Looming over everyone's minds at the current moment is the economic recession and its overarching impact on a host of industries. It is also bound to have an impact on the charitable sector, namely the type of fundraising charities engage in, how much they spend on various channels, and the amount of money individual donors decide to give.

In our podcast with James Appleyard, The Charitable Sector & Economic Recession, James discusses the economic and financial volatility that we are experiencing which sprung from the US credit crisis and sub-prime mortgages. The question that most charities are facing is how does this economic recession affect us? James concludes that unfortunately there is no definitive answer we can call upon at the given time; the economic future is simply too unstable and therefore unpredictable for all sectors.

However, what I would like to focus on, and what I think charities and not-for-profits should pay more attention to generally, is the online giver. We know that the general trend in individual giving is upward and that last year $250 billion was given by individuals in North America. Only 2-3% of all giving is conducted online but a 37% increase in this area was seen last year alone. Though the impact of this appears small, we at Artez feel that it is worthwhile to focus more energy in researching and understanding online fundraising during these tough economic times.

The following graph from the Giving USA Foundation shows the trend of giving in recession years and though we must prepare ourselves for hard times it does not mean your donors will stop giving altogether:

The benefits of shifting toward, or increasing, your eFundraising initiatives include:
 spending less money than traditional methods
experiencing a higher return
becoming more efficient by developing easy-to-create and implement online modules, establishing a larger reach and easily testing and evaluating your online functionality
and
being more effective with online campaigning, achieving higher gift values and reaching desired and new demographic segments

Ultimately, we recommend that charities, at the least, do not cut back or begin to under-invest in fundraising channels that have proven successful in the past and that they do not cut back on new-donor acquisition or cultivation.

My advice: don't spend any upfront money on software right now but do take advantage of open and free platforms like Google and Salesforce. And don't lose faith in your donors.