Steve Peretz is a Senior Analyst at M+R Strategic Services

NTEN and M&R recently released our 5th annual eNonprofit Benchmarks Study which looked at nonprofit fundraising, social media, online messaging and advocacy metrics. 

The study is designed to remove the guesswork so that you can compare your results to similar organizations. 

With 40 nonprofits letting us analyze their data, this year’s findings cover more ground than ever before.   

For example, if fundraising is important to your organization, but you’re not sure you raised all you could online in 2010, take a look at our findings:
- Growth in online fundraising was slow in 2010 for most sectors, reflecting the slow economic recovery in 2010.

- In general, increases in the number of online gifts – up 7 percent year-over-year – drove what growth we did see

- The exception: The International sector, which saw an enormous 163 percent increase in dollars raised, largely due to 2010’s emergencies from Haiti to Pakistan.

Here are some other trends we saw:

Email Messaging:

- For email rates, we evaluated three distinct types of message: fundraising appeals, advocacy alerts and email newsletters. 

-Advocacy emails had the highest open, click-through and response rates.  Fundraising emails had the lowest click-through rates.

-Environmental and Wildlife/Animal Welfare organizations had almost twice the click-through rates of others.

-In our experience, advocacy actions and items of personal interest in newsletters tend to result in more click-throughs.

-The average study participant sent 3.6 emails per subscriber per month.

Online Fundraising:

- Across all sectors, one-time donations made up 90% or more of all online revenue.

-The amount of online revenue resulting from email varied greatly among sectors. The Environmental sector saw more than 50% of their online income generated by email campaigns while the Health and International sectors saw a much greater percentage driven by non-email online sources.

Online Advocacy:

- On average, nonprofit Facebook pages had 15,053 users (defined as people who “like” a fan page).

 -Nonprofit FB fan pages grew an average of 14% per month.

- The average nonprofit had 4,632 Twitter followers.

- FB users were much more engaged with nonprofits in the Wildlife/Animal Welfare sector than any other sector (their FB fan page action rate was nearly twice as high as the average).

People often ask me, what does all this data mean for me and my organization? 

Here are four ways I believe you can make the most of our report:

1.       Track These Stats.  Groups that focus on one or two stats may not be getting the full picture.  The 2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study covers just about everything we think you should be tracking in order to fully understand your online program’s effectiveness.  What matters most is YOUR data.

2.       Look for Big Differences.  If you’re seeing some really major differences it could signal something important, and that’s an area we recommend you start paying more attention to.  Ask what you’re doing differently and run tests to bring your results on par with other groups or to build on the most successful parts of your program!

3.       Listen for Clues.  Your supporters are telling you what they need—but are you listening?  The best way to get to know your supporters and learn what they want from you is to track and measure their responses at every level.  If you’re paying attention, your supporters will tell you exactly what you need to do to keep them happy and engaged.

4.      Get Social. This year’s study showed that there’s still tremendous room for organizations to grow on Facebook and Twitter: On average, nonprofits had just 110 Facebook fan page users and 19 Twitter followers for every 1,000 email subscribers. 

The complete 2011 eNonprofit Benchmarks Study is available from M+R Strategic Services and NTEN for free download at www.e-benchmarksstudy.com.