Network for Good: Economy Is Down, Charitable Giving Is Up

The biggest time of the year for online fundraising is rapidly coming to a close, or so I'm reminded daily by the emails I receive from charities that I follow alerting me to the fact that I have just 5 days, 2 days, 48 hours, or "still time" to make a tax-deductible donation. But how will it all end? Will charities see the usual rush of year-end gifts made online? Will giving be up or down in these tough economic times?

Network for Good just released some stats that show online charitable giving is up, even though the economy is down:

• Philanthropic procrastinators are flocking to the Web to make their year-end charitable donations this year, despite the downturn in the economy. More people are giving, though at lower dollar amounts than years past: Network for Good is seeing a 50% increase in the number of donations in comparison to this time last year; the donation amount is up 20%. We have been processing approximately $500,000 in donations per day since the beginning of December and we expect an even larger spike in the next few days which are typically up to $2 million per day in the last days of the month.  Annually, about 45% of annual giving occurs in December alone and we forecast $75 million in donations processed this year, which is 30% growth from last year. 
• More people are giving the gift of charity. We saw huge growth in the gift of charity this year.  Network for Good saw record sales of its Good Card (www.networkforgood.org/goodcard) - a gift card with stored value that can be redeemed as a donation to any of more 1.5 million charities. This year we have sold over $1 million in cards, and we were averaging 500 cards sold per day through December 25th.  We also have an increasing demand of people looking to send them for the New Year.

Comments

[Cheryl Mahoney]

How wonderful to see something positive about charity giving this year! There seems to be endless articles floating around about the bad economy causing a drop-off in donations. It's a pleasure to see someone suggesting something different is going on. I work for UniversalGiving, a charity networking site similar to Network for Good. I don't know what our statistics are for this year, but it's encouraging to see something positive!