2011 donorCentrics Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report · 2017-11-30 · About Target Analytics...
Transcript of 2011 donorCentrics Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report · 2017-11-30 · About Target Analytics...
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ContentsAn Introduction to Multichannel Giving and Donor Value 2
Summary of Findings 3
The Data Used for Analysis 4
A Note About Multichannel Communications 4
Differences in Online and Offline Giving 5
The Growth of Online Giving 5
Demographic Differences 6
Differences in Giving Behavior 6
Differences in Long-Term Value 7
Who Gives Through More Than One Channel 10
Online and Offline Multichannel Giving 10
Other Acquisition Channels 10
Online-to-Offline Migration 11
Where Multiple Giving Channels Increase Retention and Value 13
Online-Acquired Donors 13
The Impact of Cross-Channel Giving on Giving Amounts 14
Creating a True Single Channel Environment 15
A Note About Mail-Acquired Cross-Channel Donors 15
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value 16
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation 16
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level 16
Segmentation by Recency 17
About Target Analytics 18
About Blackbaud 18
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report Including an Analysis on Online Giving in the Context of an Integrated Direct Marketing Program
Authored by Helen Flannery and Rob Harris
Appendices
Appendix A 19Participating Organizations
Appendix B 20Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
Appendix C 21Four Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
Appendix D 22Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
An Introduction to Multichannel Giving and Donor Value
The increase in online giving over the past several years has generated renewed interest among nonprofit direct marketers about the
value of multiple-channel donors Fundraisers want to know if donors who give to an organization through more than one source mdash
through both direct mail and the Internet for example mdash give larger gifts or can be retained at higher rates than those who give through
only one source
For the past five years Target Analytics has organized and led donorCentrics benchmarking groups for large nonprofit organizations
with a particular focus on online giving and how online donors are integrated into a traditional direct marketing program The data
gathered from this service allows us to draw some general conclusions about multichannel giving
It is difficult to make a simple statement about whether multichannel giving always correlates with higher donor retention or higher
long-term value The subsequent giving behavior of donors can only be determined by looking at a large number of factors including
the channels they use as well as their giving loyalty recency frequency and monetary giving amounts and demographic profile
Comparing the behavior and value of multichannel donors to that of single channel donors is particularly difficult to do accurately
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift donors as well and the effects of higher gift frequencies must be
accounted for in any analysis
While multichannel giving has become a popular objective of nonprofits as a way to build constituent support the large majority of
donors on file give through only one channel and use only direct mail as their vehicle for donations The only donors who do significant
multichannel giving are new donors acquired online who switch in large numbers to direct mail giving in subsequent years
This is the group of donors for which multichannel giving results in improved performance The Internet is a successful acquisition
channel but it has not proven to be an effective one for retention It is the ability of online-acquired donors to become multichannel
donors mdash that is to start giving through direct mail mdash that significantly boosts the retention and long-term value of this group of
donors far beyond what they would be if online giving were the only channel available
The presence of past multichannel giving for steady donors already on file however is far less predictive of higher value and retention
than the traditional recency frequency and monetary giving amount factors that direct marketers have used for decades
These findings are explained in greater detail on the following pages
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Summary of Findings
bull For the large direct marketing organizations participating in our online benchmarking groups the majority of gifts are still
received through direct mail
bull Although direct mail remains the dominant channel for new donor acquisitions as well it has become increasingly common for
new donors to give their first gift online
bull Online-acquired donors are significantly younger and tend to have higher household incomes than mail-acquired donors
bull Online-acquired donors tend to give much larger gifts than mail-acquired donors
bull However online-acquired donors tend to have slightly lower retention rates than mail-acquired donors
bull In aggregate online-acquired donors have much higher cumulative value over the long term than traditional mail-acquired
donors
bull However long-term value varies depending on the donorrsquos origin gift level The substantially larger gift amounts given by online-
acquired donors can mask issues with retention
bull Multichannel giving is not ubiquitous The majority of multichannel donors are those who are acquired online and then subsequently
start giving direct mail gifts This is the only situation in which there are significant numbers of cross-channel donors across all
organizations
bull Every year large proportions of online-acquired donors switch from online giving to offline sources mdash primarily to direct mail The
reverse is not true however only a tiny percentage of mail-acquired donors give online in later years
bull When online-acquired donors move offline they tend to do so soon in their first renewal year They then continue to give
offline in similar proportions in subsequent years Eventually just under half of all online-acquired donors convert entirely to
offline primarily direct mail giving
bull Robust direct mail programs drive up the retention and long-term value of new donors acquired online Without the ability to
become multichannel givers by renewing their support via direct mail this group of donors would be worth far less Other than
monthly recurring giving programs established direct mail programs are the best method for gaining repeat gifts from online-
acquired donors
bull When online-acquired donors move offline in subsequent years of giving it does have some negative effect on their value in the
renewal year The higher the donorrsquos original gift level the less they upgrade and in fact the more likely it is that the donor will
actually downgrade if they move offline However these lower gift amounts are far outweighed by the higher retention of online-
acquired donors provided by the direct mail channel
bull For the consistent givers who comprise the majority of donors already on file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally
not a significant factor in predicting future retention or long-term value Traditional RFM factors are far more predictive
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
The Data Used for Analysis
In 2010 a total of 28 major national nonprofit organizations participated in Target Analyticsrsquo donorCentrics online benchmarking
meetings To provide a factual basis for discussion we provided participants with analytic reports comparing the behavior of their
online and offline donors
The data in the donorCentrics reports and all data in this study is derived solely from transactional giving data downloaded from each
organizationrsquos fundraising database There is no anecdotal or self-reported data As part of the process all participants reviewed and
approved these metrics for accuracy
The data presented in the analysis that follows is from the most recent data available for all 28 organizations participating in 2010 For
one group of 14 organizations the donorCentrics analysis covers giving for the 12 months ending December 2010 and the previous
four years for the other group of 14 organizations the donorCentrics analysis covers giving for the 12 months ending June 2010
and the previous four years The most current 12 months of data for all 28 organizations together includes transactions for over 15
million donors and more than $1 billion in revenue For a list of participants in both groups please see Appendix A at the end of this
document
The organizations that participate in our online benchmarking groups are prominent national nonprofits covering a range of sectors
including animal welfare the environment health human services international relief and societal benefit These organizations
receive the majority of their direct marketing revenue from direct mail Revenue from sustainer giving and from other channels such
as telemarketing and the Internet makes up a relatively small portion of the overall total Revenue from large-scale events such as
walkathons is not included in this analysis only a handful of participating organizations conduct these events
For all charts that show revenue per donor or retention rates we have excluded donor populations of fewer than 100 donors For all
charts that show revenue per donor amounts we have excluded all donors acquired at origin gift amounts of $250 or above For the
first three charts that show the percent of gifts or donors brought in online we have excluded any international relief organizations
that had atypical amounts of giving in January 2010 mdash attributable to recovery efforts following the severe earthquake in Haiti in that
month While this growth was significant it was not reflective of what organizations in any other industry sector experienced or of
what the relief sector itself experiences in typical years
Throughout this analysis all results are reported as medians mdash the middle value of the group of 28 participating organizations
Medians represent the giving behavior and program performance of a typical organization more accurately than either averages or
aggregates which can be skewed by organizations with larger donor populations or higher revenue
A Note About Multichannel Communications
The Internet offers many ways to communicate with donors and prospects mdash email solicitations website content advertisements
and various forms of social media While this study analyzes the effects of multichannel giving on donor value it draws no conclusions
about the effects of ongoing multichannel communications
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Differences in Online and Offline Giving
The Growth of Online Giving
For the organizations participating in our donorCentrics
Internet benchmarking groups the vast majority of gifts are
made through direct mail The typical organization receives
more than three-quarters of its total gifts through direct mail
and only 10 of its gifts online
Direct mail acquisition is also responsible for three quarters
of all new donors
Over the past several years however the overall number of
gifts given online and the number of donors acquired online
have both grown steadily The Internet is becoming an
increasingly significant source of giving and of new donor
acquisition in particular
Participants in the online benchmarking groups are a self-
selected group of organizations which are particularly
focused on the topic of online giving and therefore have
larger online programs than other similar nonprofits
Percentages of gifts and donors coming in online will be
smaller for the industry as a whole
Demographic Differences
Online-acquired donors have different demographic profiles
and different giving patterns than traditional primarily direct
mail-acquired donors
Most notably online-acquired donors are significantly
younger than mail-acquired donors
Given the high average age of donors to many benchmarking
organizations the online channelrsquos ability to attract younger
donors is very appealing
Distribution of New Donorsby Channel2010 Medians
16
76
8
JoinedOnline
Joinedby Mail
Joinedby OtherOffline
Distribution of All Giftsby Channel2010 Medians
10
79
11
Online Mail OtherOffline
Trends in the Percent of Donors Giving Online2006-2010 Medians
9
5
12
5
8
14
6
9
16
7
10
7
New Donors Multi-Year Donors All Donors
Distribution of New Donors by Agewithin Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Online donors also tend to have higher household
incomes than mail-acquired donors
Differences in Giving Behavior
Online-acquired donors tend to give much larger
gifts and to give more in total revenue each year
than mail-acquired donors
This is true even when controlling for the age and
income of the donor
Distribution of New Donors by Household Incomewithin Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Age and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Household Income and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Origin Channel
2010 Medians
$62
$32
Joined Online Joined by Mail
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
However online-acquired donors tend to have
slightly lower retention rates than mail-acquired
donors
This is also generally true even when controlling for
the age and income of the donor It is even more
pronounced when controlling for origin gift amount
as shown in the next section
Differences in Long-Term Value
In aggregate online-acquired donors have much
higher cumulative value over the long term than
traditional mail-acquired donors
Original gift amount is one of the most important
determinants of long-term value and online-
acquired donors join at much higher levels than
donors acquired by mail
However there is some evidence of sub-par
retention and accompanying lower long-term value
for donors acquired online at higher giving levels
New Donor Retention Rateby Origin Channel
2010 Medians
2830
Joined Online in2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
New Donor Retention Rateby Age and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
New Donor Retention Rateby Household Income and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Lifetime Revenue per Original Donor(All Origin Gift Levels)
2010 Medians
$197
$158
$72 $66$51
$118
Joined in 2007 Joined in 2008 Joined in 2009
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Online donors are acquired at disproportionately higher levels than donors acquired through direct mail Most direct mail donors join
at $10 $15 and $25 while most online donors join at $25 $50 and $100
At the lower origin gift levels (below $25) where mail donors are more common online-acquired donors outperform mail-acquired donors
in long-term value At these levels the larger gifts given by online donors in subsequent years result in higher cumulative revenue per donor
over the long term
At the $25 origin gift level where online and offline donors join in somewhat similar proportions they have similar cumulative revenue
per donor after several years
At the higher origin gift levels ($50 and above) where online donors are more common mail-acquired donors begin to outperform
online-acquired donors over the long term At these levels of giving the higher retention rates of mail-acquired donors tend to result
in higher cumulative revenue per donor in subsequent years
There may be a number of explanations for this pattern
One is that acquisition gift levels below $25 are not natural giving points for online donors and they readily upgrade out of them
Relatively small numbers of online donors join at the lowest gift levels and not surprisingly those who do tend to upgrade
significantly in their second year of giving ndash whether they stay online or not in that second year
2010 Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Levelfor Donors Acquired in 2007
Medians for Donors Acquired at $1-499
Joined OnlineJoined by Mail
Percent ofOriginal Donors
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
Percent of Original DonorsGiving in 2010
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
2010 Lifetime Revenueper Original Donor
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
These lower acquisition gift levels are typical giving ranges for direct mail donors however and as expected those donors do only
nominal upgrading in subsequent years
At the higher end of the scale on the other hand direct mail donors are relatively rare While a $50 gift is a typical size for an
online gift it is a large direct mail acquisition gift Fewer than 12 of all mail-acquired donors join at $50 or above each year
and those who do are likely to be significantly more invested in the organization than those who join at lower levels It is not
surprising that donors acquired by mail at these higher levels have higher retention rates than their online-acquired equivalents
and that this results in higher cumulative value over the long term
In general then most online-acquired donors are acquired at origin gift levels where they under-perform their mail-acquired equivalents
This may be due more to the specific characteristics of the donors and their relative level of commitment to the organization than the
fundraising practices used to cultivate them
For a version of the chart on the previous page showing donors acquired in 2008 please see Appendix B
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Who Gives Through More Than One Channel
Online and Offline Multichannel Giving
While multichannel giving is a popular topic in the direct marketing
fundraising community it is not ubiquitous in practice Significant
multichannel communication may occur notably via email website
content or social media but not multichannel giving
Multichannel donors are almost exclusively online-acquired donors
who later start giving direct mail gifts This is the only situation in
which there are consistently significant numbers of cross-channel
donors across all organizations
In our analysis of giving channel migration we focus on donors who
gave only one gift in their acquisition year These one-gift donors
make up the vast majority (82) of all donors so they can serve as a
reasonable proxy for the entire donor population and provide a control
for giving frequency without making the study unduly complex
What we found is that every year high percentages of online-acquired donors switch from online to offline giving primarily to direct
mail The reverse is not true however only a tiny percentage of mail-acquired donors give online in later years
In other words the number of donors who migrate from online to offline giving can be significant to an organization while the number
who migrate from offline to online giving may not be noticeable at all
Other Acquisition Channels
Donors do of course join through channels other than direct mail and the
Internet Donors may be acquired through a number of disparate channels
such as DRTV events telemarketing and face-to-face canvassing
However these other offline acquisition techniques together make up
only about 8 of all acquisitions each year And of the 28 organizations
participating in our benchmarking analysis only a few employed one or
more of these channels
Organizations that do significant face-to-face canvassing DRTV or
event acquisition do tend to see large numbers of those donors converting
to regular monthly sustainer or direct mail giving in later years But because
so few organizations employ each technique for our 28 participants there is
no movement between these different offline sources on the scale of the
movement of online-acquired donors to direct mail
Distribution of 2010 Renewal Gifts by ChannelMedians for Donors Acquired as
One-Gift Donors in 2009
60
32
9 7
3
91
Joined Onlinein 2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Evidence from our benchmarking groups suggests that organizations that use a wide range of techniques mdash beyond direct mail and the
Internet mdash to acquire new donors do tend to have robust fundraising programs While implementation of these multichannel acquisition
programs often requires higher levels of investment having a variety of acquisition methods available often results in greater success
Online-to-Offline Migration
When online-acquired donors move offline they tend to do so quickly in their first renewal year They then continue to give offline in
similar proportions in subsequent years After three or four years about half of all online-acquired donors are giving offline gifts and
over 40 are giving exclusively offline primarily through direct mail
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In addition as the chart on the previous page shows new donors who were retained in their second year (here in 2008) are far more
likely to still be giving four years later (in 2010) than donors who lapsed in their second year
In fact of the 2007 online-acquired donors who were still giving in 2010 more than half of them had given for all four of the years
they had been on file Most donors give consistently over consecutive years or they lapse out and do not return Donors who skip
years mdash who have a pattern of lapsing and reactivating mdash are relatively rare
For a version of this chart showing the four-year migration of mail-acquired donors see Appendix C
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Where Multiple Giving Channels Increase Retention and Value
Online-Acquired Donors
Multichannel giving does correspond with higher retention and increased donor value for one key population new donors acquired
online This is the only group in which significant numbers of donors readily switch giving channels
If the Internet was the only giving channel available to these new donors their retention rates and subsequent long-term value would
be a fraction of what they actually are It is the ability to use another channel mdash specifically direct mail mdash that drives up the retention
and long-term value of a population of newly acquired donors
Direct mail is a very effective method of getting repeat gifts from donors Over time the high giving amounts of online donors coupled
with the high donor retention rates provided by direct mail make for a powerful combination
The charts on the following page illustrate the difference that the availability of multiple giving channels makes over time for new
online-acquired and mail-acquired donors They compare the actual performance of all donors acquired in 2007 to the performance
of the same set of donors including only gifts given to their channel of origin
The lines that include all giving
show the donorsrsquo behavior in the
real (multichannel) world The lines
that include only giving to the origin
channel simulate what the donorsrsquo
giving would be if they were only
able to give in a single channel
world
This analysis shows that having
multiple channels makes only a
small difference for mail-acquired
donors Donors who join through
direct mail do not gain a significant
advantage from the ability to
give through other channels in
later years They typically prefer
to continue giving through the
same channel by which they were
acquired
In contrast the ability to give
via different channels makes a
significant difference for online-
acquired donors When offline gifts
are excluded from online-acquired
donorsrsquo giving their retention and
resulting cumulative long-term
value both drop considerably
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In the real multichannel world each donor that was acquired online in 2007 was worth $197 by 2010 If all of their offline giving is
excluded their value drops to $128
For versions of these charts showing year-by-year trends for donors acquired in 2008 see Appendix D
The Impact of Cross-Channel Giving on Giving Amounts
There is some concern that moving online donors to offline primarily direct mail channels will result in downgrades of gift amounts
When online-acquired donors move
offline it does indeed have a negative
effect on revenue donors who switch
to offline channels upgrade less than
donors who stay online For our bench-
marking participants donors acquired
online in 2009 upgraded by $10 when
they stayed online but only $2 when
they moved offline in 2010
In addition the higher the donorrsquos
original gift amount the less they
upgrade and in fact the more likely
it is that they will actually downgrade
if they move offline
Donors acquired online at $10-$14 for example upgraded by roughly similar amounts in their renewal year whether they stayed
online or moved offline Donors acquired online at $100-$249 on the other hand downgraded when they moved offline
Again to control for the effects of gift frequency we have restricted this analysis to the 82 of annual donors who are single gift
givers
Over the long term this downgrading is still outweighed by the increased retention rates that result when online-acquired donors
become multichannel donors mdash that is when they give by direct mail
Donors acquired at the
$100-$249 level in 2007
are a case in point In
the real multichannel
world each donor that
was acquired online in
2007 was worth $310
by 2010 If all of their
offline giving is excluded
their value drops to $231
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
22 of the original donors acquired in 2007 are still giving in 2010 but this number drops to only 12 when all offline giving is
excluded This also means that the disparity in long-term value between these two populations will only increase in future years
Creating a True Single Channel Environment
The single channel simulations above cause any online donors who renewed offline to appear as though they were lapsed In reality
of course some of these donors would have given again through the online channel
Although the fall-off in donors and revenue would probably not be as dramatic as presented here it would still be substantial
While the Internet has proven a source for new donor acquisition it is not a reliable channel for renewing donor support In past
years we have worked with organizations who could not integrate online giving with the rest of the direct marketing program due to
technology constraints and they did experience steep drop-offs in online-acquired donor populations similar to what is shown in
these simulations
With testing we could determine exactly how many online-acquired donors would have given again if no offline means of renewal
existed But because of the dominance and success of direct mail programs organizations are justifiably reluctant to hold any online-
acquired donors out of the direct mail stream
A Note About Mail-Acquired Cross-Channel Donors
Donors who join through direct mail and then start giving online typically give much larger gifts and have higher cumulative long-term
value than donors who only ever give by mail
However the number of mail-acquired donors who migrate to online giving is so small that it has very little impact on overall revenue
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation
Most donors on file are steady donors who have given recently Excluding new donors 72 of all 2010 givers had also given in 2009
For these consistent donors already on an organizationrsquos file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant
factor in predicting future retention or value Traditional recency frequency and monetary amount (RFM) factors that encapsulate the
donorrsquos engagement and prior giving behavior are much more predictive of future performance
For example if a donor has given one gift of $50 in each of the last four years that donor will give similar amounts and will retain at
the same rate in the current year regardless of whether that donor has given only online only offline or a combination of online and
offline gifts in the past
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level
To determine whether multichannel giving alone accounts for higher value or better retention of donors already on file we must first
control for RFM variables
Isolating the effects of gift frequency is particularly important
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift
donors as well and multiple-gift donors invariably perform
better than one-gift donors If the performance of mainly two-
gift multichannel donors is compared against that of mainly
one-gift single channel donors the multichannel donors
will always perform better mdash not necessarily because they
are multichannel donors but because they are multiple-gift
donors
The charts in this section show donors acquired online in
2007 divided into two different populations One group
donors who gave online in 2009 serves as our proxy for
single channel donors because they are still giving by
their channel of origin The other group donors who gave
offline in 2009 serves as our proxy for multichannel donors
because they have switched channels
These charts compare single channel and multichannel
giving in the RFM segments where online-acquired donors
are the most plentiful one-gift donors who gave last year at
the three most common giving levels for online donors
This analysis shows that when controlling for RFM factors
those donors who remained giving only within the online
channel in 2009 (single channel donors) and those donors who had migrated to offline giving in 2009 (multichannel donors) gave similar
amounts in 2010
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
An Introduction to Multichannel Giving and Donor Value
The increase in online giving over the past several years has generated renewed interest among nonprofit direct marketers about the
value of multiple-channel donors Fundraisers want to know if donors who give to an organization through more than one source mdash
through both direct mail and the Internet for example mdash give larger gifts or can be retained at higher rates than those who give through
only one source
For the past five years Target Analytics has organized and led donorCentrics benchmarking groups for large nonprofit organizations
with a particular focus on online giving and how online donors are integrated into a traditional direct marketing program The data
gathered from this service allows us to draw some general conclusions about multichannel giving
It is difficult to make a simple statement about whether multichannel giving always correlates with higher donor retention or higher
long-term value The subsequent giving behavior of donors can only be determined by looking at a large number of factors including
the channels they use as well as their giving loyalty recency frequency and monetary giving amounts and demographic profile
Comparing the behavior and value of multichannel donors to that of single channel donors is particularly difficult to do accurately
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift donors as well and the effects of higher gift frequencies must be
