The Management Centre, a UK-based consulting group for non-profits, has published its Global Fundraising Confidence Survey for 2009 and from our perspective many of the results they highlighted weren’t too surprising.  Most notably, although half of the non-profits surveyed reported a decline in income over the past year, a third saw in an increase.

Among the reasons cited for decline was “poor crisis leadership” from the top, while — and this is what we want to stress most — the top listed factor for positive results was “increased investment in fundraising.”

The research highlights the potential for success where fundraisers took a proactive approach in meeting the recession head on. When asked to indicate what broad strategy they had used for tackling the recession, over half of respondents favoured ‘fighting for market share – expansion has been our key tactic’ (30%) or ‘taking effective action quickly to maintain donations’ (25%).

As we’ve tried to stress, those organizations that continued to engage in acquisition campaigns, as well as additional gift and lapsed campaigns were holding their own.  Certainly that is true amongst out clients.

The entire 40+ page report is available for download.  We’ll also post more highlights as we dig through it.

Share/Bookmark