October 4, 2010; Source: MarketWatch | In case you missed it, Gene Austin, Chairman and Chief Executive Officer of Convio, Inc., rang the NASDAQ Opening Bell this morning. (Nothing like the sound of the bell to get your day started!) Austin is in New York this morning to celebrate Convio’s 1,300 nonprofit clients, which have raised $1 billion online in the first nine months of 2010. This is a 64 percent increase over the same period a year ago – no small feat considering five years ago, $1 billion was the amount raised online by the entire nonprofit sector.

Though Convio’s clients are doing quite well, online fundraising has continued to grow for most nonprofits despite a lagging economy. According to the most recent e-Nonprofit Benchmarks Study published by M+R Strategic Services and N-TEN [PDF], the amount of money raised online in September 2008 was 37 percent greater than in September of 2007, and the total number of online donations was up forty-three percent in 2008.

Convio provides software and support for online fundraising and donor management for nonprofits. Convio, Inc. (CNVO) has been a publicly traded company since April.—Aaron Lester