accounted for in any analysis
While multichannel giving has become a popular objective of nonprofits as a way to build constituent support the large majority of
donors on file give through only one channel and use only direct mail as their vehicle for donations The only donors who do significant
multichannel giving are new donors acquired online who switch in large numbers to direct mail giving in subsequent years
This is the group of donors for which multichannel giving results in improved performance The Internet is a successful acquisition
channel but it has not proven to be an effective one for retention It is the ability of online-acquired donors to become multichannel
donors mdash that is to start giving through direct mail mdash that significantly boosts the retention and long-term value of this group of
donors far beyond what they would be if online giving were the only channel available
The presence of past multichannel giving for steady donors already on file however is far less predictive of higher value and retention
than the traditional recency frequency and monetary giving amount factors that direct marketers have used for decades
These findings are explained in greater detail on the following pages
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Summary of Findings
bull For the large direct marketing organizations participating in our online benchmarking groups the majority of gifts are still
received through direct mail
bull Although direct mail remains the dominant channel for new donor acquisitions as well it has become increasingly common for
new donors to give their first gift online
bull Online-acquired donors are significantly younger and tend to have higher household incomes than mail-acquired donors
bull Online-acquired donors tend to give much larger gifts than mail-acquired donors
bull However online-acquired donors tend to have slightly lower retention rates than mail-acquired donors
bull In aggregate online-acquired donors have much higher cumulative value over the long term than traditional mail-acquired
donors
bull However long-term value varies depending on the donorrsquos origin gift level The substantially larger gift amounts given by online-
acquired donors can mask issues with retention
bull Multichannel giving is not ubiquitous The majority of multichannel donors are those who are acquired online and then subsequently
start giving direct mail gifts This is the only situation in which there are significant numbers of cross-channel donors across all
organizations
bull Every year large proportions of online-acquired donors switch from online giving to offline sources mdash primarily to direct mail The
reverse is not true however only a tiny percentage of mail-acquired donors give online in later years
bull When online-acquired donors move offline they tend to do so soon in their first renewal year They then continue to give
offline in similar proportions in subsequent years Eventually just under half of all online-acquired donors convert entirely to
offline primarily direct mail giving
bull Robust direct mail programs drive up the retention and long-term value of new donors acquired online Without the ability to
become multichannel givers by renewing their support via direct mail this group of donors would be worth far less Other than
monthly recurring giving programs established direct mail programs are the best method for gaining repeat gifts from online-
acquired donors
bull When online-acquired donors move offline in subsequent years of giving it does have some negative effect on their value in the
renewal year The higher the donorrsquos original gift level the less they upgrade and in fact the more likely it is that the donor will
actually downgrade if they move offline However these lower gift amounts are far outweighed by the higher retention of online-
acquired donors provided by the direct mail channel
bull For the consistent givers who comprise the majority of donors already on file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally
not a significant factor in predicting future retention or long-term value Traditional RFM factors are far more predictive
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
The Data Used for Analysis
In 2010 a total of 28 major national nonprofit organizations participated in Target Analyticsrsquo donorCentrics online benchmarking
meetings To provide a factual basis for discussion we provided participants with analytic reports comparing the behavior of their
online and offline donors
The data in the donorCentrics reports and all data in this study is derived solely from transactional giving data downloaded from each
organizationrsquos fundraising database There is no anecdotal or self-reported data As part of the process all participants reviewed and
approved these metrics for accuracy
The data presented in the analysis that follows is from the most recent data available for all 28 organizations participating in 2010 For
one group of 14 organizations the donorCentrics analysis covers giving for the 12 months ending December 2010 and the previous
four years for the other group of 14 organizations the donorCentrics analysis covers giving for the 12 months ending June 2010
and the previous four years The most current 12 months of data for all 28 organizations together includes transactions for over 15
million donors and more than $1 billion in revenue For a list of participants in both groups please see Appendix A at the end of this
document
The organizations that participate in our online benchmarking groups are prominent national nonprofits covering a range of sectors
including animal welfare the environment health human services international relief and societal benefit These organizations
receive the majority of their direct marketing revenue from direct mail Revenue from sustainer giving and from other channels such
as telemarketing and the Internet makes up a relatively small portion of the overall total Revenue from large-scale events such as
walkathons is not included in this analysis only a handful of participating organizations conduct these events
For all charts that show revenue per donor or retention rates we have excluded donor populations of fewer than 100 donors For all
charts that show revenue per donor amounts we have excluded all donors acquired at origin gift amounts of $250 or above For the
first three charts that show the percent of gifts or donors brought in online we have excluded any international relief organizations
that had atypical amounts of giving in January 2010 mdash attributable to recovery efforts following the severe earthquake in Haiti in that
month While this growth was significant it was not reflective of what organizations in any other industry sector experienced or of
what the relief sector itself experiences in typical years
Throughout this analysis all results are reported as medians mdash the middle value of the group of 28 participating organizations
Medians represent the giving behavior and program performance of a typical organization more accurately than either averages or
aggregates which can be skewed by organizations with larger donor populations or higher revenue
A Note About Multichannel Communications
The Internet offers many ways to communicate with donors and prospects mdash email solicitations website content advertisements
and various forms of social media While this study analyzes the effects of multichannel giving on donor value it draws no conclusions
about the effects of ongoing multichannel communications
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Differences in Online and Offline Giving
The Growth of Online Giving
For the organizations participating in our donorCentrics
Internet benchmarking groups the vast majority of gifts are
made through direct mail The typical organization receives
more than three-quarters of its total gifts through direct mail
and only 10 of its gifts online
Direct mail acquisition is also responsible for three quarters
of all new donors
Over the past several years however the overall number of
gifts given online and the number of donors acquired online
have both grown steadily The Internet is becoming an
increasingly significant source of giving and of new donor
acquisition in particular
Participants in the online benchmarking groups are a self-
selected group of organizations which are particularly
focused on the topic of online giving and therefore have
larger online programs than other similar nonprofits
Percentages of gifts and donors coming in online will be
smaller for the industry as a whole
Demographic Differences
Online-acquired donors have different demographic profiles
and different giving patterns than traditional primarily direct
mail-acquired donors
Most notably online-acquired donors are significantly
younger than mail-acquired donors
Given the high average age of donors to many benchmarking
organizations the online channelrsquos ability to attract younger
donors is very appealing
Distribution of New Donorsby Channel2010 Medians
16
76
8
JoinedOnline
Joinedby Mail
Joinedby OtherOffline
Distribution of All Giftsby Channel2010 Medians
10
79
11
Online Mail OtherOffline
Trends in the Percent of Donors Giving Online2006-2010 Medians
9
5
12
5
8
14
6
9
16
7
10
7
New Donors Multi-Year Donors All Donors
Distribution of New Donors by Agewithin Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Online donors also tend to have higher household
incomes than mail-acquired donors
Differences in Giving Behavior
Online-acquired donors tend to give much larger
gifts and to give more in total revenue each year
than mail-acquired donors
This is true even when controlling for the age and
income of the donor
Distribution of New Donors by Household Incomewithin Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Age and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Household Income and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Origin Channel
2010 Medians
$62
$32
Joined Online Joined by Mail
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
However online-acquired donors tend to have
slightly lower retention rates than mail-acquired
donors
This is also generally true even when controlling for
the age and income of the donor It is even more
pronounced when controlling for origin gift amount
as shown in the next section
Differences in Long-Term Value
In aggregate online-acquired donors have much
higher cumulative value over the long term than
traditional mail-acquired donors
Original gift amount is one of the most important
determinants of long-term value and online-
acquired donors join at much higher levels than
donors acquired by mail
However there is some evidence of sub-par
retention and accompanying lower long-term value
for donors acquired online at higher giving levels
New Donor Retention Rateby Origin Channel
2010 Medians
2830
Joined Online in2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
New Donor Retention Rateby Age and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
New Donor Retention Rateby Household Income and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Lifetime Revenue per Original Donor(All Origin Gift Levels)
2010 Medians
$197
$158
$72 $66$51
$118
Joined in 2007 Joined in 2008 Joined in 2009
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Online donors are acquired at disproportionately higher levels than donors acquired through direct mail Most direct mail donors join
at $10 $15 and $25 while most online donors join at $25 $50 and $100
At the lower origin gift levels (below $25) where mail donors are more common online-acquired donors outperform mail-acquired donors
in long-term value At these levels the larger gifts given by online donors in subsequent years result in higher cumulative revenue per donor
over the long term
At the $25 origin gift level where online and offline donors join in somewhat similar proportions they have similar cumulative revenue
per donor after several years
At the higher origin gift levels ($50 and above) where online donors are more common mail-acquired donors begin to outperform
online-acquired donors over the long term At these levels of giving the higher retention rates of mail-acquired donors tend to result
in higher cumulative revenue per donor in subsequent years
There may be a number of explanations for this pattern
One is that acquisition gift levels below $25 are not natural giving points for online donors and they readily upgrade out of them
Relatively small numbers of online donors join at the lowest gift levels and not surprisingly those who do tend to upgrade
significantly in their second year of giving ndash whether they stay online or not in that second year
2010 Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Levelfor Donors Acquired in 2007
Medians for Donors Acquired at $1-499
Joined OnlineJoined by Mail
Percent ofOriginal Donors
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
Percent of Original DonorsGiving in 2010
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
2010 Lifetime Revenueper Original Donor
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
These lower acquisition gift levels are typical giving ranges for direct mail donors however and as expected those donors do only
nominal upgrading in subsequent years
At the higher end of the scale on the other hand direct mail donors are relatively rare While a $50 gift is a typical size for an
online gift it is a large direct mail acquisition gift Fewer than 12 of all mail-acquired donors join at $50 or above each year
and those who do are likely to be significantly more invested in the organization than those who join at lower levels It is not
surprising that donors acquired by mail at these higher levels have higher retention rates than their online-acquired equivalents
and that this results in higher cumulative value over the long term
In general then most online-acquired donors are acquired at origin gift levels where they under-perform their mail-acquired equivalents
This may be due more to the specific characteristics of the donors and their relative level of commitment to the organization than the
fundraising practices used to cultivate them
For a version of the chart on the previous page showing donors acquired in 2008 please see Appendix B
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Who Gives Through More Than One Channel
Online and Offline Multichannel Giving
While multichannel giving is a popular topic in the direct marketing
fundraising community it is not ubiquitous in practice Significant
multichannel communication may occur notably via email website
content or social media but not multichannel giving
Multichannel donors are almost exclusively online-acquired donors
who later start giving direct mail gifts This is the only situation in
which there are consistently significant numbers of cross-channel
donors across all organizations
In our analysis of giving channel migration we focus on donors who
gave only one gift in their acquisition year These one-gift donors
make up the vast majority (82) of all donors so they can serve as a
reasonable proxy for the entire donor population and provide a control
for giving frequency without making the study unduly complex
What we found is that every year high percentages of online-acquired donors switch from online to offline giving primarily to direct
mail The reverse is not true however only a tiny percentage of mail-acquired donors give online in later years
In other words the number of donors who migrate from online to offline giving can be significant to an organization while the number
who migrate from offline to online giving may not be noticeable at all
Other Acquisition Channels
Donors do of course join through channels other than direct mail and the
Internet Donors may be acquired through a number of disparate channels
such as DRTV events telemarketing and face-to-face canvassing
However these other offline acquisition techniques together make up
only about 8 of all acquisitions each year And of the 28 organizations
participating in our benchmarking analysis only a few employed one or
more of these channels
Organizations that do significant face-to-face canvassing DRTV or
event acquisition do tend to see large numbers of those donors converting
to regular monthly sustainer or direct mail giving in later years But because
so few organizations employ each technique for our 28 participants there is
no movement between these different offline sources on the scale of the
movement of online-acquired donors to direct mail
Distribution of 2010 Renewal Gifts by ChannelMedians for Donors Acquired as
One-Gift Donors in 2009
60
32
9 7
3
91
Joined Onlinein 2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Evidence from our benchmarking groups suggests that organizations that use a wide range of techniques mdash beyond direct mail and the
Internet mdash to acquire new donors do tend to have robust fundraising programs While implementation of these multichannel acquisition
programs often requires higher levels of investment having a variety of acquisition methods available often results in greater success
Online-to-Offline Migration
When online-acquired donors move offline they tend to do so quickly in their first renewal year They then continue to give offline in
similar proportions in subsequent years After three or four years about half of all online-acquired donors are giving offline gifts and
over 40 are giving exclusively offline primarily through direct mail
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In addition as the chart on the previous page shows new donors who were retained in their second year (here in 2008) are far more
likely to still be giving four years later (in 2010) than donors who lapsed in their second year
In fact of the 2007 online-acquired donors who were still giving in 2010 more than half of them had given for all four of the years
they had been on file Most donors give consistently over consecutive years or they lapse out and do not return Donors who skip
years mdash who have a pattern of lapsing and reactivating mdash are relatively rare
For a version of this chart showing the four-year migration of mail-acquired donors see Appendix C
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Where Multiple Giving Channels Increase Retention and Value
Online-Acquired Donors
Multichannel giving does correspond with higher retention and increased donor value for one key population new donors acquired
online This is the only group in which significant numbers of donors readily switch giving channels
If the Internet was the only giving channel available to these new donors their retention rates and subsequent long-term value would
be a fraction of what they actually are It is the ability to use another channel mdash specifically direct mail mdash that drives up the retention
and long-term value of a population of newly acquired donors
Direct mail is a very effective method of getting repeat gifts from donors Over time the high giving amounts of online donors coupled
with the high donor retention rates provided by direct mail make for a powerful combination
The charts on the following page illustrate the difference that the availability of multiple giving channels makes over time for new
online-acquired and mail-acquired donors They compare the actual performance of all donors acquired in 2007 to the performance
of the same set of donors including only gifts given to their channel of origin
The lines that include all giving
show the donorsrsquo behavior in the
real (multichannel) world The lines
that include only giving to the origin
channel simulate what the donorsrsquo
giving would be if they were only
able to give in a single channel
world
This analysis shows that having
multiple channels makes only a
small difference for mail-acquired
donors Donors who join through
direct mail do not gain a significant
advantage from the ability to
give through other channels in
later years They typically prefer
to continue giving through the
same channel by which they were
acquired
In contrast the ability to give
via different channels makes a
significant difference for online-
acquired donors When offline gifts
are excluded from online-acquired
donorsrsquo giving their retention and
resulting cumulative long-term
value both drop considerably
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In the real multichannel world each donor that was acquired online in 2007 was worth $197 by 2010 If all of their offline giving is
excluded their value drops to $128
For versions of these charts showing year-by-year trends for donors acquired in 2008 see Appendix D
The Impact of Cross-Channel Giving on Giving Amounts
There is some concern that moving online donors to offline primarily direct mail channels will result in downgrades of gift amounts
When online-acquired donors move
offline it does indeed have a negative
effect on revenue donors who switch
to offline channels upgrade less than
donors who stay online For our bench-
marking participants donors acquired
online in 2009 upgraded by $10 when
they stayed online but only $2 when
they moved offline in 2010
In addition the higher the donorrsquos
original gift amount the less they
upgrade and in fact the more likely
it is that they will actually downgrade
if they move offline
Donors acquired online at $10-$14 for example upgraded by roughly similar amounts in their renewal year whether they stayed
online or moved offline Donors acquired online at $100-$249 on the other hand downgraded when they moved offline
Again to control for the effects of gift frequency we have restricted this analysis to the 82 of annual donors who are single gift
givers
Over the long term this downgrading is still outweighed by the increased retention rates that result when online-acquired donors
become multichannel donors mdash that is when they give by direct mail
Donors acquired at the
$100-$249 level in 2007
are a case in point In
the real multichannel
world each donor that
was acquired online in
2007 was worth $310
by 2010 If all of their
offline giving is excluded
their value drops to $231
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
22 of the original donors acquired in 2007 are still giving in 2010 but this number drops to only 12 when all offline giving is
excluded This also means that the disparity in long-term value between these two populations will only increase in future years
Creating a True Single Channel Environment
The single channel simulations above cause any online donors who renewed offline to appear as though they were lapsed In reality
of course some of these donors would have given again through the online channel
Although the fall-off in donors and revenue would probably not be as dramatic as presented here it would still be substantial
While the Internet has proven a source for new donor acquisition it is not a reliable channel for renewing donor support In past
years we have worked with organizations who could not integrate online giving with the rest of the direct marketing program due to
technology constraints and they did experience steep drop-offs in online-acquired donor populations similar to what is shown in
these simulations
With testing we could determine exactly how many online-acquired donors would have given again if no offline means of renewal
existed But because of the dominance and success of direct mail programs organizations are justifiably reluctant to hold any online-
acquired donors out of the direct mail stream
A Note About Mail-Acquired Cross-Channel Donors
Donors who join through direct mail and then start giving online typically give much larger gifts and have higher cumulative long-term
value than donors who only ever give by mail
However the number of mail-acquired donors who migrate to online giving is so small that it has very little impact on overall revenue
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation
Most donors on file are steady donors who have given recently Excluding new donors 72 of all 2010 givers had also given in 2009
For these consistent donors already on an organizationrsquos file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant
factor in predicting future retention or value Traditional recency frequency and monetary amount (RFM) factors that encapsulate the
donorrsquos engagement and prior giving behavior are much more predictive of future performance
For example if a donor has given one gift of $50 in each of the last four years that donor will give similar amounts and will retain at
the same rate in the current year regardless of whether that donor has given only online only offline or a combination of online and
offline gifts in the past
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level
To determine whether multichannel giving alone accounts for higher value or better retention of donors already on file we must first
control for RFM variables
Isolating the effects of gift frequency is particularly important
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift
donors as well and multiple-gift donors invariably perform
better than one-gift donors If the performance of mainly two-
gift multichannel donors is compared against that of mainly
one-gift single channel donors the multichannel donors
will always perform better mdash not necessarily because they
are multichannel donors but because they are multiple-gift
donors
The charts in this section show donors acquired online in
2007 divided into two different populations One group
donors who gave online in 2009 serves as our proxy for
single channel donors because they are still giving by
their channel of origin The other group donors who gave
offline in 2009 serves as our proxy for multichannel donors
because they have switched channels
These charts compare single channel and multichannel
giving in the RFM segments where online-acquired donors
are the most plentiful one-gift donors who gave last year at
the three most common giving levels for online donors
This analysis shows that when controlling for RFM factors
those donors who remained giving only within the online
channel in 2009 (single channel donors) and those donors who had migrated to offline giving in 2009 (multichannel donors) gave similar
amounts in 2010
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 20
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 3
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Summary of Findings
bull For the large direct marketing organizations participating in our online benchmarking groups the majority of gifts are still
received through direct mail
bull Although direct mail remains the dominant channel for new donor acquisitions as well it has become increasingly common for
new donors to give their first gift online
bull Online-acquired donors are significantly younger and tend to have higher household incomes than mail-acquired donors
bull Online-acquired donors tend to give much larger gifts than mail-acquired donors
bull However online-acquired donors tend to have slightly lower retention rates than mail-acquired donors
bull In aggregate online-acquired donors have much higher cumulative value over the long term than traditional mail-acquired
donors
bull However long-term value varies depending on the donorrsquos origin gift level The substantially larger gift amounts given by online-
acquired donors can mask issues with retention
bull Multichannel giving is not ubiquitous The majority of multichannel donors are those who are acquired online and then subsequently
start giving direct mail gifts This is the only situation in which there are significant numbers of cross-channel donors across all
organizations
bull Every year large proportions of online-acquired donors switch from online giving to offline sources mdash primarily to direct mail The
reverse is not true however only a tiny percentage of mail-acquired donors give online in later years
bull When online-acquired donors move offline they tend to do so soon in their first renewal year They then continue to give
offline in similar proportions in subsequent years Eventually just under half of all online-acquired donors convert entirely to
offline primarily direct mail giving
bull Robust direct mail programs drive up the retention and long-term value of new donors acquired online Without the ability to
become multichannel givers by renewing their support via direct mail this group of donors would be worth far less Other than
monthly recurring giving programs established direct mail programs are the best method for gaining repeat gifts from online-
acquired donors
bull When online-acquired donors move offline in subsequent years of giving it does have some negative effect on their value in the
renewal year The higher the donorrsquos original gift level the less they upgrade and in fact the more likely it is that the donor will
actually downgrade if they move offline However these lower gift amounts are far outweighed by the higher retention of online-
acquired donors provided by the direct mail channel
bull For the consistent givers who comprise the majority of donors already on file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally
not a significant factor in predicting future retention or long-term value Traditional RFM factors are far more predictive
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
The Data Used for Analysis
In 2010 a total of 28 major national nonprofit organizations participated in Target Analyticsrsquo donorCentrics online benchmarking
meetings To provide a factual basis for discussion we provided participants with analytic reports comparing the behavior of their
online and offline donors
The data in the donorCentrics reports and all data in this study is derived solely from transactional giving data downloaded from each
organizationrsquos fundraising database There is no anecdotal or self-reported data As part of the process all participants reviewed and
approved these metrics for accuracy
The data presented in the analysis that follows is from the most recent data available for all 28 organizations participating in 2010 For
one group of 14 organizations the donorCentrics analysis covers giving for the 12 months ending December 2010 and the previous
four years for the other group of 14 organizations the donorCentrics analysis covers giving for the 12 months ending June 2010
and the previous four years The most current 12 months of data for all 28 organizations together includes transactions for over 15
million donors and more than $1 billion in revenue For a list of participants in both groups please see Appendix A at the end of this
document
The organizations that participate in our online benchmarking groups are prominent national nonprofits covering a range of sectors
including animal welfare the environment health human services international relief and societal benefit These organizations
