Donations to smaller groups are on the up

GiveNow, part of the same Our Community social enterprise stable as the Institute of Community Directors Australia (ICDA), recorded a rebound in giving in the crucial subsector.

GiveNow executive director Cathy Truong, speaking at last week’s Finding Funding webinar for Not-for-profit Finance Week, said the donations platform’s figures showed that the 5,000-odd small to medium organisations using the system were starting to come out of the post-covid donations slump.

“I feel like the worst of the current donation environment is behind us if you're a small to medium-sized community organisation," Ms Truong told the nearly 1000 not-for-profit leaders who signed up for the webinar.

"If there's anything you write down from today's webinar, as far as I'm concerned, it’s that for donations, 2024 is better than last year.”

She said an examination of data from January to August 2024 showed donations 5% higher than for the same period in 2023.

“That's being driven specifically by an average value donation increase of about 5%,” Ms Truong said.

While there had been no change to the number of donors overall since 2023, the average value of donations had increased.

And she said that in the lead-up to the end of the financial year there had been a 30% bump in the number of large donations, those worth $5,000 or more. The average value of those large donations had increased by 35%.

Ms Truong said the figures demonstrated the impact of rising cost-of-living pressures for some and increased disposable income for others.

“I think what we're seeing is an impact of a two-speed economy. One speed for those who are really stressed by interest rates and rental costs and the cost-of-living pressures, and then the other speed are those that have more home security and enough savings to buffer against the worst of the cost-of-living expense."

She said GiveNow figures indicated greater generosity from the second group, who were financially protected. Even so, Ms Truong believed many donors in both groups were “stressed”.

Canny not-for-profits should be careful to manage and segment their donation requests, she said; that is, to seek different amounts from supporters with different profiles.

Sophisticated not-for-profits should properly understand their donor base, and the recently published Community Compass report was a valuable tool for understanding how the six key attitudinal segments identified in the report perceived the community sector, she said.

“Once you can genuinely identify who your supporters are, this report is brilliant at helping you to understand the values, attitudes, patterns of media consumption and key messages that they respond to. This then helps you to tailor your message to these groups.”

The GiveNow platform enables users to segment regular supporters and to suggest higher donation amounts to those with the capacity to afford them.

"I don't see community organisations doing enough of this, and it's because I think we shirk away from it a little bit because we don't feel like it's quite appropriate. We don't want to ask for too much.

"But can I say to you that in not asking for this, and essentially asking for less by not segmenting or managing, you are doing your organisation a disservice."

Ms Truong told attendees that apart from good segmentation and messaging, organisations should develop:

• an all-in-one process allowing donors to make their donations on a trusted organisation’s website
• regular giving campaigns, brought in regular income and also helped “stressed” donors to manage their finances
• “crowdraiser” campaigns using leaders and high-profile individuals connected to organisations to mark important events
• plans for a revival of in-person event fundraising, as these types of events emerged from a covid-related slump
• membership offerings that generated income.

She said the GiveNow site provided help and guidance on many of those initiatives.

This article first appeared in Community Directors Intelligence, the newsletter for not-for-profit leaders.