Report predicts 'explosive growth' in mobile fundraising

By Kirsty Weakley. The majority of UK charities are investing in mobile technologies and nearly two-thirds expect individual income to rise next year, according to a report. 
About 70 per cent of the 301 UK respondents to Blackbaud’s global annual State of the Nonprofit Industry (SONI) report have already or plan to design a mobile-friendly version of their website and 57 per cent plan to optimize their emails for mobile devices. UK charities reported the highest use or planned use of SMS giving with 58 per cent.
The report predicts that: “The use of mobile technologies in fundraising an marketing will experience explosive growth, in most cases more than doubling in the next 12 months.”
Some 63 per cent of UK charities said that they were optimistic of their organisation’s ability to increase the amount given through individual donations. This is a slightly different question to that asked last year, when 51 per cent of UK charities expected charitable income to increase.
Special events are still the most popular way to attract new donors, with 71 per cent using this method, but this is followed by social media  at 56 per cent.
Online giving
Online giving still accounts for a “relatively low” proportion of overall giving, according to the report, but all nine countries that feature reported an increase in the proportion of total online donations of between 32 per cent (the Netherlands) and 64 per cent (France). UK charities saw an increase of 54 per cent. The UK is behind Australia, New Zealand, United States and Canada when it comes to the percentage of charities which receive more than a quarter of their donations online. In Australia almost 30 per cent of nonprofits receive a quarter of their total donations online, in the UK it is 13 per cent. Italy had the lowest proportion with 6 per cent.
Donor survey
Alongside the SONI report Blackbaud conducted an online survey of UK, US and Australian consumers who had donated to charity in the past year. There were almost 1,500 respondents in the UK, the majority of them (60 per cent) recording no change in the amount they had donated to charity from the previous year. Just under one fifth (17 per cent), decreased the amount that they donated, with most citing changes in personal financial circumstances as the reason. Almost 40 per cent of donors had not made a regular donation in the last year. More than a third (34 per cent) said they were most likely to make their last one-off donation through sponsoring a friend or colleague in an event.