Donations to charities increased 2 percent in 2020, while gifts made online grew 21 percent over 2019, according to Blackbaud Institute’s latest annual report on charitable giving, released Tuesday.
But it was only the largest nonprofits that benefited from the boom. Donations to big organizations, those that raise $10 million or more a year, were up 5.3 percent in 2020. Medium-size nonprofits, those with total annual donations of $1 million to $10 million, saw a 1.2 percent increase. But small nonprofits, those that raise less than $1 million, saw a 7.2 percent decrease in contributions.
The picture was rosier for digital giving, with small groups faring far better than other nonprofits. Large organizations saw a 15 percent increase in online fundraising hauls in 2020 compared with the year before. Midsize nonprofits saw online fundraising increase nearly 25 percent. Small groups expanded their online fundraising by 22.3 percent.
As donors turned to digital donations, the share of total charitable revenue from online giving jumped sharply, from less than 10 percent in 2019 to roughly 13 percent in 2020. In another sign of how digital fundraising is shifting, more donors are using their smartphones to make gifts. The report estimates 28 percent of all contributions made online were from mobile devices.
Last year “was the year of digital transformation the sector has been waiting for maybe a decade or more,” said Steve MacLaughlin, vice president of product management at Blackbaud. “When overall giving was at its lowest, online giving was at levels we’ve not seen before.”
Blackbaud’s report does not tie its year-over-year changes to dollar values, presenting only percent changes in total and online fundraising from 2019 to 2020. The report is, however, based on data from thousands of nonprofits and weighted to create a sample resembling the broader charitable sector.
Overall giving numbers in the report were drawn from data from more than 8,800 nonprofit organizations that accounted for roughly $40.7 billion in donations in 2020. The report’s numbers for online giving data were drawn from information from roughly 4,960 nonprofits that raised a total of $3.2 billion online in 2020. For context, “Giving USA” — which incorporates Blackbaud data into its annual charitable giving report — estimated total 2019 charitable giving of $450 billion. If Blackbaud’s projections are accurate, that would mean total charitable giving increased in 2020 to roughly $459 billion.