receive the majority of their direct marketing revenue from direct mail Revenue from sustainer giving and from other channels such
as telemarketing and the Internet makes up a relatively small portion of the overall total Revenue from large-scale events such as
walkathons is not included in this analysis only a handful of participating organizations conduct these events
For all charts that show revenue per donor or retention rates we have excluded donor populations of fewer than 100 donors For all
charts that show revenue per donor amounts we have excluded all donors acquired at origin gift amounts of $250 or above For the
first three charts that show the percent of gifts or donors brought in online we have excluded any international relief organizations
that had atypical amounts of giving in January 2010 mdash attributable to recovery efforts following the severe earthquake in Haiti in that
month While this growth was significant it was not reflective of what organizations in any other industry sector experienced or of
what the relief sector itself experiences in typical years
Throughout this analysis all results are reported as medians mdash the middle value of the group of 28 participating organizations
Medians represent the giving behavior and program performance of a typical organization more accurately than either averages or
aggregates which can be skewed by organizations with larger donor populations or higher revenue
A Note About Multichannel Communications
The Internet offers many ways to communicate with donors and prospects mdash email solicitations website content advertisements
and various forms of social media While this study analyzes the effects of multichannel giving on donor value it draws no conclusions
about the effects of ongoing multichannel communications
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Differences in Online and Offline Giving
The Growth of Online Giving
For the organizations participating in our donorCentrics
Internet benchmarking groups the vast majority of gifts are
made through direct mail The typical organization receives
more than three-quarters of its total gifts through direct mail
and only 10 of its gifts online
Direct mail acquisition is also responsible for three quarters
of all new donors
Over the past several years however the overall number of
gifts given online and the number of donors acquired online
have both grown steadily The Internet is becoming an
increasingly significant source of giving and of new donor
acquisition in particular
Participants in the online benchmarking groups are a self-
selected group of organizations which are particularly
focused on the topic of online giving and therefore have
larger online programs than other similar nonprofits
Percentages of gifts and donors coming in online will be
smaller for the industry as a whole
Demographic Differences
Online-acquired donors have different demographic profiles
and different giving patterns than traditional primarily direct
mail-acquired donors
Most notably online-acquired donors are significantly
younger than mail-acquired donors
Given the high average age of donors to many benchmarking
organizations the online channelrsquos ability to attract younger
donors is very appealing
Distribution of New Donorsby Channel2010 Medians
16
76
8
JoinedOnline
Joinedby Mail
Joinedby OtherOffline
Distribution of All Giftsby Channel2010 Medians
10
79
11
Online Mail OtherOffline
Trends in the Percent of Donors Giving Online2006-2010 Medians
9
5
12
5
8
14
6
9
16
7
10
7
New Donors Multi-Year Donors All Donors
Distribution of New Donors by Agewithin Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Online donors also tend to have higher household
incomes than mail-acquired donors
Differences in Giving Behavior
Online-acquired donors tend to give much larger
gifts and to give more in total revenue each year
than mail-acquired donors
This is true even when controlling for the age and
income of the donor
Distribution of New Donors by Household Incomewithin Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Age and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Household Income and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Origin Channel
2010 Medians
$62
$32
Joined Online Joined by Mail
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
However online-acquired donors tend to have
slightly lower retention rates than mail-acquired
donors
This is also generally true even when controlling for
the age and income of the donor It is even more
pronounced when controlling for origin gift amount
as shown in the next section
Differences in Long-Term Value
In aggregate online-acquired donors have much
higher cumulative value over the long term than
traditional mail-acquired donors
Original gift amount is one of the most important
determinants of long-term value and online-
acquired donors join at much higher levels than
donors acquired by mail
However there is some evidence of sub-par
retention and accompanying lower long-term value
for donors acquired online at higher giving levels
New Donor Retention Rateby Origin Channel
2010 Medians
2830
Joined Online in2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
New Donor Retention Rateby Age and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
New Donor Retention Rateby Household Income and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Lifetime Revenue per Original Donor(All Origin Gift Levels)
2010 Medians
$197
$158
$72 $66$51
$118
Joined in 2007 Joined in 2008 Joined in 2009
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Online donors are acquired at disproportionately higher levels than donors acquired through direct mail Most direct mail donors join
at $10 $15 and $25 while most online donors join at $25 $50 and $100
At the lower origin gift levels (below $25) where mail donors are more common online-acquired donors outperform mail-acquired donors
in long-term value At these levels the larger gifts given by online donors in subsequent years result in higher cumulative revenue per donor
over the long term
At the $25 origin gift level where online and offline donors join in somewhat similar proportions they have similar cumulative revenue
per donor after several years
At the higher origin gift levels ($50 and above) where online donors are more common mail-acquired donors begin to outperform
online-acquired donors over the long term At these levels of giving the higher retention rates of mail-acquired donors tend to result
in higher cumulative revenue per donor in subsequent years
There may be a number of explanations for this pattern
One is that acquisition gift levels below $25 are not natural giving points for online donors and they readily upgrade out of them
Relatively small numbers of online donors join at the lowest gift levels and not surprisingly those who do tend to upgrade
significantly in their second year of giving ndash whether they stay online or not in that second year
2010 Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Levelfor Donors Acquired in 2007
Medians for Donors Acquired at $1-499
Joined OnlineJoined by Mail
Percent ofOriginal Donors
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
Percent of Original DonorsGiving in 2010
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
2010 Lifetime Revenueper Original Donor
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
These lower acquisition gift levels are typical giving ranges for direct mail donors however and as expected those donors do only
nominal upgrading in subsequent years
At the higher end of the scale on the other hand direct mail donors are relatively rare While a $50 gift is a typical size for an
online gift it is a large direct mail acquisition gift Fewer than 12 of all mail-acquired donors join at $50 or above each year
and those who do are likely to be significantly more invested in the organization than those who join at lower levels It is not
surprising that donors acquired by mail at these higher levels have higher retention rates than their online-acquired equivalents
and that this results in higher cumulative value over the long term
In general then most online-acquired donors are acquired at origin gift levels where they under-perform their mail-acquired equivalents
This may be due more to the specific characteristics of the donors and their relative level of commitment to the organization than the
fundraising practices used to cultivate them
For a version of the chart on the previous page showing donors acquired in 2008 please see Appendix B
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Who Gives Through More Than One Channel
Online and Offline Multichannel Giving
While multichannel giving is a popular topic in the direct marketing
fundraising community it is not ubiquitous in practice Significant
multichannel communication may occur notably via email website
content or social media but not multichannel giving
Multichannel donors are almost exclusively online-acquired donors
who later start giving direct mail gifts This is the only situation in
which there are consistently significant numbers of cross-channel
donors across all organizations
In our analysis of giving channel migration we focus on donors who
gave only one gift in their acquisition year These one-gift donors
make up the vast majority (82) of all donors so they can serve as a
reasonable proxy for the entire donor population and provide a control
for giving frequency without making the study unduly complex
What we found is that every year high percentages of online-acquired donors switch from online to offline giving primarily to direct
mail The reverse is not true however only a tiny percentage of mail-acquired donors give online in later years
In other words the number of donors who migrate from online to offline giving can be significant to an organization while the number
who migrate from offline to online giving may not be noticeable at all
Other Acquisition Channels
Donors do of course join through channels other than direct mail and the
Internet Donors may be acquired through a number of disparate channels
such as DRTV events telemarketing and face-to-face canvassing
However these other offline acquisition techniques together make up
only about 8 of all acquisitions each year And of the 28 organizations
participating in our benchmarking analysis only a few employed one or
more of these channels
Organizations that do significant face-to-face canvassing DRTV or
event acquisition do tend to see large numbers of those donors converting
to regular monthly sustainer or direct mail giving in later years But because
so few organizations employ each technique for our 28 participants there is
no movement between these different offline sources on the scale of the
movement of online-acquired donors to direct mail
Distribution of 2010 Renewal Gifts by ChannelMedians for Donors Acquired as
One-Gift Donors in 2009
60
32
9 7
3
91
Joined Onlinein 2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Evidence from our benchmarking groups suggests that organizations that use a wide range of techniques mdash beyond direct mail and the
Internet mdash to acquire new donors do tend to have robust fundraising programs While implementation of these multichannel acquisition
programs often requires higher levels of investment having a variety of acquisition methods available often results in greater success
Online-to-Offline Migration
When online-acquired donors move offline they tend to do so quickly in their first renewal year They then continue to give offline in
similar proportions in subsequent years After three or four years about half of all online-acquired donors are giving offline gifts and
over 40 are giving exclusively offline primarily through direct mail
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In addition as the chart on the previous page shows new donors who were retained in their second year (here in 2008) are far more
likely to still be giving four years later (in 2010) than donors who lapsed in their second year
In fact of the 2007 online-acquired donors who were still giving in 2010 more than half of them had given for all four of the years
they had been on file Most donors give consistently over consecutive years or they lapse out and do not return Donors who skip
years mdash who have a pattern of lapsing and reactivating mdash are relatively rare
For a version of this chart showing the four-year migration of mail-acquired donors see Appendix C
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Where Multiple Giving Channels Increase Retention and Value
Online-Acquired Donors
Multichannel giving does correspond with higher retention and increased donor value for one key population new donors acquired
online This is the only group in which significant numbers of donors readily switch giving channels
If the Internet was the only giving channel available to these new donors their retention rates and subsequent long-term value would
be a fraction of what they actually are It is the ability to use another channel mdash specifically direct mail mdash that drives up the retention
and long-term value of a population of newly acquired donors
Direct mail is a very effective method of getting repeat gifts from donors Over time the high giving amounts of online donors coupled
with the high donor retention rates provided by direct mail make for a powerful combination
The charts on the following page illustrate the difference that the availability of multiple giving channels makes over time for new
online-acquired and mail-acquired donors They compare the actual performance of all donors acquired in 2007 to the performance
of the same set of donors including only gifts given to their channel of origin
The lines that include all giving
show the donorsrsquo behavior in the
real (multichannel) world The lines
that include only giving to the origin
channel simulate what the donorsrsquo
giving would be if they were only
able to give in a single channel
world
This analysis shows that having
multiple channels makes only a
small difference for mail-acquired
donors Donors who join through
direct mail do not gain a significant
advantage from the ability to
give through other channels in
later years They typically prefer
to continue giving through the
same channel by which they were
acquired
In contrast the ability to give
via different channels makes a
significant difference for online-
acquired donors When offline gifts
are excluded from online-acquired
donorsrsquo giving their retention and
resulting cumulative long-term
value both drop considerably
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In the real multichannel world each donor that was acquired online in 2007 was worth $197 by 2010 If all of their offline giving is
excluded their value drops to $128
For versions of these charts showing year-by-year trends for donors acquired in 2008 see Appendix D
The Impact of Cross-Channel Giving on Giving Amounts
There is some concern that moving online donors to offline primarily direct mail channels will result in downgrades of gift amounts
When online-acquired donors move
offline it does indeed have a negative
effect on revenue donors who switch
to offline channels upgrade less than
donors who stay online For our bench-
marking participants donors acquired
online in 2009 upgraded by $10 when
they stayed online but only $2 when
they moved offline in 2010
In addition the higher the donorrsquos
original gift amount the less they
upgrade and in fact the more likely
it is that they will actually downgrade
if they move offline
Donors acquired online at $10-$14 for example upgraded by roughly similar amounts in their renewal year whether they stayed
online or moved offline Donors acquired online at $100-$249 on the other hand downgraded when they moved offline
Again to control for the effects of gift frequency we have restricted this analysis to the 82 of annual donors who are single gift
givers
Over the long term this downgrading is still outweighed by the increased retention rates that result when online-acquired donors
become multichannel donors mdash that is when they give by direct mail
Donors acquired at the
$100-$249 level in 2007
are a case in point In
the real multichannel
world each donor that
was acquired online in
2007 was worth $310
by 2010 If all of their
offline giving is excluded
their value drops to $231
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
22 of the original donors acquired in 2007 are still giving in 2010 but this number drops to only 12 when all offline giving is
excluded This also means that the disparity in long-term value between these two populations will only increase in future years
Creating a True Single Channel Environment
The single channel simulations above cause any online donors who renewed offline to appear as though they were lapsed In reality
of course some of these donors would have given again through the online channel
Although the fall-off in donors and revenue would probably not be as dramatic as presented here it would still be substantial
While the Internet has proven a source for new donor acquisition it is not a reliable channel for renewing donor support In past
years we have worked with organizations who could not integrate online giving with the rest of the direct marketing program due to
technology constraints and they did experience steep drop-offs in online-acquired donor populations similar to what is shown in
these simulations
With testing we could determine exactly how many online-acquired donors would have given again if no offline means of renewal
existed But because of the dominance and success of direct mail programs organizations are justifiably reluctant to hold any online-
acquired donors out of the direct mail stream
A Note About Mail-Acquired Cross-Channel Donors
Donors who join through direct mail and then start giving online typically give much larger gifts and have higher cumulative long-term
value than donors who only ever give by mail
However the number of mail-acquired donors who migrate to online giving is so small that it has very little impact on overall revenue
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation
Most donors on file are steady donors who have given recently Excluding new donors 72 of all 2010 givers had also given in 2009
For these consistent donors already on an organizationrsquos file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant
factor in predicting future retention or value Traditional recency frequency and monetary amount (RFM) factors that encapsulate the
donorrsquos engagement and prior giving behavior are much more predictive of future performance
For example if a donor has given one gift of $50 in each of the last four years that donor will give similar amounts and will retain at
the same rate in the current year regardless of whether that donor has given only online only offline or a combination of online and
offline gifts in the past
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level
To determine whether multichannel giving alone accounts for higher value or better retention of donors already on file we must first
control for RFM variables
Isolating the effects of gift frequency is particularly important
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift
donors as well and multiple-gift donors invariably perform
better than one-gift donors If the performance of mainly two-
gift multichannel donors is compared against that of mainly
one-gift single channel donors the multichannel donors
will always perform better mdash not necessarily because they
are multichannel donors but because they are multiple-gift
donors
The charts in this section show donors acquired online in
2007 divided into two different populations One group
donors who gave online in 2009 serves as our proxy for
single channel donors because they are still giving by
their channel of origin The other group donors who gave
offline in 2009 serves as our proxy for multichannel donors
because they have switched channels
These charts compare single channel and multichannel
giving in the RFM segments where online-acquired donors
are the most plentiful one-gift donors who gave last year at
the three most common giving levels for online donors
This analysis shows that when controlling for RFM factors
those donors who remained giving only within the online
channel in 2009 (single channel donors) and those donors who had migrated to offline giving in 2009 (multichannel donors) gave similar
amounts in 2010
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 4
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
The Data Used for Analysis
In 2010 a total of 28 major national nonprofit organizations participated in Target Analyticsrsquo donorCentrics online benchmarking
meetings To provide a factual basis for discussion we provided participants with analytic reports comparing the behavior of their
online and offline donors
The data in the donorCentrics reports and all data in this study is derived solely from transactional giving data downloaded from each
organizationrsquos fundraising database There is no anecdotal or self-reported data As part of the process all participants reviewed and
approved these metrics for accuracy
The data presented in the analysis that follows is from the most recent data available for all 28 organizations participating in 2010 For
one group of 14 organizations the donorCentrics analysis covers giving for the 12 months ending December 2010 and the previous
four years for the other group of 14 organizations the donorCentrics analysis covers giving for the 12 months ending June 2010
and the previous four years The most current 12 months of data for all 28 organizations together includes transactions for over 15
million donors and more than $1 billion in revenue For a list of participants in both groups please see Appendix A at the end of this
document
The organizations that participate in our online benchmarking groups are prominent national nonprofits covering a range of sectors
including animal welfare the environment health human services international relief and societal benefit These organizations
receive the majority of their direct marketing revenue from direct mail Revenue from sustainer giving and from other channels such
as telemarketing and the Internet makes up a relatively small portion of the overall total Revenue from large-scale events such as
walkathons is not included in this analysis only a handful of participating organizations conduct these events
For all charts that show revenue per donor or retention rates we have excluded donor populations of fewer than 100 donors For all
charts that show revenue per donor amounts we have excluded all donors acquired at origin gift amounts of $250 or above For the
first three charts that show the percent of gifts or donors brought in online we have excluded any international relief organizations
that had atypical amounts of giving in January 2010 mdash attributable to recovery efforts following the severe earthquake in Haiti in that
month While this growth was significant it was not reflective of what organizations in any other industry sector experienced or of
what the relief sector itself experiences in typical years
Throughout this analysis all results are reported as medians mdash the middle value of the group of 28 participating organizations
Medians represent the giving behavior and program performance of a typical organization more accurately than either averages or
aggregates which can be skewed by organizations with larger donor populations or higher revenue
A Note About Multichannel Communications
The Internet offers many ways to communicate with donors and prospects mdash email solicitations website content advertisements
and various forms of social media While this study analyzes the effects of multichannel giving on donor value it draws no conclusions
about the effects of ongoing multichannel communications
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 5
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Differences in Online and Offline Giving
The Growth of Online Giving
For the organizations participating in our donorCentrics
Internet benchmarking groups the vast majority of gifts are
made through direct mail The typical organization receives
more than three-quarters of its total gifts through direct mail
and only 10 of its gifts online
Direct mail acquisition is also responsible for three quarters
of all new donors
Over the past several years however the overall number of
gifts given online and the number of donors acquired online
have both grown steadily The Internet is becoming an
increasingly significant source of giving and of new donor
acquisition in particular
Participants in the online benchmarking groups are a self-
selected group of organizations which are particularly
focused on the topic of online giving and therefore have
larger online programs than other similar nonprofits
Percentages of gifts and donors coming in online will be
smaller for the industry as a whole
Demographic Differences
Online-acquired donors have different demographic profiles
and different giving patterns than traditional primarily direct
mail-acquired donors
Most notably online-acquired donors are significantly
younger than mail-acquired donors
Given the high average age of donors to many benchmarking
organizations the online channelrsquos ability to attract younger
donors is very appealing
Distribution of New Donorsby Channel2010 Medians
16
76
8
JoinedOnline
Joinedby Mail
Joinedby OtherOffline
Distribution of All Giftsby Channel2010 Medians
10
79
11
Online Mail OtherOffline
Trends in the Percent of Donors Giving Online2006-2010 Medians
9
5
12
5
8
14
6
9
16
7
10
7
New Donors Multi-Year Donors All Donors
Distribution of New Donors by Agewithin Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 6
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Online donors also tend to have higher household
incomes than mail-acquired donors
Differences in Giving Behavior
Online-acquired donors tend to give much larger
gifts and to give more in total revenue each year
than mail-acquired donors
This is true even when controlling for the age and
income of the donor
Distribution of New Donors by Household Incomewithin Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Age and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Household Income and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Origin Channel
2010 Medians
$62
$32
Joined Online Joined by Mail
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 7
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
However online-acquired donors tend to have
slightly lower retention rates than mail-acquired
donors
This is also generally true even when controlling for
the age and income of the donor It is even more
pronounced when controlling for origin gift amount
as shown in the next section
Differences in Long-Term Value
In aggregate online-acquired donors have much
higher cumulative value over the long term than
traditional mail-acquired donors
Original gift amount is one of the most important
determinants of long-term value and online-
acquired donors join at much higher levels than
donors acquired by mail
However there is some evidence of sub-par
retention and accompanying lower long-term value
for donors acquired online at higher giving levels
New Donor Retention Rateby Origin Channel
2010 Medians
2830
Joined Online in2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
New Donor Retention Rateby Age and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
New Donor Retention Rateby Household Income and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Lifetime Revenue per Original Donor(All Origin Gift Levels)
2010 Medians
$197
$158
$72 $66$51
$118
Joined in 2007 Joined in 2008 Joined in 2009
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Online donors are acquired at disproportionately higher levels than donors acquired through direct mail Most direct mail donors join
at $10 $15 and $25 while most online donors join at $25 $50 and $100
At the lower origin gift levels (below $25) where mail donors are more common online-acquired donors outperform mail-acquired donors
in long-term value At these levels the larger gifts given by online donors in subsequent years result in higher cumulative revenue per donor
over the long term
At the $25 origin gift level where online and offline donors join in somewhat similar proportions they have similar cumulative revenue
per donor after several years
At the higher origin gift levels ($50 and above) where online donors are more common mail-acquired donors begin to outperform
online-acquired donors over the long term At these levels of giving the higher retention rates of mail-acquired donors tend to result
in higher cumulative revenue per donor in subsequent years
There may be a number of explanations for this pattern
One is that acquisition gift levels below $25 are not natural giving points for online donors and they readily upgrade out of them
Relatively small numbers of online donors join at the lowest gift levels and not surprisingly those who do tend to upgrade
significantly in their second year of giving ndash whether they stay online or not in that second year
2010 Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Levelfor Donors Acquired in 2007
Medians for Donors Acquired at $1-499
Joined OnlineJoined by Mail
Percent ofOriginal Donors
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
Percent of Original DonorsGiving in 2010
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
2010 Lifetime Revenueper Original Donor
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
These lower acquisition gift levels are typical giving ranges for direct mail donors however and as expected those donors do only
nominal upgrading in subsequent years
At the higher end of the scale on the other hand direct mail donors are relatively rare While a $50 gift is a typical size for an
online gift it is a large direct mail acquisition gift Fewer than 12 of all mail-acquired donors join at $50 or above each year
and those who do are likely to be significantly more invested in the organization than those who join at lower levels It is not
surprising that donors acquired by mail at these higher levels have higher retention rates than their online-acquired equivalents
and that this results in higher cumulative value over the long term
In general then most online-acquired donors are acquired at origin gift levels where they under-perform their mail-acquired equivalents
This may be due more to the specific characteristics of the donors and their relative level of commitment to the organization than the
fundraising practices used to cultivate them
For a version of the chart on the previous page showing donors acquired in 2008 please see Appendix B
