Donors contributed 8.9 percent more to nonprofits in 2021 than they did in 2020, according to a new report from the Blackbaud Institute, a research division of the fundraising technology firm Blackbaud. Researchers plumbed data from 8,635 nonprofits and found the biggest year-over-year increase in giving since 2012. Nonprofits of all budget sizes enjoyed roughly 9 percent increases in fundraising revenue last year. Among all causes, environmental charities saw the biggest rise, bringing in 19.3 percent more than in 2020.
Last year was the third consecutive year that Blackbaud researchers recorded fundraising growth. In 2020, giving increased 2 percent over 2019 giving. It’s a good sign that donors continued to open their wallets during the pandemic’s second year, said Steve MacLaughlin, vice president of product management at Blackbaud.
“Fundraisers should be really encouraged about the fundraising environment,” he said — “2021 really showed that things didn’t go back to normal. Things went forward to the new normal, and I would expect that to continue in 2022.”
Health-care and medical-research charities increased donations last year by 5 percent and 9.7 percent, respectively. These groups tend to rely heavily on peer-to-peer fundraising events like walkathons and bike rides. Many of these mass fundraising events were canceled in 2020 but rebounded in 2021.
“We may start to see that trend continue for those types of events,” MacLaughlin said. “There is definitely a lot of pent-up demand.”
One driver of last year’s increase in overall giving, MacLaughlin said, was an average gift size of $813, which was 10 percent greater than in 2020. An increase of that size usually signals donors’ confidence in continuing to give to nonprofits, MacLaughlin said.
Among the study’s other findings:
- 12 percent of the dollars raised by the charities in the report came from online donations. In 2020, that share was 13 percent.
- Donors who gave less than $1,000 to charity last year made a median contribution of $20. Among donors who gave more than $1,000, the median gift was $2,500.
- For the second year in a row, 28 percent of online gifts were made on a smartphone or tablet.
