Soapbox Engage Blog

It’s been a long year, and like us, you’re probably eager to see 2021. To send 2020 off in style (or with “good-riddance”?), we thought we’d go through the past two years and look at the philanthropic landscape. And wow do we have some great news to share with you!

Here are some of the key statistics and takeaways we think are important to keep in mind as you lead your nonprofit in fundraising and donor care.

Table of Contents

• Overall Highlights and Takeaways
• 2019 Statistics and Takeaways
• 2020 Statistics and Takeaways

Overall Highlights and Takeaways

• Donor participation rose in both 2019 and 2020.
• Smaller donations are the most common donations.
• Mobile and online giving is critical to donors. But email is still a preferred form of contact for donors.
• Social media is an active and powerful force for inspiring and raising donations.
• Donors want to see the impact of their donations as their thanks, not gifts or marketing gimmicks.

2019 Statistics and Takeaways

2019 was an excellent year for charitable giving. According to Giving USA, it was one of the “highest years ever” for charitable giving, with a total contribution amount sitting slightly below 2017’s record donations amount.

Overall, we see a trend towards generosity, online interactions with nonprofits, and a broad interest in donations.

• Individual giving made up just under 70% of total giving, totaling $309.66 billion dollars! That marks a 2.8% rise from the previous year when adjusted for inflation.
• Foundation giving is up 0.7% when adjusted for inflation.
• Corporate giving rose 11.4% when adjusted for inflation.
• Giving by bequest declined by 1.6% when adjusted for inflation.

Compared to the year before, total giving rose 4.2%, even when adjusted for inflation. This is great news for development professionals and nonprofits worldwide!

Giving Tuesday had an impressive 2019

• Donations totaled $1.97 billion on Giving Tuesday. This statistic includes both online and other giving methods.
• Online giving totaled $511 million on Giving Tuesday, marking a 28% increase in online donations from the previous year, reinforcing the value and necessity for high-quality donation pages and virtual giving options.
• The median gift size was $50.

Some helpful data on donors from 2019

• 62% of donors preferred online giving methods (credit or debit cards) and 12% preferred PayPal as an online giving method.
• 57% of donors are enrolled in some kind of recurring giving program.
• 35% of donors found email to be most inspiring to give, and 25% found social media most inspiring.
• 47% of donors said regular email interaction about their donation’s impact inspired them to give, 23% said social media about their donation’s impact inspired them.
• 77% of donors found Facebook and Instagram most inspiring. 50% donated directly through Facebook Fundraising tools, and “of those, 82% say they are likely to do it again.”
• Nearly every nonprofit sector saw giving increases in some form even when adjusted for inflation, with double-digit growth in education; public-society benefit; arts, culture, and humanities; and environmental and animal organizations.
• Giving to religion and international affairs remained essentially flat.

2020 Statistics and Takeaways

Let’s just call 2020 “the year of the unexpected”. First-quarter reports for 2020 didn’t look too good, but a surprising second quarter and an incredible Giving Tuesday may have made 2020 the most charitable year to date (and it’s not even over)!

• The recent Giving USA 2020 Second Quarter Report and the Fundraising Effectiveness Project found giving “surged 12 percentage points in the second quarter,” overcoming the 6 percent first-quarter decline.
• In total, giving increased 7.5 percent in the first half of 2020 alone.
• The total number of donations equaled nearly half the total giving for all of 2019, so despite the onset of a pandemic, 2020 remained on course for charitable giving.
• The total number of donors in the first half of 2020 increased by 7.2 percent compared to the first half of 2019. Donor retention rate rose 1.8 percent overall, and both retained repeat donors and recaptured donors showed increases.
• 85% of donors expected their giving plans to hold steady or increase in the second half of the year, per a July 2020 study.
• While all donations saw an increase, donations less than $250 increased the most (19.2%), the $250 to $999 range saw a modest increase of 8.1%, and the $1,000 and above saw the smallest increase (6.4%).
• Donor grantmaking was up 16% in the first four months of 2020 when compared to the same time period in 2019.

2020 Giving Tuesday statistics

Despite a global pandemic and all the other things 2020 threw our way, this year’s Giving Tuesday was far more generous than 2019’s.

• Giving Tuesday donors in the United States gave a combined total of $2.47 billion.
• $808 million of that was donated online on Giving Tuesday alone, a significant increase from last year’s $511 million.
• Giving Tuesday saw a 25% increase in donations over the previous year and a donor participant increase of 29%.

Some helpful data on donors from 2020

• Canada saw online giving increase three times the rate of overall giving, and one-third of that was through mobile giving options. Mobile giving also outpaced desktop giving by almost 10%.
• Facebook and Instagram saw almost 2 million people raise more than $135 million on their social platforms, and they’re still going strong.

Additional helpful 2020 giving statistics

In our travels around the internet, we found these statistics to be helpful. Though not necessarily directed towards the performance of 2020 (or the year prior), we think they’ll be a handy addition to any fundraising plan, PowerPoint, or online giving strategy discussion.

• It’s rare that free gifts are motivating for donors. We found that 20% of donors are apt to donate money if they receive a free gift. The remaining majority (80%) said that a gift wouldn’t motivate them to donate. In fact, 66% of that majority saw a free gift as a waste of money.
• Email is still the way to go. Almost 70% of individuals who donate prefer an email expressing gratitude for their contribution.
• 49% of global online traffic is mobile internet traffic.
• Social media use has increased by 9.2% since 2019. Which is impressive, considering everyone’s using it. 83.4% of internet users are on social media. 90.7% of mobile internet users are on social media. And 98.7% of social media users access websites or apps through a mobile device.
• Finally, politics is a powerful motivator. Experts found that donors who pledged during the time of the 2016 election were more likely to stick around for the following 18 months, and for public-society benefit organizations (specifically civil rights organizations), donors who committed following the election were 50% more likely to keep donating a year and a half later. Experts expect this trend to continue in the 2020 election year time frame.

What does all this data mean? Well, Americans are not only generous when the economy is doing excellent, they band together to donate when their neighbors are in need! Despite the multiple crises our world faced this year, domestic and international giving did not falter but increased.

We’ll leave you with one last statistic to give you a smile. Myanmar and the USA are tied overall as the most charitable countries in 2020.

Not only are Americans not tired of giving, but they are also motivated to help others in times of plenty and times of crisis. Here’s to 2020 being, on paper, a pretty great year for humans helping humans.

Here are three great resources to help you put some of this excellent data to work in your fundraising efforts.

• The Nonprofit Fundraising Guide for Every Development Professional: We know that time, energy, and money are precious commodities for development professionals. That’s why we created this nonprofit fundraising guide to help you build a fundraising plan that fits your strengths and mission so you can get the best results from your hard work!
• 9 Must-Have Features for Your Nonprofit's Online Donation Page: The statistics above proved over and over that online giving is only growing in popularity. That means your donation page is the foundation of all your online fundraising efforts--and practically an industry standard! This blog will help you do a quick “donation page check-up” to make sure you’ve got all the right features for online fundraising success.
• 5 Steps to Designing Donation Tiers to Raise More Money: Setting donation tiers is both an art and a science. This feature on your donation page is a common way to boost average donation sizes. This blog will help you create donation tiers in just five (relatively) easy steps that aren’t very painful or hard.