June 8, 2010; Source: MarketWatch | A study released on Tuesday shows that online giving is on the rise, increasing 14 percent last year, despite challenging economic conditions. Other findings from the annual Convio Online Marketing and Nonprofit Benchmark Index Study include: overall, some 69 percent of the 499 organizations surveyed reported an increase in online fundraising over the previous year, with the balance reporting a dip in giving. The jump was attributed to numbers of gifts, with 92 percent of respondents reporting an increase, while 43 percent saw the amount of their average gift climb over 2009.

Smaller organizations—those with fewer than 10,000 email addresses on file—also seemed to do the best. Their online revenues increased by 26 percent and numbers of gifts were up 32 percent. Many organizations also saw their website traffic climb in 2009, though only at about 6 percent, which was a slower rate of increase than the 2008-2009 period, which saw growth in double digits. The full Convio study can be downloaded here [http://my.convio.com/forms/2010ConvioOnlineNonprofitBenchmarkStudyGuide].—Bruce Trachtenberg