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A Walk Into the Sunset or a Walk Off a Cliff

Blackbaud Institute’s 2018 Charitable Giving Report was recently released, and though giving was up 1% (due to large donors), the most disappointing metric for 2018 is that online giving remains stuck below 10% of total giving.

Ten years ago, most of us (including myself) predicted that more money would be coming in online than offline by 2019.

But donors have been stubbornly resisting the digital transition.

This pesky fact has been the subject of much discussion around the watering holes at fundraising conferences.

Digital has disrupted nearly every facet of the economy since its arrival a generation ago. Remember travel agents, mail catalogs and Blockbuster Videos?

Yet, by and large, the old ways of fundraising remain unchanged.

I think most of us would agree that digital fundraising will replace direct mail at some point. The question on my mind is whether direct mail will have a slow, steady walk into the sunset, or will it walk off a cliff because of some new Silicon Valley innovation?

The Regression to the Mean has Begun

by Bill Jacobs | May 31, 2021

A year ago, all of us in the business of fundraising were nervous. Lockdowns were taking place across the world, there were shortages of toilet paper and no one was sure how donors would respond. No one could have predicted that donors would respond in a such an...

December 31 Emails

by Bill Jacobs | Jan 7, 2021

This past year, we tracked email solicitations for both Giving Tuesday and December 31 (your can read about Giving Tuesday here: https://www.analyticalones.com/giving-spam-tuesday/). We wanted to compare these two critical days of email fundraising. Here are some...

Giving (SPAM) Tuesday

by Bill Jacobs | Dec 3, 2020

This year, the whole Analytical Ones’ team tracked our the number of emails we received from organizations, how many we received, our relationship with the organization (active donor, lapsed donor or new donor acquisition), and, when we received the email. Here is...