Online service reports drop in Irish giving
Howard Lake | 22 February 2009 | News
Online fundraising service mycharity.ie has reported a 14 per cent decrease in the average value of donations for last year compared to 2007. November alone was down 22 per cent on the same month a year previously, indicating that the situation worsened during the year.
Chief executive of my charity.ie Niall Devine said the organisation started to notice a trend of fewer donations from last August/September. As well as fewer donations, the average value of the donations dropped.
“The average donation value in November 2007 was €88 through the site, which goes direct to the charity, whereas the average for last November was €52,” he said.
Around 200 charities are registered on the mycharity.ie website, which has raised more than €2.8 million for charities. Despite the fall in donations, it hopes to raise €2.5 million in 2009. Devine hopes the number of charities on the website will increase to around 280 within the year.
“Growth is continuing on mycharity.ie, regardless of the recession, but we are now finding that charities have to work harder and be more clever to get the donor and the fundraisers on board,” said Devine. Things have also changed where large donations are concerned.
“The days of corporations having large amounts of cash to donate to charities, no matter how worthy the cause, are all but gone for now. Many charities will be forced to reduce their services in line with their new and reduced incomes – and all at a time when the public’s reliance on help from charities is at unprecedented levels.”
Devine believes that events based fundraising will become even more important in the downturn. “People are much more likely to engage and get involved in charities if they take on a challenge like a marathon, a run or a mountain climb,” he said.
“It’s a much more successful way of fund-raising. If, for example, a random charity asked you for a donation of €100, you’re most likely to say no, but if friends ask you to sponsor them for a walk, swim or hike, chances are you’re going to give that donation. In the end it’s the charity that benefits.”
www.mycharity.ie
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.