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Who Gives Through More Than One Channel
Online and Offline Multichannel Giving
While multichannel giving is a popular topic in the direct marketing
fundraising community it is not ubiquitous in practice Significant
multichannel communication may occur notably via email website
content or social media but not multichannel giving
Multichannel donors are almost exclusively online-acquired donors
who later start giving direct mail gifts This is the only situation in
which there are consistently significant numbers of cross-channel
donors across all organizations
In our analysis of giving channel migration we focus on donors who
gave only one gift in their acquisition year These one-gift donors
make up the vast majority (82) of all donors so they can serve as a
reasonable proxy for the entire donor population and provide a control
for giving frequency without making the study unduly complex
What we found is that every year high percentages of online-acquired donors switch from online to offline giving primarily to direct
mail The reverse is not true however only a tiny percentage of mail-acquired donors give online in later years
In other words the number of donors who migrate from online to offline giving can be significant to an organization while the number
who migrate from offline to online giving may not be noticeable at all
Other Acquisition Channels
Donors do of course join through channels other than direct mail and the
Internet Donors may be acquired through a number of disparate channels
such as DRTV events telemarketing and face-to-face canvassing
However these other offline acquisition techniques together make up
only about 8 of all acquisitions each year And of the 28 organizations
participating in our benchmarking analysis only a few employed one or
more of these channels
Organizations that do significant face-to-face canvassing DRTV or
event acquisition do tend to see large numbers of those donors converting
to regular monthly sustainer or direct mail giving in later years But because
so few organizations employ each technique for our 28 participants there is
no movement between these different offline sources on the scale of the
movement of online-acquired donors to direct mail
Distribution of 2010 Renewal Gifts by ChannelMedians for Donors Acquired as
One-Gift Donors in 2009
60
32
9 7
3
91
Joined Onlinein 2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Evidence from our benchmarking groups suggests that organizations that use a wide range of techniques mdash beyond direct mail and the
Internet mdash to acquire new donors do tend to have robust fundraising programs While implementation of these multichannel acquisition
programs often requires higher levels of investment having a variety of acquisition methods available often results in greater success
Online-to-Offline Migration
When online-acquired donors move offline they tend to do so quickly in their first renewal year They then continue to give offline in
similar proportions in subsequent years After three or four years about half of all online-acquired donors are giving offline gifts and
over 40 are giving exclusively offline primarily through direct mail
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In addition as the chart on the previous page shows new donors who were retained in their second year (here in 2008) are far more
likely to still be giving four years later (in 2010) than donors who lapsed in their second year
In fact of the 2007 online-acquired donors who were still giving in 2010 more than half of them had given for all four of the years
they had been on file Most donors give consistently over consecutive years or they lapse out and do not return Donors who skip
years mdash who have a pattern of lapsing and reactivating mdash are relatively rare
For a version of this chart showing the four-year migration of mail-acquired donors see Appendix C
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Where Multiple Giving Channels Increase Retention and Value
Online-Acquired Donors
Multichannel giving does correspond with higher retention and increased donor value for one key population new donors acquired
online This is the only group in which significant numbers of donors readily switch giving channels
If the Internet was the only giving channel available to these new donors their retention rates and subsequent long-term value would
be a fraction of what they actually are It is the ability to use another channel mdash specifically direct mail mdash that drives up the retention
and long-term value of a population of newly acquired donors
Direct mail is a very effective method of getting repeat gifts from donors Over time the high giving amounts of online donors coupled
with the high donor retention rates provided by direct mail make for a powerful combination
The charts on the following page illustrate the difference that the availability of multiple giving channels makes over time for new
online-acquired and mail-acquired donors They compare the actual performance of all donors acquired in 2007 to the performance
of the same set of donors including only gifts given to their channel of origin
The lines that include all giving
show the donorsrsquo behavior in the
real (multichannel) world The lines
that include only giving to the origin
channel simulate what the donorsrsquo
giving would be if they were only
able to give in a single channel
world
This analysis shows that having
multiple channels makes only a
small difference for mail-acquired
donors Donors who join through
direct mail do not gain a significant
advantage from the ability to
give through other channels in
later years They typically prefer
to continue giving through the
same channel by which they were
acquired
In contrast the ability to give
via different channels makes a
significant difference for online-
acquired donors When offline gifts
are excluded from online-acquired
donorsrsquo giving their retention and
resulting cumulative long-term
value both drop considerably
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In the real multichannel world each donor that was acquired online in 2007 was worth $197 by 2010 If all of their offline giving is
excluded their value drops to $128
For versions of these charts showing year-by-year trends for donors acquired in 2008 see Appendix D
The Impact of Cross-Channel Giving on Giving Amounts
There is some concern that moving online donors to offline primarily direct mail channels will result in downgrades of gift amounts
When online-acquired donors move
offline it does indeed have a negative
effect on revenue donors who switch
to offline channels upgrade less than
donors who stay online For our bench-
marking participants donors acquired
online in 2009 upgraded by $10 when
they stayed online but only $2 when
they moved offline in 2010
In addition the higher the donorrsquos
original gift amount the less they
upgrade and in fact the more likely
it is that they will actually downgrade
if they move offline
Donors acquired online at $10-$14 for example upgraded by roughly similar amounts in their renewal year whether they stayed
online or moved offline Donors acquired online at $100-$249 on the other hand downgraded when they moved offline
Again to control for the effects of gift frequency we have restricted this analysis to the 82 of annual donors who are single gift
givers
Over the long term this downgrading is still outweighed by the increased retention rates that result when online-acquired donors
become multichannel donors mdash that is when they give by direct mail
Donors acquired at the
$100-$249 level in 2007
are a case in point In
the real multichannel
world each donor that
was acquired online in
2007 was worth $310
by 2010 If all of their
offline giving is excluded
their value drops to $231
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
22 of the original donors acquired in 2007 are still giving in 2010 but this number drops to only 12 when all offline giving is
excluded This also means that the disparity in long-term value between these two populations will only increase in future years
Creating a True Single Channel Environment
The single channel simulations above cause any online donors who renewed offline to appear as though they were lapsed In reality
of course some of these donors would have given again through the online channel
Although the fall-off in donors and revenue would probably not be as dramatic as presented here it would still be substantial
While the Internet has proven a source for new donor acquisition it is not a reliable channel for renewing donor support In past
years we have worked with organizations who could not integrate online giving with the rest of the direct marketing program due to
technology constraints and they did experience steep drop-offs in online-acquired donor populations similar to what is shown in
these simulations
With testing we could determine exactly how many online-acquired donors would have given again if no offline means of renewal
existed But because of the dominance and success of direct mail programs organizations are justifiably reluctant to hold any online-
acquired donors out of the direct mail stream
A Note About Mail-Acquired Cross-Channel Donors
Donors who join through direct mail and then start giving online typically give much larger gifts and have higher cumulative long-term
value than donors who only ever give by mail
However the number of mail-acquired donors who migrate to online giving is so small that it has very little impact on overall revenue
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation
Most donors on file are steady donors who have given recently Excluding new donors 72 of all 2010 givers had also given in 2009
For these consistent donors already on an organizationrsquos file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant
factor in predicting future retention or value Traditional recency frequency and monetary amount (RFM) factors that encapsulate the
donorrsquos engagement and prior giving behavior are much more predictive of future performance
For example if a donor has given one gift of $50 in each of the last four years that donor will give similar amounts and will retain at
the same rate in the current year regardless of whether that donor has given only online only offline or a combination of online and
offline gifts in the past
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level
To determine whether multichannel giving alone accounts for higher value or better retention of donors already on file we must first
control for RFM variables
Isolating the effects of gift frequency is particularly important
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift
donors as well and multiple-gift donors invariably perform
better than one-gift donors If the performance of mainly two-
gift multichannel donors is compared against that of mainly
one-gift single channel donors the multichannel donors
will always perform better mdash not necessarily because they
are multichannel donors but because they are multiple-gift
donors
The charts in this section show donors acquired online in
2007 divided into two different populations One group
donors who gave online in 2009 serves as our proxy for
single channel donors because they are still giving by
their channel of origin The other group donors who gave
offline in 2009 serves as our proxy for multichannel donors
because they have switched channels
These charts compare single channel and multichannel
giving in the RFM segments where online-acquired donors
are the most plentiful one-gift donors who gave last year at
the three most common giving levels for online donors
This analysis shows that when controlling for RFM factors
those donors who remained giving only within the online
channel in 2009 (single channel donors) and those donors who had migrated to offline giving in 2009 (multichannel donors) gave similar
amounts in 2010
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 5
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Differences in Online and Offline Giving
The Growth of Online Giving
For the organizations participating in our donorCentrics
Internet benchmarking groups the vast majority of gifts are
made through direct mail The typical organization receives
more than three-quarters of its total gifts through direct mail
and only 10 of its gifts online
Direct mail acquisition is also responsible for three quarters
of all new donors
Over the past several years however the overall number of
gifts given online and the number of donors acquired online
have both grown steadily The Internet is becoming an
increasingly significant source of giving and of new donor
acquisition in particular
Participants in the online benchmarking groups are a self-
selected group of organizations which are particularly
focused on the topic of online giving and therefore have
larger online programs than other similar nonprofits
Percentages of gifts and donors coming in online will be
smaller for the industry as a whole
Demographic Differences
Online-acquired donors have different demographic profiles
and different giving patterns than traditional primarily direct
mail-acquired donors
Most notably online-acquired donors are significantly
younger than mail-acquired donors
Given the high average age of donors to many benchmarking
organizations the online channelrsquos ability to attract younger
donors is very appealing
Distribution of New Donorsby Channel2010 Medians
16
76
8
JoinedOnline
Joinedby Mail
Joinedby OtherOffline
Distribution of All Giftsby Channel2010 Medians
10
79
11
Online Mail OtherOffline
Trends in the Percent of Donors Giving Online2006-2010 Medians
9
5
12
5
8
14
6
9
16
7
10
7
New Donors Multi-Year Donors All Donors
Distribution of New Donors by Agewithin Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Online donors also tend to have higher household
incomes than mail-acquired donors
Differences in Giving Behavior
Online-acquired donors tend to give much larger
gifts and to give more in total revenue each year
than mail-acquired donors
This is true even when controlling for the age and
income of the donor
Distribution of New Donors by Household Incomewithin Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Age and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Household Income and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Origin Channel
2010 Medians
$62
$32
Joined Online Joined by Mail
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
However online-acquired donors tend to have
slightly lower retention rates than mail-acquired
donors
This is also generally true even when controlling for
the age and income of the donor It is even more
pronounced when controlling for origin gift amount
as shown in the next section
Differences in Long-Term Value
In aggregate online-acquired donors have much
higher cumulative value over the long term than
traditional mail-acquired donors
Original gift amount is one of the most important
determinants of long-term value and online-
acquired donors join at much higher levels than
donors acquired by mail
However there is some evidence of sub-par
retention and accompanying lower long-term value
for donors acquired online at higher giving levels
New Donor Retention Rateby Origin Channel
2010 Medians
2830
Joined Online in2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
New Donor Retention Rateby Age and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
New Donor Retention Rateby Household Income and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Lifetime Revenue per Original Donor(All Origin Gift Levels)
2010 Medians
$197
$158
$72 $66$51
$118
Joined in 2007 Joined in 2008 Joined in 2009
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Online donors are acquired at disproportionately higher levels than donors acquired through direct mail Most direct mail donors join
at $10 $15 and $25 while most online donors join at $25 $50 and $100
At the lower origin gift levels (below $25) where mail donors are more common online-acquired donors outperform mail-acquired donors
in long-term value At these levels the larger gifts given by online donors in subsequent years result in higher cumulative revenue per donor
over the long term
At the $25 origin gift level where online and offline donors join in somewhat similar proportions they have similar cumulative revenue
per donor after several years
At the higher origin gift levels ($50 and above) where online donors are more common mail-acquired donors begin to outperform
online-acquired donors over the long term At these levels of giving the higher retention rates of mail-acquired donors tend to result
in higher cumulative revenue per donor in subsequent years
There may be a number of explanations for this pattern
One is that acquisition gift levels below $25 are not natural giving points for online donors and they readily upgrade out of them
Relatively small numbers of online donors join at the lowest gift levels and not surprisingly those who do tend to upgrade
significantly in their second year of giving ndash whether they stay online or not in that second year
2010 Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Levelfor Donors Acquired in 2007
Medians for Donors Acquired at $1-499
Joined OnlineJoined by Mail
Percent ofOriginal Donors
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
Percent of Original DonorsGiving in 2010
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
2010 Lifetime Revenueper Original Donor
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
These lower acquisition gift levels are typical giving ranges for direct mail donors however and as expected those donors do only
nominal upgrading in subsequent years
At the higher end of the scale on the other hand direct mail donors are relatively rare While a $50 gift is a typical size for an
online gift it is a large direct mail acquisition gift Fewer than 12 of all mail-acquired donors join at $50 or above each year
and those who do are likely to be significantly more invested in the organization than those who join at lower levels It is not
surprising that donors acquired by mail at these higher levels have higher retention rates than their online-acquired equivalents
and that this results in higher cumulative value over the long term
In general then most online-acquired donors are acquired at origin gift levels where they under-perform their mail-acquired equivalents
This may be due more to the specific characteristics of the donors and their relative level of commitment to the organization than the
fundraising practices used to cultivate them
For a version of the chart on the previous page showing donors acquired in 2008 please see Appendix B
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Who Gives Through More Than One Channel
Online and Offline Multichannel Giving
While multichannel giving is a popular topic in the direct marketing
fundraising community it is not ubiquitous in practice Significant
multichannel communication may occur notably via email website
content or social media but not multichannel giving
Multichannel donors are almost exclusively online-acquired donors
who later start giving direct mail gifts This is the only situation in
which there are consistently significant numbers of cross-channel
donors across all organizations
In our analysis of giving channel migration we focus on donors who
gave only one gift in their acquisition year These one-gift donors
make up the vast majority (82) of all donors so they can serve as a
reasonable proxy for the entire donor population and provide a control
for giving frequency without making the study unduly complex
What we found is that every year high percentages of online-acquired donors switch from online to offline giving primarily to direct
mail The reverse is not true however only a tiny percentage of mail-acquired donors give online in later years
In other words the number of donors who migrate from online to offline giving can be significant to an organization while the number
who migrate from offline to online giving may not be noticeable at all
Other Acquisition Channels
Donors do of course join through channels other than direct mail and the
Internet Donors may be acquired through a number of disparate channels
such as DRTV events telemarketing and face-to-face canvassing
However these other offline acquisition techniques together make up
only about 8 of all acquisitions each year And of the 28 organizations
participating in our benchmarking analysis only a few employed one or
more of these channels
Organizations that do significant face-to-face canvassing DRTV or
event acquisition do tend to see large numbers of those donors converting
to regular monthly sustainer or direct mail giving in later years But because
so few organizations employ each technique for our 28 participants there is
no movement between these different offline sources on the scale of the
movement of online-acquired donors to direct mail
Distribution of 2010 Renewal Gifts by ChannelMedians for Donors Acquired as
One-Gift Donors in 2009
60
32
9 7
3
91
Joined Onlinein 2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Evidence from our benchmarking groups suggests that organizations that use a wide range of techniques mdash beyond direct mail and the
Internet mdash to acquire new donors do tend to have robust fundraising programs While implementation of these multichannel acquisition
programs often requires higher levels of investment having a variety of acquisition methods available often results in greater success
Online-to-Offline Migration
When online-acquired donors move offline they tend to do so quickly in their first renewal year They then continue to give offline in
similar proportions in subsequent years After three or four years about half of all online-acquired donors are giving offline gifts and
over 40 are giving exclusively offline primarily through direct mail
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In addition as the chart on the previous page shows new donors who were retained in their second year (here in 2008) are far more
likely to still be giving four years later (in 2010) than donors who lapsed in their second year
In fact of the 2007 online-acquired donors who were still giving in 2010 more than half of them had given for all four of the years
they had been on file Most donors give consistently over consecutive years or they lapse out and do not return Donors who skip
years mdash who have a pattern of lapsing and reactivating mdash are relatively rare
For a version of this chart showing the four-year migration of mail-acquired donors see Appendix C
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Where Multiple Giving Channels Increase Retention and Value
Online-Acquired Donors
Multichannel giving does correspond with higher retention and increased donor value for one key population new donors acquired
online This is the only group in which significant numbers of donors readily switch giving channels
If the Internet was the only giving channel available to these new donors their retention rates and subsequent long-term value would
be a fraction of what they actually are It is the ability to use another channel mdash specifically direct mail mdash that drives up the retention
and long-term value of a population of newly acquired donors
Direct mail is a very effective method of getting repeat gifts from donors Over time the high giving amounts of online donors coupled
with the high donor retention rates provided by direct mail make for a powerful combination
The charts on the following page illustrate the difference that the availability of multiple giving channels makes over time for new
online-acquired and mail-acquired donors They compare the actual performance of all donors acquired in 2007 to the performance
of the same set of donors including only gifts given to their channel of origin
The lines that include all giving
show the donorsrsquo behavior in the
real (multichannel) world The lines
that include only giving to the origin
channel simulate what the donorsrsquo
giving would be if they were only
able to give in a single channel
world
This analysis shows that having
multiple channels makes only a
small difference for mail-acquired
donors Donors who join through
direct mail do not gain a significant
advantage from the ability to
give through other channels in
later years They typically prefer
to continue giving through the
same channel by which they were
acquired
In contrast the ability to give
via different channels makes a
significant difference for online-
acquired donors When offline gifts
are excluded from online-acquired
donorsrsquo giving their retention and
resulting cumulative long-term
value both drop considerably
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In the real multichannel world each donor that was acquired online in 2007 was worth $197 by 2010 If all of their offline giving is
excluded their value drops to $128
For versions of these charts showing year-by-year trends for donors acquired in 2008 see Appendix D
The Impact of Cross-Channel Giving on Giving Amounts
There is some concern that moving online donors to offline primarily direct mail channels will result in downgrades of gift amounts
When online-acquired donors move
offline it does indeed have a negative
effect on revenue donors who switch
to offline channels upgrade less than
donors who stay online For our bench-
marking participants donors acquired
online in 2009 upgraded by $10 when
they stayed online but only $2 when
they moved offline in 2010
In addition the higher the donorrsquos
original gift amount the less they
upgrade and in fact the more likely
it is that they will actually downgrade
if they move offline
Donors acquired online at $10-$14 for example upgraded by roughly similar amounts in their renewal year whether they stayed
online or moved offline Donors acquired online at $100-$249 on the other hand downgraded when they moved offline
Again to control for the effects of gift frequency we have restricted this analysis to the 82 of annual donors who are single gift
givers
Over the long term this downgrading is still outweighed by the increased retention rates that result when online-acquired donors
become multichannel donors mdash that is when they give by direct mail
Donors acquired at the
$100-$249 level in 2007
are a case in point In
the real multichannel
world each donor that
was acquired online in
2007 was worth $310
by 2010 If all of their
offline giving is excluded
their value drops to $231
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
22 of the original donors acquired in 2007 are still giving in 2010 but this number drops to only 12 when all offline giving is
excluded This also means that the disparity in long-term value between these two populations will only increase in future years
Creating a True Single Channel Environment
The single channel simulations above cause any online donors who renewed offline to appear as though they were lapsed In reality
of course some of these donors would have given again through the online channel
Although the fall-off in donors and revenue would probably not be as dramatic as presented here it would still be substantial
While the Internet has proven a source for new donor acquisition it is not a reliable channel for renewing donor support In past
years we have worked with organizations who could not integrate online giving with the rest of the direct marketing program due to
technology constraints and they did experience steep drop-offs in online-acquired donor populations similar to what is shown in
these simulations
With testing we could determine exactly how many online-acquired donors would have given again if no offline means of renewal
existed But because of the dominance and success of direct mail programs organizations are justifiably reluctant to hold any online-
acquired donors out of the direct mail stream
A Note About Mail-Acquired Cross-Channel Donors
Donors who join through direct mail and then start giving online typically give much larger gifts and have higher cumulative long-term
value than donors who only ever give by mail
However the number of mail-acquired donors who migrate to online giving is so small that it has very little impact on overall revenue
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation
Most donors on file are steady donors who have given recently Excluding new donors 72 of all 2010 givers had also given in 2009
For these consistent donors already on an organizationrsquos file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant
factor in predicting future retention or value Traditional recency frequency and monetary amount (RFM) factors that encapsulate the
donorrsquos engagement and prior giving behavior are much more predictive of future performance
For example if a donor has given one gift of $50 in each of the last four years that donor will give similar amounts and will retain at
the same rate in the current year regardless of whether that donor has given only online only offline or a combination of online and
offline gifts in the past
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level
To determine whether multichannel giving alone accounts for higher value or better retention of donors already on file we must first
control for RFM variables
Isolating the effects of gift frequency is particularly important
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift
donors as well and multiple-gift donors invariably perform
better than one-gift donors If the performance of mainly two-
gift multichannel donors is compared against that of mainly
one-gift single channel donors the multichannel donors
will always perform better mdash not necessarily because they
are multichannel donors but because they are multiple-gift
donors
The charts in this section show donors acquired online in
2007 divided into two different populations One group
donors who gave online in 2009 serves as our proxy for
single channel donors because they are still giving by
their channel of origin The other group donors who gave
offline in 2009 serves as our proxy for multichannel donors
because they have switched channels
These charts compare single channel and multichannel
giving in the RFM segments where online-acquired donors
are the most plentiful one-gift donors who gave last year at
the three most common giving levels for online donors
This analysis shows that when controlling for RFM factors
those donors who remained giving only within the online
channel in 2009 (single channel donors) and those donors who had migrated to offline giving in 2009 (multichannel donors) gave similar
amounts in 2010
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Online donors also tend to have higher household
incomes than mail-acquired donors
Differences in Giving Behavior
