November 26, 2021 – PND – Candid

More than a third of large and midsize nonprofits in ten countries report exceeding their fundraising goals in the past twelve months, a report from Salesforce.org finds.

Based on a survey of 1,250 nonprofit employees in Australia, Canada, the Netherlands, the Nordics (Denmark, Finland, Iceland, Norway, and Sweden), the United Kingdom, and the United States, the 2021 Nonprofit Trends Report (48 pages, PDF) found that 24 percent of organizations with annual revenues of less than $1 million, 35 percent of those with revenues of between $1 million and $5 million, 40 percent of those with revenues of between $5.1 million and $10 million, and 33 percent of those with revenues of more than $10 million said they had exceeded their fundraising goals. Between 21 percent and 41 percent of organizations in each category reported exceeding their goals in the areas of program delivery, marketing and communications, overall mission, controlling expenses, retraining staff, retraining volunteers, organizational DEI efforts, and staff well-being.

According to the report, 76 percent of U.S. nonprofits said individual donations were a major source of revenue over the past year, compared with 56 percent in the Netherlands, 50 percent in Canada, 43 percent in Australia and the UK, and 24 percent in the Nordics. Nearly a third (31 percent) of all respondents reported providing donors with online access to a dashboard showing impact measurements of their donations in action, 86 percent of whom said it was impactful and 44 percent have permanently added that functionality to their fundraising approaches.

The survey also found that 87 percent of all respondents agreed that it is important to advance diversity, equity, and inclusion; 61 percent said that their organization had made commitments to advance DEI; 49 percent reported that their organization had changed its approach to DEI over the past twelve months, including actively increasing diversity among board members (37 percent), leadership (43 percent), and staff (35 percent). The survey also found that nearly 32 percent of all respondents surveyed said that ensuring the mental health and well-being of their employees was a major issue in the past year, and 35 percent expect it to be even more challenging in the coming year; 62 percent reported providing mental health resources for employees, including 73 percent of U.S. nonprofits.

Other challenges respondents expected to continue included managing staff and volunteers remotely (84 percent) and staff retention (85 percent); a large majority of U.S. respondents said their organizations would likely operate virtually and/or no longer have a physical office (86 percent), outsource jobs (84 percent), implement widespread use of AI technology (86 percent), and rely more on technology than on people to run the organization (89 percent) in the next three years. In addition, the report found that 22 percent of nonprofits had “high digital maturity” based on Salesforce.org’s index; 64 percent of those organizations said they were able to forecast income accurately, compared with 24 percent and 0 percent of nonprofits in the medium (72 percent of respondents) and low digital maturity categories.

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