Who's participated this year?

The 25 participants in our survey are all non-profit organisations, primarily from the education, development and social sectors. We asked them about their areas of focus, the volume of their donations and the sources of financing.

Unfortunately, the number of participants has halved compared to 2018. As a result, the evaluation of some "familiar" key figures from the previous year was no longer meaningful or possible. In contrast to the previous year, the participants can only be registered in three size groups depending on the respective donation volume of the organization: "Large" are those organizations that collect more than 1 million € annually. The category "small" includes those with an annual donation volume of between € 10,000 and € 100,000. Organisations that receive less than € 10,000 per year are referred to as "very small". None of the participants fell into the middle comparison group of 100,001 to 1 million € annual donation volume.

How have online donations developed?

A good third of the organisations surveyed (a quarter in the previous year) generate more than 20% of their donations online. The organisations finance themselves predominantly (66.5%) through private donations. Organizations in the "very small" category are also increasingly using other financing channels.

What could we find out about online donors?

There are very few permanent donors. The proportion is only 6%. Direct debit (36.8%) and Paypal (29.8%) dominate the payment method. How do donors get to the fundraising pages? Most find their way via search engines (37.8%) or direct input (26.6%). Social networks account for 11.2% of donors.

How do organisations recruit online donors?

For participating organisations, social media is the most important channel (72%). E-mailings, on the other hand, are rarely used. Least of all small and very small organisations. Telephone and SMS use only the "big ones" as fundraising channels.

What are the challenges?

Lack of time is cited as the biggest challenge for better online fundraising. The topic "online fundraising" is seen as more relevant for the future than for today.

NGO-Meter 2019: Ergebnisse der Online-Fundraising-Umfrage from betterplace lab