Online-acquired donors tend to give much larger
gifts and to give more in total revenue each year
than mail-acquired donors
This is true even when controlling for the age and
income of the donor
Distribution of New Donors by Household Incomewithin Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Age and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Household Income and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Revenue per New 2010 Donorby Origin Channel
2010 Medians
$62
$32
Joined Online Joined by Mail
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
However online-acquired donors tend to have
slightly lower retention rates than mail-acquired
donors
This is also generally true even when controlling for
the age and income of the donor It is even more
pronounced when controlling for origin gift amount
as shown in the next section
Differences in Long-Term Value
In aggregate online-acquired donors have much
higher cumulative value over the long term than
traditional mail-acquired donors
Original gift amount is one of the most important
determinants of long-term value and online-
acquired donors join at much higher levels than
donors acquired by mail
However there is some evidence of sub-par
retention and accompanying lower long-term value
for donors acquired online at higher giving levels
New Donor Retention Rateby Origin Channel
2010 Medians
2830
Joined Online in2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
New Donor Retention Rateby Age and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
New Donor Retention Rateby Household Income and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Lifetime Revenue per Original Donor(All Origin Gift Levels)
2010 Medians
$197
$158
$72 $66$51
$118
Joined in 2007 Joined in 2008 Joined in 2009
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Online donors are acquired at disproportionately higher levels than donors acquired through direct mail Most direct mail donors join
at $10 $15 and $25 while most online donors join at $25 $50 and $100
At the lower origin gift levels (below $25) where mail donors are more common online-acquired donors outperform mail-acquired donors
in long-term value At these levels the larger gifts given by online donors in subsequent years result in higher cumulative revenue per donor
over the long term
At the $25 origin gift level where online and offline donors join in somewhat similar proportions they have similar cumulative revenue
per donor after several years
At the higher origin gift levels ($50 and above) where online donors are more common mail-acquired donors begin to outperform
online-acquired donors over the long term At these levels of giving the higher retention rates of mail-acquired donors tend to result
in higher cumulative revenue per donor in subsequent years
There may be a number of explanations for this pattern
One is that acquisition gift levels below $25 are not natural giving points for online donors and they readily upgrade out of them
Relatively small numbers of online donors join at the lowest gift levels and not surprisingly those who do tend to upgrade
significantly in their second year of giving ndash whether they stay online or not in that second year
2010 Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Levelfor Donors Acquired in 2007
Medians for Donors Acquired at $1-499
Joined OnlineJoined by Mail
Percent ofOriginal Donors
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
Percent of Original DonorsGiving in 2010
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
2010 Lifetime Revenueper Original Donor
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
These lower acquisition gift levels are typical giving ranges for direct mail donors however and as expected those donors do only
nominal upgrading in subsequent years
At the higher end of the scale on the other hand direct mail donors are relatively rare While a $50 gift is a typical size for an
online gift it is a large direct mail acquisition gift Fewer than 12 of all mail-acquired donors join at $50 or above each year
and those who do are likely to be significantly more invested in the organization than those who join at lower levels It is not
surprising that donors acquired by mail at these higher levels have higher retention rates than their online-acquired equivalents
and that this results in higher cumulative value over the long term
In general then most online-acquired donors are acquired at origin gift levels where they under-perform their mail-acquired equivalents
This may be due more to the specific characteristics of the donors and their relative level of commitment to the organization than the
fundraising practices used to cultivate them
For a version of the chart on the previous page showing donors acquired in 2008 please see Appendix B
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 10
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Who Gives Through More Than One Channel
Online and Offline Multichannel Giving
While multichannel giving is a popular topic in the direct marketing
fundraising community it is not ubiquitous in practice Significant
multichannel communication may occur notably via email website
content or social media but not multichannel giving
Multichannel donors are almost exclusively online-acquired donors
who later start giving direct mail gifts This is the only situation in
which there are consistently significant numbers of cross-channel
donors across all organizations
In our analysis of giving channel migration we focus on donors who
gave only one gift in their acquisition year These one-gift donors
make up the vast majority (82) of all donors so they can serve as a
reasonable proxy for the entire donor population and provide a control
for giving frequency without making the study unduly complex
What we found is that every year high percentages of online-acquired donors switch from online to offline giving primarily to direct
mail The reverse is not true however only a tiny percentage of mail-acquired donors give online in later years
In other words the number of donors who migrate from online to offline giving can be significant to an organization while the number
who migrate from offline to online giving may not be noticeable at all
Other Acquisition Channels
Donors do of course join through channels other than direct mail and the
Internet Donors may be acquired through a number of disparate channels
such as DRTV events telemarketing and face-to-face canvassing
However these other offline acquisition techniques together make up
only about 8 of all acquisitions each year And of the 28 organizations
participating in our benchmarking analysis only a few employed one or
more of these channels
Organizations that do significant face-to-face canvassing DRTV or
event acquisition do tend to see large numbers of those donors converting
to regular monthly sustainer or direct mail giving in later years But because
so few organizations employ each technique for our 28 participants there is
no movement between these different offline sources on the scale of the
movement of online-acquired donors to direct mail
Distribution of 2010 Renewal Gifts by ChannelMedians for Donors Acquired as
One-Gift Donors in 2009
60
32
9 7
3
91
Joined Onlinein 2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Evidence from our benchmarking groups suggests that organizations that use a wide range of techniques mdash beyond direct mail and the
Internet mdash to acquire new donors do tend to have robust fundraising programs While implementation of these multichannel acquisition
programs often requires higher levels of investment having a variety of acquisition methods available often results in greater success
Online-to-Offline Migration
When online-acquired donors move offline they tend to do so quickly in their first renewal year They then continue to give offline in
similar proportions in subsequent years After three or four years about half of all online-acquired donors are giving offline gifts and
over 40 are giving exclusively offline primarily through direct mail
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In addition as the chart on the previous page shows new donors who were retained in their second year (here in 2008) are far more
likely to still be giving four years later (in 2010) than donors who lapsed in their second year
In fact of the 2007 online-acquired donors who were still giving in 2010 more than half of them had given for all four of the years
they had been on file Most donors give consistently over consecutive years or they lapse out and do not return Donors who skip
years mdash who have a pattern of lapsing and reactivating mdash are relatively rare
For a version of this chart showing the four-year migration of mail-acquired donors see Appendix C
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Where Multiple Giving Channels Increase Retention and Value
Online-Acquired Donors
Multichannel giving does correspond with higher retention and increased donor value for one key population new donors acquired
online This is the only group in which significant numbers of donors readily switch giving channels
If the Internet was the only giving channel available to these new donors their retention rates and subsequent long-term value would
be a fraction of what they actually are It is the ability to use another channel mdash specifically direct mail mdash that drives up the retention
and long-term value of a population of newly acquired donors
Direct mail is a very effective method of getting repeat gifts from donors Over time the high giving amounts of online donors coupled
with the high donor retention rates provided by direct mail make for a powerful combination
The charts on the following page illustrate the difference that the availability of multiple giving channels makes over time for new
online-acquired and mail-acquired donors They compare the actual performance of all donors acquired in 2007 to the performance
of the same set of donors including only gifts given to their channel of origin
The lines that include all giving
show the donorsrsquo behavior in the
real (multichannel) world The lines
that include only giving to the origin
channel simulate what the donorsrsquo
giving would be if they were only
able to give in a single channel
world
This analysis shows that having
multiple channels makes only a
small difference for mail-acquired
donors Donors who join through
direct mail do not gain a significant
advantage from the ability to
give through other channels in
later years They typically prefer
to continue giving through the
same channel by which they were
acquired
In contrast the ability to give
via different channels makes a
significant difference for online-
acquired donors When offline gifts
are excluded from online-acquired
donorsrsquo giving their retention and
resulting cumulative long-term
value both drop considerably
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 14
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In the real multichannel world each donor that was acquired online in 2007 was worth $197 by 2010 If all of their offline giving is
excluded their value drops to $128
For versions of these charts showing year-by-year trends for donors acquired in 2008 see Appendix D
The Impact of Cross-Channel Giving on Giving Amounts
There is some concern that moving online donors to offline primarily direct mail channels will result in downgrades of gift amounts
When online-acquired donors move
offline it does indeed have a negative
effect on revenue donors who switch
to offline channels upgrade less than
donors who stay online For our bench-
marking participants donors acquired
online in 2009 upgraded by $10 when
they stayed online but only $2 when
they moved offline in 2010
In addition the higher the donorrsquos
original gift amount the less they
upgrade and in fact the more likely
it is that they will actually downgrade
if they move offline
Donors acquired online at $10-$14 for example upgraded by roughly similar amounts in their renewal year whether they stayed
online or moved offline Donors acquired online at $100-$249 on the other hand downgraded when they moved offline
Again to control for the effects of gift frequency we have restricted this analysis to the 82 of annual donors who are single gift
givers
Over the long term this downgrading is still outweighed by the increased retention rates that result when online-acquired donors
become multichannel donors mdash that is when they give by direct mail
Donors acquired at the
$100-$249 level in 2007
are a case in point In
the real multichannel
world each donor that
was acquired online in
2007 was worth $310
by 2010 If all of their
offline giving is excluded
their value drops to $231
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 15
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
22 of the original donors acquired in 2007 are still giving in 2010 but this number drops to only 12 when all offline giving is
excluded This also means that the disparity in long-term value between these two populations will only increase in future years
Creating a True Single Channel Environment
The single channel simulations above cause any online donors who renewed offline to appear as though they were lapsed In reality
of course some of these donors would have given again through the online channel
Although the fall-off in donors and revenue would probably not be as dramatic as presented here it would still be substantial
While the Internet has proven a source for new donor acquisition it is not a reliable channel for renewing donor support In past
years we have worked with organizations who could not integrate online giving with the rest of the direct marketing program due to
technology constraints and they did experience steep drop-offs in online-acquired donor populations similar to what is shown in
these simulations
With testing we could determine exactly how many online-acquired donors would have given again if no offline means of renewal
existed But because of the dominance and success of direct mail programs organizations are justifiably reluctant to hold any online-
acquired donors out of the direct mail stream
A Note About Mail-Acquired Cross-Channel Donors
Donors who join through direct mail and then start giving online typically give much larger gifts and have higher cumulative long-term
value than donors who only ever give by mail
However the number of mail-acquired donors who migrate to online giving is so small that it has very little impact on overall revenue
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 16
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation
Most donors on file are steady donors who have given recently Excluding new donors 72 of all 2010 givers had also given in 2009
For these consistent donors already on an organizationrsquos file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant
factor in predicting future retention or value Traditional recency frequency and monetary amount (RFM) factors that encapsulate the
donorrsquos engagement and prior giving behavior are much more predictive of future performance
For example if a donor has given one gift of $50 in each of the last four years that donor will give similar amounts and will retain at
the same rate in the current year regardless of whether that donor has given only online only offline or a combination of online and
offline gifts in the past
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level
To determine whether multichannel giving alone accounts for higher value or better retention of donors already on file we must first
control for RFM variables
Isolating the effects of gift frequency is particularly important
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift
donors as well and multiple-gift donors invariably perform
better than one-gift donors If the performance of mainly two-
gift multichannel donors is compared against that of mainly
one-gift single channel donors the multichannel donors
will always perform better mdash not necessarily because they
are multichannel donors but because they are multiple-gift
donors
The charts in this section show donors acquired online in
2007 divided into two different populations One group
donors who gave online in 2009 serves as our proxy for
single channel donors because they are still giving by
their channel of origin The other group donors who gave
offline in 2009 serves as our proxy for multichannel donors
because they have switched channels
These charts compare single channel and multichannel
giving in the RFM segments where online-acquired donors
are the most plentiful one-gift donors who gave last year at
the three most common giving levels for online donors
This analysis shows that when controlling for RFM factors
those donors who remained giving only within the online
channel in 2009 (single channel donors) and those donors who had migrated to offline giving in 2009 (multichannel donors) gave similar
amounts in 2010
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 17
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 18
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 20
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 21
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 7
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
However online-acquired donors tend to have
slightly lower retention rates than mail-acquired
donors
This is also generally true even when controlling for
the age and income of the donor It is even more
pronounced when controlling for origin gift amount
as shown in the next section
Differences in Long-Term Value
In aggregate online-acquired donors have much
higher cumulative value over the long term than
traditional mail-acquired donors
Original gift amount is one of the most important
determinants of long-term value and online-
acquired donors join at much higher levels than
donors acquired by mail
However there is some evidence of sub-par
retention and accompanying lower long-term value
for donors acquired online at higher giving levels
New Donor Retention Rateby Origin Channel
2010 Medians
2830
Joined Online in2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
New Donor Retention Rateby Age and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
18-24 25-34 35-44 45-54 55-64 65-74 75+
New Donor Retention Rateby Household Income and Origin Channel
2010 Medians
Less than$25000
$25001-$50000
$50001-$75000
$75001-$100000
$100001-$145000
$145001+
Lifetime Revenue per Original Donor(All Origin Gift Levels)
2010 Medians
$197
$158
$72 $66$51
$118
Joined in 2007 Joined in 2008 Joined in 2009
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 8
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Online donors are acquired at disproportionately higher levels than donors acquired through direct mail Most direct mail donors join
at $10 $15 and $25 while most online donors join at $25 $50 and $100
At the lower origin gift levels (below $25) where mail donors are more common online-acquired donors outperform mail-acquired donors
in long-term value At these levels the larger gifts given by online donors in subsequent years result in higher cumulative revenue per donor
over the long term
At the $25 origin gift level where online and offline donors join in somewhat similar proportions they have similar cumulative revenue
per donor after several years
At the higher origin gift levels ($50 and above) where online donors are more common mail-acquired donors begin to outperform
online-acquired donors over the long term At these levels of giving the higher retention rates of mail-acquired donors tend to result
in higher cumulative revenue per donor in subsequent years
There may be a number of explanations for this pattern
One is that acquisition gift levels below $25 are not natural giving points for online donors and they readily upgrade out of them
Relatively small numbers of online donors join at the lowest gift levels and not surprisingly those who do tend to upgrade
significantly in their second year of giving ndash whether they stay online or not in that second year
2010 Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Levelfor Donors Acquired in 2007
Medians for Donors Acquired at $1-499
Joined OnlineJoined by Mail
Percent ofOriginal Donors
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
Percent of Original DonorsGiving in 2010
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
2010 Lifetime Revenueper Original Donor
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 9
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
These lower acquisition gift levels are typical giving ranges for direct mail donors however and as expected those donors do only
nominal upgrading in subsequent years
At the higher end of the scale on the other hand direct mail donors are relatively rare While a $50 gift is a typical size for an
online gift it is a large direct mail acquisition gift Fewer than 12 of all mail-acquired donors join at $50 or above each year
and those who do are likely to be significantly more invested in the organization than those who join at lower levels It is not
surprising that donors acquired by mail at these higher levels have higher retention rates than their online-acquired equivalents
and that this results in higher cumulative value over the long term
In general then most online-acquired donors are acquired at origin gift levels where they under-perform their mail-acquired equivalents
This may be due more to the specific characteristics of the donors and their relative level of commitment to the organization than the
fundraising practices used to cultivate them
For a version of the chart on the previous page showing donors acquired in 2008 please see Appendix B
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 10
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Who Gives Through More Than One Channel
Online and Offline Multichannel Giving
While multichannel giving is a popular topic in the direct marketing
fundraising community it is not ubiquitous in practice Significant
multichannel communication may occur notably via email website
content or social media but not multichannel giving
Multichannel donors are almost exclusively online-acquired donors
who later start giving direct mail gifts This is the only situation in
which there are consistently significant numbers of cross-channel
donors across all organizations
In our analysis of giving channel migration we focus on donors who
gave only one gift in their acquisition year These one-gift donors
make up the vast majority (82) of all donors so they can serve as a
reasonable proxy for the entire donor population and provide a control
for giving frequency without making the study unduly complex
What we found is that every year high percentages of online-acquired donors switch from online to offline giving primarily to direct
mail The reverse is not true however only a tiny percentage of mail-acquired donors give online in later years
In other words the number of donors who migrate from online to offline giving can be significant to an organization while the number
who migrate from offline to online giving may not be noticeable at all
Other Acquisition Channels
Donors do of course join through channels other than direct mail and the
Internet Donors may be acquired through a number of disparate channels
such as DRTV events telemarketing and face-to-face canvassing
However these other offline acquisition techniques together make up
only about 8 of all acquisitions each year And of the 28 organizations
participating in our benchmarking analysis only a few employed one or
more of these channels
Organizations that do significant face-to-face canvassing DRTV or
event acquisition do tend to see large numbers of those donors converting
to regular monthly sustainer or direct mail giving in later years But because
so few organizations employ each technique for our 28 participants there is
no movement between these different offline sources on the scale of the
movement of online-acquired donors to direct mail
Distribution of 2010 Renewal Gifts by ChannelMedians for Donors Acquired as
One-Gift Donors in 2009
60
32
9 7
3
91
Joined Onlinein 2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
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2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Evidence from our benchmarking groups suggests that organizations that use a wide range of techniques mdash beyond direct mail and the
Internet mdash to acquire new donors do tend to have robust fundraising programs While implementation of these multichannel acquisition
programs often requires higher levels of investment having a variety of acquisition methods available often results in greater success
Online-to-Offline Migration
When online-acquired donors move offline they tend to do so quickly in their first renewal year They then continue to give offline in
similar proportions in subsequent years After three or four years about half of all online-acquired donors are giving offline gifts and
over 40 are giving exclusively offline primarily through direct mail
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 12
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In addition as the chart on the previous page shows new donors who were retained in their second year (here in 2008) are far more
likely to still be giving four years later (in 2010) than donors who lapsed in their second year
In fact of the 2007 online-acquired donors who were still giving in 2010 more than half of them had given for all four of the years
they had been on file Most donors give consistently over consecutive years or they lapse out and do not return Donors who skip
years mdash who have a pattern of lapsing and reactivating mdash are relatively rare
For a version of this chart showing the four-year migration of mail-acquired donors see Appendix C
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 13
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Where Multiple Giving Channels Increase Retention and Value
Online-Acquired Donors
Multichannel giving does correspond with higher retention and increased donor value for one key population new donors acquired
online This is the only group in which significant numbers of donors readily switch giving channels
If the Internet was the only giving channel available to these new donors their retention rates and subsequent long-term value would
be a fraction of what they actually are It is the ability to use another channel mdash specifically direct mail mdash that drives up the retention
and long-term value of a population of newly acquired donors
Direct mail is a very effective method of getting repeat gifts from donors Over time the high giving amounts of online donors coupled
with the high donor retention rates provided by direct mail make for a powerful combination
The charts on the following page illustrate the difference that the availability of multiple giving channels makes over time for new
online-acquired and mail-acquired donors They compare the actual performance of all donors acquired in 2007 to the performance
of the same set of donors including only gifts given to their channel of origin
The lines that include all giving
show the donorsrsquo behavior in the
real (multichannel) world The lines
that include only giving to the origin
channel simulate what the donorsrsquo
giving would be if they were only
able to give in a single channel
world
This analysis shows that having
multiple channels makes only a
small difference for mail-acquired
donors Donors who join through
direct mail do not gain a significant
advantage from the ability to
give through other channels in
later years They typically prefer
to continue giving through the
same channel by which they were
acquired
In contrast the ability to give
via different channels makes a
significant difference for online-
acquired donors When offline gifts
are excluded from online-acquired
donorsrsquo giving their retention and
resulting cumulative long-term
value both drop considerably
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 14
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In the real multichannel world each donor that was acquired online in 2007 was worth $197 by 2010 If all of their offline giving is
excluded their value drops to $128
For versions of these charts showing year-by-year trends for donors acquired in 2008 see Appendix D
The Impact of Cross-Channel Giving on Giving Amounts
There is some concern that moving online donors to offline primarily direct mail channels will result in downgrades of gift amounts
When online-acquired donors move
offline it does indeed have a negative
effect on revenue donors who switch
to offline channels upgrade less than
donors who stay online For our bench-
marking participants donors acquired
online in 2009 upgraded by $10 when
they stayed online but only $2 when
they moved offline in 2010
In addition the higher the donorrsquos
original gift amount the less they
upgrade and in fact the more likely
it is that they will actually downgrade
if they move offline
Donors acquired online at $10-$14 for example upgraded by roughly similar amounts in their renewal year whether they stayed
online or moved offline Donors acquired online at $100-$249 on the other hand downgraded when they moved offline
Again to control for the effects of gift frequency we have restricted this analysis to the 82 of annual donors who are single gift
givers
Over the long term this downgrading is still outweighed by the increased retention rates that result when online-acquired donors
become multichannel donors mdash that is when they give by direct mail
Donors acquired at the
$100-$249 level in 2007
are a case in point In
the real multichannel
world each donor that
was acquired online in
2007 was worth $310
by 2010 If all of their
offline giving is excluded
their value drops to $231
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 15
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
22 of the original donors acquired in 2007 are still giving in 2010 but this number drops to only 12 when all offline giving is
excluded This also means that the disparity in long-term value between these two populations will only increase in future years
Creating a True Single Channel Environment
The single channel simulations above cause any online donors who renewed offline to appear as though they were lapsed In reality
of course some of these donors would have given again through the online channel
Although the fall-off in donors and revenue would probably not be as dramatic as presented here it would still be substantial
While the Internet has proven a source for new donor acquisition it is not a reliable channel for renewing donor support In past
years we have worked with organizations who could not integrate online giving with the rest of the direct marketing program due to
