About Howard Lake
Howard Lake is consultant editor of UK Fundraising. He founded the site in 1994 and successfully sold it in 2022. As director of Giving X Ltd he is exploring growing giving on a massive scale.
He is the founder of Fundraising Camp and co-founder of GoodJobs.