The Chronicle of Philanthropy vs. Fenton Communications: Who’s Right?

Last week, Fenton Communications released The 2010 Fenton Forecast: Leadership and Effectiveness Among Nonprofits (see blog post below, "Words to live by: Fiscal Responsibility, Content, and Credibility.") The Fenton report painted a somewhat gloomy picture of giving in 2010, drawing the conclusion that giving would be slightly down or flat.

On May 16, The Chronicle of Philanthropy published the article "Donations in 2010’s First Quarter Show Healthy Signs for Charities." This article tells us "Giving grew by a median of 11 percent in the first three months of 2010, compared with 2009."

Who's right? And how can you know for sure?

Having a look at the basis of each study is a good place to start. The Fenton Forecast credentials are good: 

The nationally representative online study, conducted in March 2010, surveyed 1,000 adults aged 18 and older who had donated $20 or more to a nonprofit organization in the past year. The margin of error is +/- 3 percentage points with a 95% level of confidence. 

My only point of contention with that source is that it was conducted online. How respondents were driven to the survey may skew the results. Then again, maybe not. Based on the information given, it's hard to tell.

The Chronicle's source is different:

The Chronicle’s quarterly survey of giving offers a bellwether of how donations to all charities are doing because it is based on the donation rates to charities that appear on the Philanthropy 400, The Chronicle’s annual tally of the American organizations that raise the most from private sources. 

Four of the organizations that provided numbers were among the top 25 recipients of donations last year: Fidelity Charitable Gift Fund (No. 3), World Vision (No 11), Catholic Charities USA (No 13) and Nature Conservancy (No. 14).

I guess what this means is that if your charity is in the top 400, out of the more than 1.2 million non-profits in America, your prospects are pretty good for 2010 and beyond. On the other hand, if your organization is one of the other 1.19+ million, the situation could be a bit dicey.

No matter the case, my advice would be the same: "Hunt where the ducks are." Look at where your organization's contributions are coming from. Look geographically and look demographically. Do some research on why that location or group has a more natural affinity with your organization. Take the extra time to split a couple of hairs. With minimal effort, you can probably mine good data from the space between two slices of demographic that are otherwise identical, except in their level of support.

Why assess by geography and demographics? These give you hard targets that have self-identified.

From those points of strength work to spread the circle. Go to your established donors -- not with another ask, but with a request that they help spread the message of your mission. Host an event, if it's a geographically sound tactic. Engage a circle of your supporters in a city or region.

Or, make it an online event, if you're working a demographically-based angle.

In any case, if you're important enough for your donors to care about, surely you're important enough for their friends to care about.

In the end whatever the current state of giving is, it is infinitely more important to you to maintain and expand your donor base than to argue over who is right.