technology constraints and they did experience steep drop-offs in online-acquired donor populations similar to what is shown in
these simulations
With testing we could determine exactly how many online-acquired donors would have given again if no offline means of renewal
existed But because of the dominance and success of direct mail programs organizations are justifiably reluctant to hold any online-
acquired donors out of the direct mail stream
A Note About Mail-Acquired Cross-Channel Donors
Donors who join through direct mail and then start giving online typically give much larger gifts and have higher cumulative long-term
value than donors who only ever give by mail
However the number of mail-acquired donors who migrate to online giving is so small that it has very little impact on overall revenue
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 16
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation
Most donors on file are steady donors who have given recently Excluding new donors 72 of all 2010 givers had also given in 2009
For these consistent donors already on an organizationrsquos file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant
factor in predicting future retention or value Traditional recency frequency and monetary amount (RFM) factors that encapsulate the
donorrsquos engagement and prior giving behavior are much more predictive of future performance
For example if a donor has given one gift of $50 in each of the last four years that donor will give similar amounts and will retain at
the same rate in the current year regardless of whether that donor has given only online only offline or a combination of online and
offline gifts in the past
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level
To determine whether multichannel giving alone accounts for higher value or better retention of donors already on file we must first
control for RFM variables
Isolating the effects of gift frequency is particularly important
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift
donors as well and multiple-gift donors invariably perform
better than one-gift donors If the performance of mainly two-
gift multichannel donors is compared against that of mainly
one-gift single channel donors the multichannel donors
will always perform better mdash not necessarily because they
are multichannel donors but because they are multiple-gift
donors
The charts in this section show donors acquired online in
2007 divided into two different populations One group
donors who gave online in 2009 serves as our proxy for
single channel donors because they are still giving by
their channel of origin The other group donors who gave
offline in 2009 serves as our proxy for multichannel donors
because they have switched channels
These charts compare single channel and multichannel
giving in the RFM segments where online-acquired donors
are the most plentiful one-gift donors who gave last year at
the three most common giving levels for online donors
This analysis shows that when controlling for RFM factors
those donors who remained giving only within the online
channel in 2009 (single channel donors) and those donors who had migrated to offline giving in 2009 (multichannel donors) gave similar
amounts in 2010
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 17
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 18
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 20
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 21
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 8
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Online donors are acquired at disproportionately higher levels than donors acquired through direct mail Most direct mail donors join
at $10 $15 and $25 while most online donors join at $25 $50 and $100
At the lower origin gift levels (below $25) where mail donors are more common online-acquired donors outperform mail-acquired donors
in long-term value At these levels the larger gifts given by online donors in subsequent years result in higher cumulative revenue per donor
over the long term
At the $25 origin gift level where online and offline donors join in somewhat similar proportions they have similar cumulative revenue
per donor after several years
At the higher origin gift levels ($50 and above) where online donors are more common mail-acquired donors begin to outperform
online-acquired donors over the long term At these levels of giving the higher retention rates of mail-acquired donors tend to result
in higher cumulative revenue per donor in subsequent years
There may be a number of explanations for this pattern
One is that acquisition gift levels below $25 are not natural giving points for online donors and they readily upgrade out of them
Relatively small numbers of online donors join at the lowest gift levels and not surprisingly those who do tend to upgrade
significantly in their second year of giving ndash whether they stay online or not in that second year
2010 Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Levelfor Donors Acquired in 2007
Medians for Donors Acquired at $1-499
Joined OnlineJoined by Mail
Percent ofOriginal Donors
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
Percent of Original DonorsGiving in 2010
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
2010 Lifetime Revenueper Original Donor
$1-9
$10-14
$15-24
$25-34
$35-49
$50-74
$75-99
$100-249
$250-499
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 9
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
These lower acquisition gift levels are typical giving ranges for direct mail donors however and as expected those donors do only
nominal upgrading in subsequent years
At the higher end of the scale on the other hand direct mail donors are relatively rare While a $50 gift is a typical size for an
online gift it is a large direct mail acquisition gift Fewer than 12 of all mail-acquired donors join at $50 or above each year
and those who do are likely to be significantly more invested in the organization than those who join at lower levels It is not
surprising that donors acquired by mail at these higher levels have higher retention rates than their online-acquired equivalents
and that this results in higher cumulative value over the long term
In general then most online-acquired donors are acquired at origin gift levels where they under-perform their mail-acquired equivalents
This may be due more to the specific characteristics of the donors and their relative level of commitment to the organization than the
fundraising practices used to cultivate them
For a version of the chart on the previous page showing donors acquired in 2008 please see Appendix B
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 10
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Who Gives Through More Than One Channel
Online and Offline Multichannel Giving
While multichannel giving is a popular topic in the direct marketing
fundraising community it is not ubiquitous in practice Significant
multichannel communication may occur notably via email website
content or social media but not multichannel giving
Multichannel donors are almost exclusively online-acquired donors
who later start giving direct mail gifts This is the only situation in
which there are consistently significant numbers of cross-channel
donors across all organizations
In our analysis of giving channel migration we focus on donors who
gave only one gift in their acquisition year These one-gift donors
make up the vast majority (82) of all donors so they can serve as a
reasonable proxy for the entire donor population and provide a control
for giving frequency without making the study unduly complex
What we found is that every year high percentages of online-acquired donors switch from online to offline giving primarily to direct
mail The reverse is not true however only a tiny percentage of mail-acquired donors give online in later years
In other words the number of donors who migrate from online to offline giving can be significant to an organization while the number
who migrate from offline to online giving may not be noticeable at all
Other Acquisition Channels
Donors do of course join through channels other than direct mail and the
Internet Donors may be acquired through a number of disparate channels
such as DRTV events telemarketing and face-to-face canvassing
However these other offline acquisition techniques together make up
only about 8 of all acquisitions each year And of the 28 organizations
participating in our benchmarking analysis only a few employed one or
more of these channels
Organizations that do significant face-to-face canvassing DRTV or
event acquisition do tend to see large numbers of those donors converting
to regular monthly sustainer or direct mail giving in later years But because
so few organizations employ each technique for our 28 participants there is
no movement between these different offline sources on the scale of the
movement of online-acquired donors to direct mail
Distribution of 2010 Renewal Gifts by ChannelMedians for Donors Acquired as
One-Gift Donors in 2009
60
32
9 7
3
91
Joined Onlinein 2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 11
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Evidence from our benchmarking groups suggests that organizations that use a wide range of techniques mdash beyond direct mail and the
Internet mdash to acquire new donors do tend to have robust fundraising programs While implementation of these multichannel acquisition
programs often requires higher levels of investment having a variety of acquisition methods available often results in greater success
Online-to-Offline Migration
When online-acquired donors move offline they tend to do so quickly in their first renewal year They then continue to give offline in
similar proportions in subsequent years After three or four years about half of all online-acquired donors are giving offline gifts and
over 40 are giving exclusively offline primarily through direct mail
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 12
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In addition as the chart on the previous page shows new donors who were retained in their second year (here in 2008) are far more
likely to still be giving four years later (in 2010) than donors who lapsed in their second year
In fact of the 2007 online-acquired donors who were still giving in 2010 more than half of them had given for all four of the years
they had been on file Most donors give consistently over consecutive years or they lapse out and do not return Donors who skip
years mdash who have a pattern of lapsing and reactivating mdash are relatively rare
For a version of this chart showing the four-year migration of mail-acquired donors see Appendix C
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 13
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Where Multiple Giving Channels Increase Retention and Value
Online-Acquired Donors
Multichannel giving does correspond with higher retention and increased donor value for one key population new donors acquired
online This is the only group in which significant numbers of donors readily switch giving channels
If the Internet was the only giving channel available to these new donors their retention rates and subsequent long-term value would
be a fraction of what they actually are It is the ability to use another channel mdash specifically direct mail mdash that drives up the retention
and long-term value of a population of newly acquired donors
Direct mail is a very effective method of getting repeat gifts from donors Over time the high giving amounts of online donors coupled
with the high donor retention rates provided by direct mail make for a powerful combination
The charts on the following page illustrate the difference that the availability of multiple giving channels makes over time for new
online-acquired and mail-acquired donors They compare the actual performance of all donors acquired in 2007 to the performance
of the same set of donors including only gifts given to their channel of origin
The lines that include all giving
show the donorsrsquo behavior in the
real (multichannel) world The lines
that include only giving to the origin
channel simulate what the donorsrsquo
giving would be if they were only
able to give in a single channel
world
This analysis shows that having
multiple channels makes only a
small difference for mail-acquired
donors Donors who join through
direct mail do not gain a significant
advantage from the ability to
give through other channels in
later years They typically prefer
to continue giving through the
same channel by which they were
acquired
In contrast the ability to give
via different channels makes a
significant difference for online-
acquired donors When offline gifts
are excluded from online-acquired
donorsrsquo giving their retention and
resulting cumulative long-term
value both drop considerably
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 14
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In the real multichannel world each donor that was acquired online in 2007 was worth $197 by 2010 If all of their offline giving is
excluded their value drops to $128
For versions of these charts showing year-by-year trends for donors acquired in 2008 see Appendix D
The Impact of Cross-Channel Giving on Giving Amounts
There is some concern that moving online donors to offline primarily direct mail channels will result in downgrades of gift amounts
When online-acquired donors move
offline it does indeed have a negative
effect on revenue donors who switch
to offline channels upgrade less than
donors who stay online For our bench-
marking participants donors acquired
online in 2009 upgraded by $10 when
they stayed online but only $2 when
they moved offline in 2010
In addition the higher the donorrsquos
original gift amount the less they
upgrade and in fact the more likely
it is that they will actually downgrade
if they move offline
Donors acquired online at $10-$14 for example upgraded by roughly similar amounts in their renewal year whether they stayed
online or moved offline Donors acquired online at $100-$249 on the other hand downgraded when they moved offline
Again to control for the effects of gift frequency we have restricted this analysis to the 82 of annual donors who are single gift
givers
Over the long term this downgrading is still outweighed by the increased retention rates that result when online-acquired donors
become multichannel donors mdash that is when they give by direct mail
Donors acquired at the
$100-$249 level in 2007
are a case in point In
the real multichannel
world each donor that
was acquired online in
2007 was worth $310
by 2010 If all of their
offline giving is excluded
their value drops to $231
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 15
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
22 of the original donors acquired in 2007 are still giving in 2010 but this number drops to only 12 when all offline giving is
excluded This also means that the disparity in long-term value between these two populations will only increase in future years
Creating a True Single Channel Environment
The single channel simulations above cause any online donors who renewed offline to appear as though they were lapsed In reality
of course some of these donors would have given again through the online channel
Although the fall-off in donors and revenue would probably not be as dramatic as presented here it would still be substantial
While the Internet has proven a source for new donor acquisition it is not a reliable channel for renewing donor support In past
years we have worked with organizations who could not integrate online giving with the rest of the direct marketing program due to
technology constraints and they did experience steep drop-offs in online-acquired donor populations similar to what is shown in
these simulations
With testing we could determine exactly how many online-acquired donors would have given again if no offline means of renewal
existed But because of the dominance and success of direct mail programs organizations are justifiably reluctant to hold any online-
acquired donors out of the direct mail stream
A Note About Mail-Acquired Cross-Channel Donors
Donors who join through direct mail and then start giving online typically give much larger gifts and have higher cumulative long-term
value than donors who only ever give by mail
However the number of mail-acquired donors who migrate to online giving is so small that it has very little impact on overall revenue
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 16
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation
Most donors on file are steady donors who have given recently Excluding new donors 72 of all 2010 givers had also given in 2009
For these consistent donors already on an organizationrsquos file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant
factor in predicting future retention or value Traditional recency frequency and monetary amount (RFM) factors that encapsulate the
donorrsquos engagement and prior giving behavior are much more predictive of future performance
For example if a donor has given one gift of $50 in each of the last four years that donor will give similar amounts and will retain at
the same rate in the current year regardless of whether that donor has given only online only offline or a combination of online and
offline gifts in the past
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level
To determine whether multichannel giving alone accounts for higher value or better retention of donors already on file we must first
control for RFM variables
Isolating the effects of gift frequency is particularly important
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift
donors as well and multiple-gift donors invariably perform
better than one-gift donors If the performance of mainly two-
gift multichannel donors is compared against that of mainly
one-gift single channel donors the multichannel donors
will always perform better mdash not necessarily because they
are multichannel donors but because they are multiple-gift
donors
The charts in this section show donors acquired online in
2007 divided into two different populations One group
donors who gave online in 2009 serves as our proxy for
single channel donors because they are still giving by
their channel of origin The other group donors who gave
offline in 2009 serves as our proxy for multichannel donors
because they have switched channels
These charts compare single channel and multichannel
giving in the RFM segments where online-acquired donors
are the most plentiful one-gift donors who gave last year at
the three most common giving levels for online donors
This analysis shows that when controlling for RFM factors
those donors who remained giving only within the online
channel in 2009 (single channel donors) and those donors who had migrated to offline giving in 2009 (multichannel donors) gave similar
amounts in 2010
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 17
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 18
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 20
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 21
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 9
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
These lower acquisition gift levels are typical giving ranges for direct mail donors however and as expected those donors do only
nominal upgrading in subsequent years
At the higher end of the scale on the other hand direct mail donors are relatively rare While a $50 gift is a typical size for an
online gift it is a large direct mail acquisition gift Fewer than 12 of all mail-acquired donors join at $50 or above each year
and those who do are likely to be significantly more invested in the organization than those who join at lower levels It is not
surprising that donors acquired by mail at these higher levels have higher retention rates than their online-acquired equivalents
and that this results in higher cumulative value over the long term
In general then most online-acquired donors are acquired at origin gift levels where they under-perform their mail-acquired equivalents
This may be due more to the specific characteristics of the donors and their relative level of commitment to the organization than the
fundraising practices used to cultivate them
For a version of the chart on the previous page showing donors acquired in 2008 please see Appendix B
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 10
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Who Gives Through More Than One Channel
Online and Offline Multichannel Giving
While multichannel giving is a popular topic in the direct marketing
fundraising community it is not ubiquitous in practice Significant
multichannel communication may occur notably via email website
content or social media but not multichannel giving
Multichannel donors are almost exclusively online-acquired donors
who later start giving direct mail gifts This is the only situation in
which there are consistently significant numbers of cross-channel
donors across all organizations
In our analysis of giving channel migration we focus on donors who
gave only one gift in their acquisition year These one-gift donors
make up the vast majority (82) of all donors so they can serve as a
reasonable proxy for the entire donor population and provide a control
for giving frequency without making the study unduly complex
What we found is that every year high percentages of online-acquired donors switch from online to offline giving primarily to direct
mail The reverse is not true however only a tiny percentage of mail-acquired donors give online in later years
In other words the number of donors who migrate from online to offline giving can be significant to an organization while the number
who migrate from offline to online giving may not be noticeable at all
Other Acquisition Channels
Donors do of course join through channels other than direct mail and the
Internet Donors may be acquired through a number of disparate channels
such as DRTV events telemarketing and face-to-face canvassing
However these other offline acquisition techniques together make up
only about 8 of all acquisitions each year And of the 28 organizations
participating in our benchmarking analysis only a few employed one or
more of these channels
Organizations that do significant face-to-face canvassing DRTV or
event acquisition do tend to see large numbers of those donors converting
to regular monthly sustainer or direct mail giving in later years But because
so few organizations employ each technique for our 28 participants there is
no movement between these different offline sources on the scale of the
movement of online-acquired donors to direct mail
Distribution of 2010 Renewal Gifts by ChannelMedians for Donors Acquired as
One-Gift Donors in 2009
60
32
9 7
3
91
Joined Onlinein 2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 11
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Evidence from our benchmarking groups suggests that organizations that use a wide range of techniques mdash beyond direct mail and the
Internet mdash to acquire new donors do tend to have robust fundraising programs While implementation of these multichannel acquisition
programs often requires higher levels of investment having a variety of acquisition methods available often results in greater success
Online-to-Offline Migration
When online-acquired donors move offline they tend to do so quickly in their first renewal year They then continue to give offline in
similar proportions in subsequent years After three or four years about half of all online-acquired donors are giving offline gifts and
over 40 are giving exclusively offline primarily through direct mail
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 12
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In addition as the chart on the previous page shows new donors who were retained in their second year (here in 2008) are far more
likely to still be giving four years later (in 2010) than donors who lapsed in their second year
In fact of the 2007 online-acquired donors who were still giving in 2010 more than half of them had given for all four of the years
they had been on file Most donors give consistently over consecutive years or they lapse out and do not return Donors who skip
years mdash who have a pattern of lapsing and reactivating mdash are relatively rare
For a version of this chart showing the four-year migration of mail-acquired donors see Appendix C
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 13
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Where Multiple Giving Channels Increase Retention and Value
Online-Acquired Donors
Multichannel giving does correspond with higher retention and increased donor value for one key population new donors acquired
online This is the only group in which significant numbers of donors readily switch giving channels
If the Internet was the only giving channel available to these new donors their retention rates and subsequent long-term value would
be a fraction of what they actually are It is the ability to use another channel mdash specifically direct mail mdash that drives up the retention
and long-term value of a population of newly acquired donors
Direct mail is a very effective method of getting repeat gifts from donors Over time the high giving amounts of online donors coupled
with the high donor retention rates provided by direct mail make for a powerful combination
The charts on the following page illustrate the difference that the availability of multiple giving channels makes over time for new
online-acquired and mail-acquired donors They compare the actual performance of all donors acquired in 2007 to the performance
of the same set of donors including only gifts given to their channel of origin
The lines that include all giving
show the donorsrsquo behavior in the
real (multichannel) world The lines
that include only giving to the origin
channel simulate what the donorsrsquo
giving would be if they were only
able to give in a single channel
world
This analysis shows that having
multiple channels makes only a
small difference for mail-acquired
donors Donors who join through
direct mail do not gain a significant
advantage from the ability to
give through other channels in
later years They typically prefer
to continue giving through the
same channel by which they were
acquired
In contrast the ability to give
via different channels makes a
significant difference for online-
acquired donors When offline gifts
are excluded from online-acquired
donorsrsquo giving their retention and
resulting cumulative long-term
value both drop considerably
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 14
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In the real multichannel world each donor that was acquired online in 2007 was worth $197 by 2010 If all of their offline giving is
excluded their value drops to $128
For versions of these charts showing year-by-year trends for donors acquired in 2008 see Appendix D
The Impact of Cross-Channel Giving on Giving Amounts
There is some concern that moving online donors to offline primarily direct mail channels will result in downgrades of gift amounts
When online-acquired donors move
offline it does indeed have a negative
effect on revenue donors who switch
to offline channels upgrade less than
donors who stay online For our bench-
marking participants donors acquired
online in 2009 upgraded by $10 when
they stayed online but only $2 when
they moved offline in 2010
In addition the higher the donorrsquos
original gift amount the less they
upgrade and in fact the more likely
it is that they will actually downgrade
if they move offline
Donors acquired online at $10-$14 for example upgraded by roughly similar amounts in their renewal year whether they stayed
online or moved offline Donors acquired online at $100-$249 on the other hand downgraded when they moved offline
Again to control for the effects of gift frequency we have restricted this analysis to the 82 of annual donors who are single gift
givers
Over the long term this downgrading is still outweighed by the increased retention rates that result when online-acquired donors
become multichannel donors mdash that is when they give by direct mail
Donors acquired at the
$100-$249 level in 2007
are a case in point In
the real multichannel
world each donor that
was acquired online in
2007 was worth $310
by 2010 If all of their
offline giving is excluded
their value drops to $231
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 15
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
22 of the original donors acquired in 2007 are still giving in 2010 but this number drops to only 12 when all offline giving is
excluded This also means that the disparity in long-term value between these two populations will only increase in future years
Creating a True Single Channel Environment
The single channel simulations above cause any online donors who renewed offline to appear as though they were lapsed In reality
of course some of these donors would have given again through the online channel
Although the fall-off in donors and revenue would probably not be as dramatic as presented here it would still be substantial
While the Internet has proven a source for new donor acquisition it is not a reliable channel for renewing donor support In past
years we have worked with organizations who could not integrate online giving with the rest of the direct marketing program due to
technology constraints and they did experience steep drop-offs in online-acquired donor populations similar to what is shown in
these simulations
With testing we could determine exactly how many online-acquired donors would have given again if no offline means of renewal
existed But because of the dominance and success of direct mail programs organizations are justifiably reluctant to hold any online-
acquired donors out of the direct mail stream
A Note About Mail-Acquired Cross-Channel Donors
Donors who join through direct mail and then start giving online typically give much larger gifts and have higher cumulative long-term
value than donors who only ever give by mail
However the number of mail-acquired donors who migrate to online giving is so small that it has very little impact on overall revenue
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 16
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation
Most donors on file are steady donors who have given recently Excluding new donors 72 of all 2010 givers had also given in 2009
For these consistent donors already on an organizationrsquos file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant
