Trends in Fundraising

In November 2011, Stats Canada released data on the charitable contributions made by Canadians in 2010. The news was good.

 Giving by Canadians showed a healthy 6.5% increase over the year before, a fact made all the more positive when compared to the declines we saw in both 2008 and 2009 (5.6% and 5.4% respectively). And this upward trajectory appears to have continued into 2011. The Blackbaud Index of Charitable Giving, a broad-based fundraising index that reports giving trends of more than 1,300 nonprofits in North America, recently reported that giving rose 5.7% during the first six months of 2011 when compared to the same period last year.

While both pieces of news are undeniably positive, it is important to remember that these numbers reflect giving from 12 to 24 months ago, which, in this time of almost daily changes to the global economic situation, can be a lifetime. And so, to get a sense of the mood of the charitable sector in Canada, we convened Roundtables over the past several months with fundraising professionals from all sub-sectors and from all parts of the country. These Roundtables enabled us to hear directly from thought leaders about the current tenor and tone of Canada’s philanthropic environment and also gave us a glimpse into the trends, as well as the challenges, of fundraising in Canada today.