Understanding how giving trends change of the years can be the key to predicting what’s going to happen in the future and planning how you’re going to address those trends. 

In today’s podcast, Ashley Thompson, Managing Director of the Blackbaud Institute, stands in as host to interview Steve MacLaughlin, regular host of this podcast and Blackbaud’s Vice President of Data and Analytics and Senior Advisor to the Blackbaud Institute for Philanthropic Impact. Steve is the author of the annual Charitable Giving Report. Tune in to hear about the latest report and what information and insights it provides about online giving trends. 

Topics Discussed in this Episode: 

• Background on the Charitable Giving Report
• The 2017 report looks at about 30 billion dollars in fundraising revenue, including about 3 billion dollars in online giving revenue
• Sectors and geographic locations included in the Charitable Giving Report
• What made giving in 2017 different from giving in 2016
• How online giving facilitates the ability of donors to immediately respond to a given event
• The increase of online donations made on a mobile device
• The trend toward giving as a crowd
• How Giving Tuesday donors are choosing to focus on smaller and medium-sized organizations
• How nonprofits can use the type of information found in the Charitable Giving Report
• Why organizations should be cautiously optimistic in the coming year 

Links and Resources: 

Steve MacLaughlin

2017 Charitable Giving Report

Blackbaud

Blackbaud - Twitter

Blackbaud - Facebook 

“We’re trying to really isolate how did specific organizations perform from one year to the next.” 

“We keep expanding the data and research that we’re publishing on an annual basis.” 

“The reality is that we’re in this transitional phase of where donors choose to give.”