factor in predicting future retention or value Traditional recency frequency and monetary amount (RFM) factors that encapsulate the
donorrsquos engagement and prior giving behavior are much more predictive of future performance
For example if a donor has given one gift of $50 in each of the last four years that donor will give similar amounts and will retain at
the same rate in the current year regardless of whether that donor has given only online only offline or a combination of online and
offline gifts in the past
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level
To determine whether multichannel giving alone accounts for higher value or better retention of donors already on file we must first
control for RFM variables
Isolating the effects of gift frequency is particularly important
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift
donors as well and multiple-gift donors invariably perform
better than one-gift donors If the performance of mainly two-
gift multichannel donors is compared against that of mainly
one-gift single channel donors the multichannel donors
will always perform better mdash not necessarily because they
are multichannel donors but because they are multiple-gift
donors
The charts in this section show donors acquired online in
2007 divided into two different populations One group
donors who gave online in 2009 serves as our proxy for
single channel donors because they are still giving by
their channel of origin The other group donors who gave
offline in 2009 serves as our proxy for multichannel donors
because they have switched channels
These charts compare single channel and multichannel
giving in the RFM segments where online-acquired donors
are the most plentiful one-gift donors who gave last year at
the three most common giving levels for online donors
This analysis shows that when controlling for RFM factors
those donors who remained giving only within the online
channel in 2009 (single channel donors) and those donors who had migrated to offline giving in 2009 (multichannel donors) gave similar
amounts in 2010
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 17
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 18
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 20
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 21
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 10
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Who Gives Through More Than One Channel
Online and Offline Multichannel Giving
While multichannel giving is a popular topic in the direct marketing
fundraising community it is not ubiquitous in practice Significant
multichannel communication may occur notably via email website
content or social media but not multichannel giving
Multichannel donors are almost exclusively online-acquired donors
who later start giving direct mail gifts This is the only situation in
which there are consistently significant numbers of cross-channel
donors across all organizations
In our analysis of giving channel migration we focus on donors who
gave only one gift in their acquisition year These one-gift donors
make up the vast majority (82) of all donors so they can serve as a
reasonable proxy for the entire donor population and provide a control
for giving frequency without making the study unduly complex
What we found is that every year high percentages of online-acquired donors switch from online to offline giving primarily to direct
mail The reverse is not true however only a tiny percentage of mail-acquired donors give online in later years
In other words the number of donors who migrate from online to offline giving can be significant to an organization while the number
who migrate from offline to online giving may not be noticeable at all
Other Acquisition Channels
Donors do of course join through channels other than direct mail and the
Internet Donors may be acquired through a number of disparate channels
such as DRTV events telemarketing and face-to-face canvassing
However these other offline acquisition techniques together make up
only about 8 of all acquisitions each year And of the 28 organizations
participating in our benchmarking analysis only a few employed one or
more of these channels
Organizations that do significant face-to-face canvassing DRTV or
event acquisition do tend to see large numbers of those donors converting
to regular monthly sustainer or direct mail giving in later years But because
so few organizations employ each technique for our 28 participants there is
no movement between these different offline sources on the scale of the
movement of online-acquired donors to direct mail
Distribution of 2010 Renewal Gifts by ChannelMedians for Donors Acquired as
One-Gift Donors in 2009
60
32
9 7
3
91
Joined Onlinein 2009
Joined by Mailin 2009
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 11
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Evidence from our benchmarking groups suggests that organizations that use a wide range of techniques mdash beyond direct mail and the
Internet mdash to acquire new donors do tend to have robust fundraising programs While implementation of these multichannel acquisition
programs often requires higher levels of investment having a variety of acquisition methods available often results in greater success
Online-to-Offline Migration
When online-acquired donors move offline they tend to do so quickly in their first renewal year They then continue to give offline in
similar proportions in subsequent years After three or four years about half of all online-acquired donors are giving offline gifts and
over 40 are giving exclusively offline primarily through direct mail
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 12
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In addition as the chart on the previous page shows new donors who were retained in their second year (here in 2008) are far more
likely to still be giving four years later (in 2010) than donors who lapsed in their second year
In fact of the 2007 online-acquired donors who were still giving in 2010 more than half of them had given for all four of the years
they had been on file Most donors give consistently over consecutive years or they lapse out and do not return Donors who skip
years mdash who have a pattern of lapsing and reactivating mdash are relatively rare
For a version of this chart showing the four-year migration of mail-acquired donors see Appendix C
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 13
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Where Multiple Giving Channels Increase Retention and Value
Online-Acquired Donors
Multichannel giving does correspond with higher retention and increased donor value for one key population new donors acquired
online This is the only group in which significant numbers of donors readily switch giving channels
If the Internet was the only giving channel available to these new donors their retention rates and subsequent long-term value would
be a fraction of what they actually are It is the ability to use another channel mdash specifically direct mail mdash that drives up the retention
and long-term value of a population of newly acquired donors
Direct mail is a very effective method of getting repeat gifts from donors Over time the high giving amounts of online donors coupled
with the high donor retention rates provided by direct mail make for a powerful combination
The charts on the following page illustrate the difference that the availability of multiple giving channels makes over time for new
online-acquired and mail-acquired donors They compare the actual performance of all donors acquired in 2007 to the performance
of the same set of donors including only gifts given to their channel of origin
The lines that include all giving
show the donorsrsquo behavior in the
real (multichannel) world The lines
that include only giving to the origin
channel simulate what the donorsrsquo
giving would be if they were only
able to give in a single channel
world
This analysis shows that having
multiple channels makes only a
small difference for mail-acquired
donors Donors who join through
direct mail do not gain a significant
advantage from the ability to
give through other channels in
later years They typically prefer
to continue giving through the
same channel by which they were
acquired
In contrast the ability to give
via different channels makes a
significant difference for online-
acquired donors When offline gifts
are excluded from online-acquired
donorsrsquo giving their retention and
resulting cumulative long-term
value both drop considerably
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 14
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In the real multichannel world each donor that was acquired online in 2007 was worth $197 by 2010 If all of their offline giving is
excluded their value drops to $128
For versions of these charts showing year-by-year trends for donors acquired in 2008 see Appendix D
The Impact of Cross-Channel Giving on Giving Amounts
There is some concern that moving online donors to offline primarily direct mail channels will result in downgrades of gift amounts
When online-acquired donors move
offline it does indeed have a negative
effect on revenue donors who switch
to offline channels upgrade less than
donors who stay online For our bench-
marking participants donors acquired
online in 2009 upgraded by $10 when
they stayed online but only $2 when
they moved offline in 2010
In addition the higher the donorrsquos
original gift amount the less they
upgrade and in fact the more likely
it is that they will actually downgrade
if they move offline
Donors acquired online at $10-$14 for example upgraded by roughly similar amounts in their renewal year whether they stayed
online or moved offline Donors acquired online at $100-$249 on the other hand downgraded when they moved offline
Again to control for the effects of gift frequency we have restricted this analysis to the 82 of annual donors who are single gift
givers
Over the long term this downgrading is still outweighed by the increased retention rates that result when online-acquired donors
become multichannel donors mdash that is when they give by direct mail
Donors acquired at the
$100-$249 level in 2007
are a case in point In
the real multichannel
world each donor that
was acquired online in
2007 was worth $310
by 2010 If all of their
offline giving is excluded
their value drops to $231
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 15
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
22 of the original donors acquired in 2007 are still giving in 2010 but this number drops to only 12 when all offline giving is
excluded This also means that the disparity in long-term value between these two populations will only increase in future years
Creating a True Single Channel Environment
The single channel simulations above cause any online donors who renewed offline to appear as though they were lapsed In reality
of course some of these donors would have given again through the online channel
Although the fall-off in donors and revenue would probably not be as dramatic as presented here it would still be substantial
While the Internet has proven a source for new donor acquisition it is not a reliable channel for renewing donor support In past
years we have worked with organizations who could not integrate online giving with the rest of the direct marketing program due to
technology constraints and they did experience steep drop-offs in online-acquired donor populations similar to what is shown in
these simulations
With testing we could determine exactly how many online-acquired donors would have given again if no offline means of renewal
existed But because of the dominance and success of direct mail programs organizations are justifiably reluctant to hold any online-
acquired donors out of the direct mail stream
A Note About Mail-Acquired Cross-Channel Donors
Donors who join through direct mail and then start giving online typically give much larger gifts and have higher cumulative long-term
value than donors who only ever give by mail
However the number of mail-acquired donors who migrate to online giving is so small that it has very little impact on overall revenue
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 16
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation
Most donors on file are steady donors who have given recently Excluding new donors 72 of all 2010 givers had also given in 2009
For these consistent donors already on an organizationrsquos file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant
factor in predicting future retention or value Traditional recency frequency and monetary amount (RFM) factors that encapsulate the
donorrsquos engagement and prior giving behavior are much more predictive of future performance
For example if a donor has given one gift of $50 in each of the last four years that donor will give similar amounts and will retain at
the same rate in the current year regardless of whether that donor has given only online only offline or a combination of online and
offline gifts in the past
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level
To determine whether multichannel giving alone accounts for higher value or better retention of donors already on file we must first
control for RFM variables
Isolating the effects of gift frequency is particularly important
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift
donors as well and multiple-gift donors invariably perform
better than one-gift donors If the performance of mainly two-
gift multichannel donors is compared against that of mainly
one-gift single channel donors the multichannel donors
will always perform better mdash not necessarily because they
are multichannel donors but because they are multiple-gift
donors
The charts in this section show donors acquired online in
2007 divided into two different populations One group
donors who gave online in 2009 serves as our proxy for
single channel donors because they are still giving by
their channel of origin The other group donors who gave
offline in 2009 serves as our proxy for multichannel donors
because they have switched channels
These charts compare single channel and multichannel
giving in the RFM segments where online-acquired donors
are the most plentiful one-gift donors who gave last year at
the three most common giving levels for online donors
This analysis shows that when controlling for RFM factors
those donors who remained giving only within the online
channel in 2009 (single channel donors) and those donors who had migrated to offline giving in 2009 (multichannel donors) gave similar
amounts in 2010
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 17
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 18
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 20
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 21
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 11
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Evidence from our benchmarking groups suggests that organizations that use a wide range of techniques mdash beyond direct mail and the
Internet mdash to acquire new donors do tend to have robust fundraising programs While implementation of these multichannel acquisition
programs often requires higher levels of investment having a variety of acquisition methods available often results in greater success
Online-to-Offline Migration
When online-acquired donors move offline they tend to do so quickly in their first renewal year They then continue to give offline in
similar proportions in subsequent years After three or four years about half of all online-acquired donors are giving offline gifts and
over 40 are giving exclusively offline primarily through direct mail
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 12
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In addition as the chart on the previous page shows new donors who were retained in their second year (here in 2008) are far more
likely to still be giving four years later (in 2010) than donors who lapsed in their second year
In fact of the 2007 online-acquired donors who were still giving in 2010 more than half of them had given for all four of the years
they had been on file Most donors give consistently over consecutive years or they lapse out and do not return Donors who skip
years mdash who have a pattern of lapsing and reactivating mdash are relatively rare
For a version of this chart showing the four-year migration of mail-acquired donors see Appendix C
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 13
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Where Multiple Giving Channels Increase Retention and Value
Online-Acquired Donors
Multichannel giving does correspond with higher retention and increased donor value for one key population new donors acquired
online This is the only group in which significant numbers of donors readily switch giving channels
If the Internet was the only giving channel available to these new donors their retention rates and subsequent long-term value would
be a fraction of what they actually are It is the ability to use another channel mdash specifically direct mail mdash that drives up the retention
and long-term value of a population of newly acquired donors
Direct mail is a very effective method of getting repeat gifts from donors Over time the high giving amounts of online donors coupled
with the high donor retention rates provided by direct mail make for a powerful combination
The charts on the following page illustrate the difference that the availability of multiple giving channels makes over time for new
online-acquired and mail-acquired donors They compare the actual performance of all donors acquired in 2007 to the performance
of the same set of donors including only gifts given to their channel of origin
The lines that include all giving
show the donorsrsquo behavior in the
real (multichannel) world The lines
that include only giving to the origin
channel simulate what the donorsrsquo
giving would be if they were only
able to give in a single channel
world
This analysis shows that having
multiple channels makes only a
small difference for mail-acquired
donors Donors who join through
direct mail do not gain a significant
advantage from the ability to
give through other channels in
later years They typically prefer
to continue giving through the
same channel by which they were
acquired
In contrast the ability to give
via different channels makes a
significant difference for online-
acquired donors When offline gifts
are excluded from online-acquired
donorsrsquo giving their retention and
resulting cumulative long-term
value both drop considerably
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 14
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In the real multichannel world each donor that was acquired online in 2007 was worth $197 by 2010 If all of their offline giving is
excluded their value drops to $128
For versions of these charts showing year-by-year trends for donors acquired in 2008 see Appendix D
The Impact of Cross-Channel Giving on Giving Amounts
There is some concern that moving online donors to offline primarily direct mail channels will result in downgrades of gift amounts
When online-acquired donors move
offline it does indeed have a negative
effect on revenue donors who switch
to offline channels upgrade less than
donors who stay online For our bench-
marking participants donors acquired
online in 2009 upgraded by $10 when
they stayed online but only $2 when
they moved offline in 2010
In addition the higher the donorrsquos
original gift amount the less they
upgrade and in fact the more likely
it is that they will actually downgrade
if they move offline
Donors acquired online at $10-$14 for example upgraded by roughly similar amounts in their renewal year whether they stayed
online or moved offline Donors acquired online at $100-$249 on the other hand downgraded when they moved offline
Again to control for the effects of gift frequency we have restricted this analysis to the 82 of annual donors who are single gift
givers
Over the long term this downgrading is still outweighed by the increased retention rates that result when online-acquired donors
become multichannel donors mdash that is when they give by direct mail
Donors acquired at the
$100-$249 level in 2007
are a case in point In
the real multichannel
world each donor that
was acquired online in
2007 was worth $310
by 2010 If all of their
offline giving is excluded
their value drops to $231
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 15
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
22 of the original donors acquired in 2007 are still giving in 2010 but this number drops to only 12 when all offline giving is
excluded This also means that the disparity in long-term value between these two populations will only increase in future years
Creating a True Single Channel Environment
The single channel simulations above cause any online donors who renewed offline to appear as though they were lapsed In reality
of course some of these donors would have given again through the online channel
Although the fall-off in donors and revenue would probably not be as dramatic as presented here it would still be substantial
While the Internet has proven a source for new donor acquisition it is not a reliable channel for renewing donor support In past
years we have worked with organizations who could not integrate online giving with the rest of the direct marketing program due to
technology constraints and they did experience steep drop-offs in online-acquired donor populations similar to what is shown in
these simulations
With testing we could determine exactly how many online-acquired donors would have given again if no offline means of renewal
existed But because of the dominance and success of direct mail programs organizations are justifiably reluctant to hold any online-
acquired donors out of the direct mail stream
A Note About Mail-Acquired Cross-Channel Donors
Donors who join through direct mail and then start giving online typically give much larger gifts and have higher cumulative long-term
value than donors who only ever give by mail
However the number of mail-acquired donors who migrate to online giving is so small that it has very little impact on overall revenue
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 16
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation
Most donors on file are steady donors who have given recently Excluding new donors 72 of all 2010 givers had also given in 2009
For these consistent donors already on an organizationrsquos file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant
factor in predicting future retention or value Traditional recency frequency and monetary amount (RFM) factors that encapsulate the
donorrsquos engagement and prior giving behavior are much more predictive of future performance
For example if a donor has given one gift of $50 in each of the last four years that donor will give similar amounts and will retain at
the same rate in the current year regardless of whether that donor has given only online only offline or a combination of online and
offline gifts in the past
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level
To determine whether multichannel giving alone accounts for higher value or better retention of donors already on file we must first
control for RFM variables
Isolating the effects of gift frequency is particularly important
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift
donors as well and multiple-gift donors invariably perform
better than one-gift donors If the performance of mainly two-
gift multichannel donors is compared against that of mainly
one-gift single channel donors the multichannel donors
will always perform better mdash not necessarily because they
are multichannel donors but because they are multiple-gift
donors
The charts in this section show donors acquired online in
2007 divided into two different populations One group
donors who gave online in 2009 serves as our proxy for
single channel donors because they are still giving by
their channel of origin The other group donors who gave
offline in 2009 serves as our proxy for multichannel donors
because they have switched channels
These charts compare single channel and multichannel
giving in the RFM segments where online-acquired donors
are the most plentiful one-gift donors who gave last year at
the three most common giving levels for online donors
This analysis shows that when controlling for RFM factors
those donors who remained giving only within the online
channel in 2009 (single channel donors) and those donors who had migrated to offline giving in 2009 (multichannel donors) gave similar
amounts in 2010
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 17
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 18
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 20
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 21
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 12
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In addition as the chart on the previous page shows new donors who were retained in their second year (here in 2008) are far more
likely to still be giving four years later (in 2010) than donors who lapsed in their second year
In fact of the 2007 online-acquired donors who were still giving in 2010 more than half of them had given for all four of the years
they had been on file Most donors give consistently over consecutive years or they lapse out and do not return Donors who skip
years mdash who have a pattern of lapsing and reactivating mdash are relatively rare
For a version of this chart showing the four-year migration of mail-acquired donors see Appendix C
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 13
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Where Multiple Giving Channels Increase Retention and Value
Online-Acquired Donors
Multichannel giving does correspond with higher retention and increased donor value for one key population new donors acquired
online This is the only group in which significant numbers of donors readily switch giving channels
If the Internet was the only giving channel available to these new donors their retention rates and subsequent long-term value would
be a fraction of what they actually are It is the ability to use another channel mdash specifically direct mail mdash that drives up the retention
and long-term value of a population of newly acquired donors
Direct mail is a very effective method of getting repeat gifts from donors Over time the high giving amounts of online donors coupled
with the high donor retention rates provided by direct mail make for a powerful combination
The charts on the following page illustrate the difference that the availability of multiple giving channels makes over time for new
online-acquired and mail-acquired donors They compare the actual performance of all donors acquired in 2007 to the performance
of the same set of donors including only gifts given to their channel of origin
The lines that include all giving
show the donorsrsquo behavior in the
real (multichannel) world The lines
that include only giving to the origin
channel simulate what the donorsrsquo
giving would be if they were only
able to give in a single channel
world
This analysis shows that having
multiple channels makes only a
small difference for mail-acquired
donors Donors who join through
direct mail do not gain a significant
advantage from the ability to
give through other channels in
later years They typically prefer
to continue giving through the
same channel by which they were
acquired
In contrast the ability to give
via different channels makes a
significant difference for online-
acquired donors When offline gifts
are excluded from online-acquired
donorsrsquo giving their retention and
resulting cumulative long-term
value both drop considerably
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 14
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In the real multichannel world each donor that was acquired online in 2007 was worth $197 by 2010 If all of their offline giving is
excluded their value drops to $128
For versions of these charts showing year-by-year trends for donors acquired in 2008 see Appendix D
The Impact of Cross-Channel Giving on Giving Amounts
There is some concern that moving online donors to offline primarily direct mail channels will result in downgrades of gift amounts
When online-acquired donors move
offline it does indeed have a negative
effect on revenue donors who switch
to offline channels upgrade less than
donors who stay online For our bench-
marking participants donors acquired
online in 2009 upgraded by $10 when
they stayed online but only $2 when
they moved offline in 2010
In addition the higher the donorrsquos
original gift amount the less they
upgrade and in fact the more likely
it is that they will actually downgrade
if they move offline
Donors acquired online at $10-$14 for example upgraded by roughly similar amounts in their renewal year whether they stayed
online or moved offline Donors acquired online at $100-$249 on the other hand downgraded when they moved offline
Again to control for the effects of gift frequency we have restricted this analysis to the 82 of annual donors who are single gift
givers
Over the long term this downgrading is still outweighed by the increased retention rates that result when online-acquired donors
become multichannel donors mdash that is when they give by direct mail
Donors acquired at the
$100-$249 level in 2007
are a case in point In
the real multichannel
world each donor that
was acquired online in
2007 was worth $310
by 2010 If all of their
offline giving is excluded
their value drops to $231
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 15
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
22 of the original donors acquired in 2007 are still giving in 2010 but this number drops to only 12 when all offline giving is
excluded This also means that the disparity in long-term value between these two populations will only increase in future years
Creating a True Single Channel Environment
The single channel simulations above cause any online donors who renewed offline to appear as though they were lapsed In reality
of course some of these donors would have given again through the online channel
Although the fall-off in donors and revenue would probably not be as dramatic as presented here it would still be substantial
While the Internet has proven a source for new donor acquisition it is not a reliable channel for renewing donor support In past
years we have worked with organizations who could not integrate online giving with the rest of the direct marketing program due to
technology constraints and they did experience steep drop-offs in online-acquired donor populations similar to what is shown in
