Nonprofit update

ECFA and Maximum Generosity released their 4^th annual survey of church giving trends. You can see the ECFA press release here and visit the executive summary here.

At an overall level, giving is improving a bit. Comparing the portion of church reporting giving up, down or flat looks like this: Read the rest of this entry »

The Evangelical Council for Financial Accountability (ECFA) released their second Annual State of Giving Report. 

Donations to all of their members in 2010 increased by 5.8% over 2009.

A few comments on interpreting the data.

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ECFA has analyzed the giving of their members who renewed membership in the last six months. Looking at members with year-ends between April and September 2010 and comparing that to those member’s revenue from three years earlier produced some encouraging information.

This would include organizations who have been members at least three years, so there’s data for comparison. Keep in mind this would be for NPOs whose fiscal year-end dates were in the middle part of 2010.

That said, here is the summary:

Read the rest of this entry »

Giving is not likely to get good anytime soon. Confidence level in the current Barna survey is not particularly strong and seems to be deteriorating. Seems to me that confidence in the future is a major driver in how people will give.

If you are raising funds for your organization or trying to figure out when you can expand, pay attention to this part of the survey.

Here is Barna’s May 2011 report: Donors Proceed with Caution, Tithing Declines.

Read the rest of this entry »

Less bad – that is the description I’ve been looking for as I’ve read several recent surveys of donor giving patterns. Things are still grim but not quite as bad as a year ago.

David Kinnaman, president of the Barna Group says the following:

Now, even as the economy shows some signs of improvement, donors are still reluctant to return to their previous levels of generosity. They may be less shell-shocked than 15 months ago, but they are still cautious.

  Read the rest of this entry »

A few more observations on the data presented in an ECFA webinar with Brian Kluth, of Maximum Generosity, as the speaker. Previous post here discussed three-year trends.

Change in general giving (without designated funds or building projects).  The executive summary uses seven categories to describe the level of change.  I have combined the data into three categories.  Summarized changes in general giving:

Read the rest of this entry »

Listened to a great ECFA webinar with Brian Kluth, of Maximum Generosity, as the speaker.  Survey of 1,507 churches show slight improvement in giving during 2010.

“State of the Plate” survey was conducted in February 2011.  It showed about the same proportion of churches experiencing a decline in giving along with an increase in the proportion seeing an increase.

Of interest to me is the 3 year trend data:

Read the rest of this entry »

Two great articles on how to analyze the giving data for your church by Chris Gartman of PSK at their blog, Faith-Based Accounting.

The software you use for recording contributions by donor should be able to give you some great data. What can you learn from that information?

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No surprise there.

The Wall Street Journal reports here the volume of churches going through distressed sale of their property has increased rapidly over the last couple of years.  In addition to a good background article, which I think you should read, there is a great pair of charts that gives good info.

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Both ECFA and Guidestar recently released survey results of giving trends in 2010.  Wanted to put the results side by side. Read the rest of this entry »

More news on giving trends.  The news recently is almost good news, sort of.  At least the news isn’t really bad.  ECFA just released their Nonprofit Economic Impact Survey. Read the rest of this entry »

Guidestar reports good news in survey of over 2,500 charities: 2010 Fundraising Survey Results: The Worst May Be Over. Read the rest of this entry »