these simulations
With testing we could determine exactly how many online-acquired donors would have given again if no offline means of renewal
existed But because of the dominance and success of direct mail programs organizations are justifiably reluctant to hold any online-
acquired donors out of the direct mail stream
A Note About Mail-Acquired Cross-Channel Donors
Donors who join through direct mail and then start giving online typically give much larger gifts and have higher cumulative long-term
value than donors who only ever give by mail
However the number of mail-acquired donors who migrate to online giving is so small that it has very little impact on overall revenue
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 16
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation
Most donors on file are steady donors who have given recently Excluding new donors 72 of all 2010 givers had also given in 2009
For these consistent donors already on an organizationrsquos file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant
factor in predicting future retention or value Traditional recency frequency and monetary amount (RFM) factors that encapsulate the
donorrsquos engagement and prior giving behavior are much more predictive of future performance
For example if a donor has given one gift of $50 in each of the last four years that donor will give similar amounts and will retain at
the same rate in the current year regardless of whether that donor has given only online only offline or a combination of online and
offline gifts in the past
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level
To determine whether multichannel giving alone accounts for higher value or better retention of donors already on file we must first
control for RFM variables
Isolating the effects of gift frequency is particularly important
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift
donors as well and multiple-gift donors invariably perform
better than one-gift donors If the performance of mainly two-
gift multichannel donors is compared against that of mainly
one-gift single channel donors the multichannel donors
will always perform better mdash not necessarily because they
are multichannel donors but because they are multiple-gift
donors
The charts in this section show donors acquired online in
2007 divided into two different populations One group
donors who gave online in 2009 serves as our proxy for
single channel donors because they are still giving by
their channel of origin The other group donors who gave
offline in 2009 serves as our proxy for multichannel donors
because they have switched channels
These charts compare single channel and multichannel
giving in the RFM segments where online-acquired donors
are the most plentiful one-gift donors who gave last year at
the three most common giving levels for online donors
This analysis shows that when controlling for RFM factors
those donors who remained giving only within the online
channel in 2009 (single channel donors) and those donors who had migrated to offline giving in 2009 (multichannel donors) gave similar
amounts in 2010
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 17
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 18
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 20
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 21
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 13
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Where Multiple Giving Channels Increase Retention and Value
Online-Acquired Donors
Multichannel giving does correspond with higher retention and increased donor value for one key population new donors acquired
online This is the only group in which significant numbers of donors readily switch giving channels
If the Internet was the only giving channel available to these new donors their retention rates and subsequent long-term value would
be a fraction of what they actually are It is the ability to use another channel mdash specifically direct mail mdash that drives up the retention
and long-term value of a population of newly acquired donors
Direct mail is a very effective method of getting repeat gifts from donors Over time the high giving amounts of online donors coupled
with the high donor retention rates provided by direct mail make for a powerful combination
The charts on the following page illustrate the difference that the availability of multiple giving channels makes over time for new
online-acquired and mail-acquired donors They compare the actual performance of all donors acquired in 2007 to the performance
of the same set of donors including only gifts given to their channel of origin
The lines that include all giving
show the donorsrsquo behavior in the
real (multichannel) world The lines
that include only giving to the origin
channel simulate what the donorsrsquo
giving would be if they were only
able to give in a single channel
world
This analysis shows that having
multiple channels makes only a
small difference for mail-acquired
donors Donors who join through
direct mail do not gain a significant
advantage from the ability to
give through other channels in
later years They typically prefer
to continue giving through the
same channel by which they were
acquired
In contrast the ability to give
via different channels makes a
significant difference for online-
acquired donors When offline gifts
are excluded from online-acquired
donorsrsquo giving their retention and
resulting cumulative long-term
value both drop considerably
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 14
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In the real multichannel world each donor that was acquired online in 2007 was worth $197 by 2010 If all of their offline giving is
excluded their value drops to $128
For versions of these charts showing year-by-year trends for donors acquired in 2008 see Appendix D
The Impact of Cross-Channel Giving on Giving Amounts
There is some concern that moving online donors to offline primarily direct mail channels will result in downgrades of gift amounts
When online-acquired donors move
offline it does indeed have a negative
effect on revenue donors who switch
to offline channels upgrade less than
donors who stay online For our bench-
marking participants donors acquired
online in 2009 upgraded by $10 when
they stayed online but only $2 when
they moved offline in 2010
In addition the higher the donorrsquos
original gift amount the less they
upgrade and in fact the more likely
it is that they will actually downgrade
if they move offline
Donors acquired online at $10-$14 for example upgraded by roughly similar amounts in their renewal year whether they stayed
online or moved offline Donors acquired online at $100-$249 on the other hand downgraded when they moved offline
Again to control for the effects of gift frequency we have restricted this analysis to the 82 of annual donors who are single gift
givers
Over the long term this downgrading is still outweighed by the increased retention rates that result when online-acquired donors
become multichannel donors mdash that is when they give by direct mail
Donors acquired at the
$100-$249 level in 2007
are a case in point In
the real multichannel
world each donor that
was acquired online in
2007 was worth $310
by 2010 If all of their
offline giving is excluded
their value drops to $231
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 15
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
22 of the original donors acquired in 2007 are still giving in 2010 but this number drops to only 12 when all offline giving is
excluded This also means that the disparity in long-term value between these two populations will only increase in future years
Creating a True Single Channel Environment
The single channel simulations above cause any online donors who renewed offline to appear as though they were lapsed In reality
of course some of these donors would have given again through the online channel
Although the fall-off in donors and revenue would probably not be as dramatic as presented here it would still be substantial
While the Internet has proven a source for new donor acquisition it is not a reliable channel for renewing donor support In past
years we have worked with organizations who could not integrate online giving with the rest of the direct marketing program due to
technology constraints and they did experience steep drop-offs in online-acquired donor populations similar to what is shown in
these simulations
With testing we could determine exactly how many online-acquired donors would have given again if no offline means of renewal
existed But because of the dominance and success of direct mail programs organizations are justifiably reluctant to hold any online-
acquired donors out of the direct mail stream
A Note About Mail-Acquired Cross-Channel Donors
Donors who join through direct mail and then start giving online typically give much larger gifts and have higher cumulative long-term
value than donors who only ever give by mail
However the number of mail-acquired donors who migrate to online giving is so small that it has very little impact on overall revenue
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 16
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation
Most donors on file are steady donors who have given recently Excluding new donors 72 of all 2010 givers had also given in 2009
For these consistent donors already on an organizationrsquos file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant
factor in predicting future retention or value Traditional recency frequency and monetary amount (RFM) factors that encapsulate the
donorrsquos engagement and prior giving behavior are much more predictive of future performance
For example if a donor has given one gift of $50 in each of the last four years that donor will give similar amounts and will retain at
the same rate in the current year regardless of whether that donor has given only online only offline or a combination of online and
offline gifts in the past
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level
To determine whether multichannel giving alone accounts for higher value or better retention of donors already on file we must first
control for RFM variables
Isolating the effects of gift frequency is particularly important
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift
donors as well and multiple-gift donors invariably perform
better than one-gift donors If the performance of mainly two-
gift multichannel donors is compared against that of mainly
one-gift single channel donors the multichannel donors
will always perform better mdash not necessarily because they
are multichannel donors but because they are multiple-gift
donors
The charts in this section show donors acquired online in
2007 divided into two different populations One group
donors who gave online in 2009 serves as our proxy for
single channel donors because they are still giving by
their channel of origin The other group donors who gave
offline in 2009 serves as our proxy for multichannel donors
because they have switched channels
These charts compare single channel and multichannel
giving in the RFM segments where online-acquired donors
are the most plentiful one-gift donors who gave last year at
the three most common giving levels for online donors
This analysis shows that when controlling for RFM factors
those donors who remained giving only within the online
channel in 2009 (single channel donors) and those donors who had migrated to offline giving in 2009 (multichannel donors) gave similar
amounts in 2010
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 17
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 18
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 20
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 21
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 14
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In the real multichannel world each donor that was acquired online in 2007 was worth $197 by 2010 If all of their offline giving is
excluded their value drops to $128
For versions of these charts showing year-by-year trends for donors acquired in 2008 see Appendix D
The Impact of Cross-Channel Giving on Giving Amounts
There is some concern that moving online donors to offline primarily direct mail channels will result in downgrades of gift amounts
When online-acquired donors move
offline it does indeed have a negative
effect on revenue donors who switch
to offline channels upgrade less than
donors who stay online For our bench-
marking participants donors acquired
online in 2009 upgraded by $10 when
they stayed online but only $2 when
they moved offline in 2010
In addition the higher the donorrsquos
original gift amount the less they
upgrade and in fact the more likely
it is that they will actually downgrade
if they move offline
Donors acquired online at $10-$14 for example upgraded by roughly similar amounts in their renewal year whether they stayed
online or moved offline Donors acquired online at $100-$249 on the other hand downgraded when they moved offline
Again to control for the effects of gift frequency we have restricted this analysis to the 82 of annual donors who are single gift
givers
Over the long term this downgrading is still outweighed by the increased retention rates that result when online-acquired donors
become multichannel donors mdash that is when they give by direct mail
Donors acquired at the
$100-$249 level in 2007
are a case in point In
the real multichannel
world each donor that
was acquired online in
2007 was worth $310
by 2010 If all of their
offline giving is excluded
their value drops to $231
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 15
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
22 of the original donors acquired in 2007 are still giving in 2010 but this number drops to only 12 when all offline giving is
excluded This also means that the disparity in long-term value between these two populations will only increase in future years
Creating a True Single Channel Environment
The single channel simulations above cause any online donors who renewed offline to appear as though they were lapsed In reality
of course some of these donors would have given again through the online channel
Although the fall-off in donors and revenue would probably not be as dramatic as presented here it would still be substantial
While the Internet has proven a source for new donor acquisition it is not a reliable channel for renewing donor support In past
years we have worked with organizations who could not integrate online giving with the rest of the direct marketing program due to
technology constraints and they did experience steep drop-offs in online-acquired donor populations similar to what is shown in
these simulations
With testing we could determine exactly how many online-acquired donors would have given again if no offline means of renewal
existed But because of the dominance and success of direct mail programs organizations are justifiably reluctant to hold any online-
acquired donors out of the direct mail stream
A Note About Mail-Acquired Cross-Channel Donors
Donors who join through direct mail and then start giving online typically give much larger gifts and have higher cumulative long-term
value than donors who only ever give by mail
However the number of mail-acquired donors who migrate to online giving is so small that it has very little impact on overall revenue
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 16
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation
Most donors on file are steady donors who have given recently Excluding new donors 72 of all 2010 givers had also given in 2009
For these consistent donors already on an organizationrsquos file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant
factor in predicting future retention or value Traditional recency frequency and monetary amount (RFM) factors that encapsulate the
donorrsquos engagement and prior giving behavior are much more predictive of future performance
For example if a donor has given one gift of $50 in each of the last four years that donor will give similar amounts and will retain at
the same rate in the current year regardless of whether that donor has given only online only offline or a combination of online and
offline gifts in the past
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level
To determine whether multichannel giving alone accounts for higher value or better retention of donors already on file we must first
control for RFM variables
Isolating the effects of gift frequency is particularly important
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift
donors as well and multiple-gift donors invariably perform
better than one-gift donors If the performance of mainly two-
gift multichannel donors is compared against that of mainly
one-gift single channel donors the multichannel donors
will always perform better mdash not necessarily because they
are multichannel donors but because they are multiple-gift
donors
The charts in this section show donors acquired online in
2007 divided into two different populations One group
donors who gave online in 2009 serves as our proxy for
single channel donors because they are still giving by
their channel of origin The other group donors who gave
offline in 2009 serves as our proxy for multichannel donors
because they have switched channels
These charts compare single channel and multichannel
giving in the RFM segments where online-acquired donors
are the most plentiful one-gift donors who gave last year at
the three most common giving levels for online donors
This analysis shows that when controlling for RFM factors
those donors who remained giving only within the online
channel in 2009 (single channel donors) and those donors who had migrated to offline giving in 2009 (multichannel donors) gave similar
amounts in 2010
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 17
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 18
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 20
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 21
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 15
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
22 of the original donors acquired in 2007 are still giving in 2010 but this number drops to only 12 when all offline giving is
excluded This also means that the disparity in long-term value between these two populations will only increase in future years
Creating a True Single Channel Environment
The single channel simulations above cause any online donors who renewed offline to appear as though they were lapsed In reality
of course some of these donors would have given again through the online channel
Although the fall-off in donors and revenue would probably not be as dramatic as presented here it would still be substantial
While the Internet has proven a source for new donor acquisition it is not a reliable channel for renewing donor support In past
years we have worked with organizations who could not integrate online giving with the rest of the direct marketing program due to
technology constraints and they did experience steep drop-offs in online-acquired donor populations similar to what is shown in
these simulations
With testing we could determine exactly how many online-acquired donors would have given again if no offline means of renewal
existed But because of the dominance and success of direct mail programs organizations are justifiably reluctant to hold any online-
acquired donors out of the direct mail stream
A Note About Mail-Acquired Cross-Channel Donors
Donors who join through direct mail and then start giving online typically give much larger gifts and have higher cumulative long-term
value than donors who only ever give by mail
However the number of mail-acquired donors who migrate to online giving is so small that it has very little impact on overall revenue
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 16
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation
Most donors on file are steady donors who have given recently Excluding new donors 72 of all 2010 givers had also given in 2009
For these consistent donors already on an organizationrsquos file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant
factor in predicting future retention or value Traditional recency frequency and monetary amount (RFM) factors that encapsulate the
donorrsquos engagement and prior giving behavior are much more predictive of future performance
For example if a donor has given one gift of $50 in each of the last four years that donor will give similar amounts and will retain at
the same rate in the current year regardless of whether that donor has given only online only offline or a combination of online and
offline gifts in the past
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level
To determine whether multichannel giving alone accounts for higher value or better retention of donors already on file we must first
control for RFM variables
Isolating the effects of gift frequency is particularly important
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift
donors as well and multiple-gift donors invariably perform
better than one-gift donors If the performance of mainly two-
gift multichannel donors is compared against that of mainly
one-gift single channel donors the multichannel donors
will always perform better mdash not necessarily because they
are multichannel donors but because they are multiple-gift
donors
The charts in this section show donors acquired online in
2007 divided into two different populations One group
donors who gave online in 2009 serves as our proxy for
single channel donors because they are still giving by
their channel of origin The other group donors who gave
offline in 2009 serves as our proxy for multichannel donors
because they have switched channels
These charts compare single channel and multichannel
giving in the RFM segments where online-acquired donors
are the most plentiful one-gift donors who gave last year at
the three most common giving levels for online donors
This analysis shows that when controlling for RFM factors
those donors who remained giving only within the online
channel in 2009 (single channel donors) and those donors who had migrated to offline giving in 2009 (multichannel donors) gave similar
amounts in 2010
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 17
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 18
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 20
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 21
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 16
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Past Multichannel Giving Does Not Predict Future Value
The Continuing Importance of RFM Segmentation
Most donors on file are steady donors who have given recently Excluding new donors 72 of all 2010 givers had also given in 2009
For these consistent donors already on an organizationrsquos file the presence of past multichannel giving is generally not a significant
factor in predicting future retention or value Traditional recency frequency and monetary amount (RFM) factors that encapsulate the
donorrsquos engagement and prior giving behavior are much more predictive of future performance
For example if a donor has given one gift of $50 in each of the last four years that donor will give similar amounts and will retain at
the same rate in the current year regardless of whether that donor has given only online only offline or a combination of online and
offline gifts in the past
Segmentation by Gift Frequency and Giving Level
To determine whether multichannel giving alone accounts for higher value or better retention of donors already on file we must first
control for RFM variables
Isolating the effects of gift frequency is particularly important
because multichannel donors are by definition multiple-gift
donors as well and multiple-gift donors invariably perform
better than one-gift donors If the performance of mainly two-
gift multichannel donors is compared against that of mainly
one-gift single channel donors the multichannel donors
will always perform better mdash not necessarily because they
are multichannel donors but because they are multiple-gift
donors
The charts in this section show donors acquired online in
2007 divided into two different populations One group
donors who gave online in 2009 serves as our proxy for
single channel donors because they are still giving by
their channel of origin The other group donors who gave
offline in 2009 serves as our proxy for multichannel donors
because they have switched channels
These charts compare single channel and multichannel
giving in the RFM segments where online-acquired donors
are the most plentiful one-gift donors who gave last year at
the three most common giving levels for online donors
This analysis shows that when controlling for RFM factors
those donors who remained giving only within the online
channel in 2009 (single channel donors) and those donors who had migrated to offline giving in 2009 (multichannel donors) gave similar
amounts in 2010
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 17
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 18
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 20
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 21
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 17
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
In other words the fact that a donor has past evidence of
multichannel giving makes little or no consistent difference in the
amount they will give this year
This stands in stark contrast to the donorrsquos prior-year giving
level which accounts for a great deal of difference in the amount
the donor will give this year
Single channel and multichannel donors in each of these RFM
segments also renew at essentially the same rates in the following
year Gift frequency and giving level each have a greater impact
on a donorrsquos renewal rate than does multichannel giving
Segmentation by Recency
Only 30 of active multi-year donors are reactivated meaning
that they were lapsed last year
An analysis which segments donors by recency mdash their last year
of giving before the current year mdash shows similar results to the
giving level analysis in the previous section
Recency is the most important determinant of retention The
effects of recency are much more significant than the presence
of multichannel giving
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 18
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 20
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 21
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 18
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
About Target Analytics
Target Analytics a Blackbaud company delivers data-driven collaborative solutions designed to help nonprofit organizations
maximize their fundraising potential Target Analytics was the first company to bring forward-thinking nonprofit organizations together
to establish industry-standard benchmarking and openly discuss successful strategies and practices
About Blackbaud
Blackbaud is the leading global provider of software and services designed specifically for nonprofit organizations enabling them
to improve operational efficiency build strong relationships and raise more money to support their missions Approximately 24000
organizations mdash including The American Red Cross Cancer Research UK Earthjustice International Fund for Animal Welfare Lincoln
Center The Salvation Army The Taft School Tulsa Community Foundation Ursinus College the WGBH Educational Foundation and
Yale University mdash use one or more Blackbaud products and services for fundraising constituent relationship management financial
management website management direct marketing education administration ticketing business intelligence prospect research
consulting and analytics Since 1981 Blackbaudrsquos sole focus and expertise has been partnering with nonprofits and providing
them the solutions they need to make a difference in their local communities and worldwide Headquartered in the United States
Blackbaud also has operations in Australia Canada Hong Kong the Netherlands and the United Kingdom For more information visit
wwwblackbaudcom
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 20
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 21
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 19
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendices
Appendix A Participating Organizations
The 28 organizations participating in online benchmarking in 2010 were divided into two groups of 14 organizations each One
group used a July-June reporting year while the other group used a January-December reporting year The organizations included
Group 1 (Reporting Year July-June)
Alzheimerrsquos Association
ASPCA
Amnesty International
CARE
Defenders of Wildlife
Humane Society of the United States
Earthjustice
Mercy Corps
National Multiple Sclerosis Society
National Parks Conservation Association
Oxfam America
Trout Unlimited
Union of Concerned Scientists
US Fund for Unicef
Group 2 (Reporting Year January-December)
ALSACSt Jude Childrenrsquos Research Hospital
AmeriCares
Covenant House
Environmental Defense Fund
Feeding America
Habitat for Humanity International
International Fund for Animal Welfare
International Rescue Committee
March of Dimes
Operation Smile
Planned Parenthood
Project Hope
Save the Children
Smithsonian Institution
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 20
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 21
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 20
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix B Lifetime Giving by Origin Gift Level for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 21
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 21
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix C Four-Year Migration of Donors Acquired by Mail in 2007
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners
copy July 2011 | 2000 Daniel Island Drive Charleston SC 29492 T 8004439441 E solutionsblackbaudcom W wwwblackbaudcom 22
2011 donorCentricstrade Internet and Multichannel Giving Benchmarking Report
Appendix D Annual Giving for Donors Acquired in 2008
copy May 2011 Blackbaud Inc
This white paper is for informational purposes only
Blackbaud makes no warranties expressed or
implied in this summary The information contained
in this document represents the current view of
Blackbaud Inc on the items discussed as of the
date of this publication
All Blackbaud product names appearing herein are
trademarks or registered trademarks of Blackbaud
Inc The names of actual companies and products
mentioned herein may be the trademarks of their
respective owners