Last week Christmas came early for Rally and all fellow data geeks. The second M+R and Rally UK Digital Benchmarks Study was released. It’s a brilliant opportunity to see up to date, comprehensive digital benchmark data across a whole host of metrics, from fundraising revenue to return on ad spend, website conversion to email engagement. And then some.
Better data makes better decisions
At Rally one of our biggest passions is working with clients to make informed choices: being guided by facts not opinions, knowing what good looks like and being honest with ourselves about how we are performing and where we could (or should) be doing better. Only then can we make smart decisions about where to focus our resources and what to do to make our programmes more effective and so inspire more people to actively participate in achieving our shared goals.
That’s why the Benchmarks Study is so important. So big thanks to M+R for bringing the study to the UK once again. And extra big thanks to the 47 charities who took part. Without them, the Study wouldn’t exist. As participants they all have access to their own personalised reports. But because we believe it’s so important for the sector as a whole to have a better understanding of our collective digital performance, the summary report and data is available to all.
Our three big takeouts
We’ve been eagerly waiting to see how things have moved on since the last Study in 2021. Let’s face it, the world is a different place now: we’ve moved on from the extremes of the pandemic where our lives were led almost exclusively online, but now we find ourselves in the midst of a cost of living crisis and the full scale Russian invasion of Ukraine.
As before, there is A LOT of information to take in. But what really struck us from the Study is that while the world around us has changed and this has inevitably impacted many of the metrics, some of the biggest challenges and opportunities in the digital engagement space remain the same.
One: Online revenue is still growing. But we can’t take it for granted.
UK online revenue increased by an average of 5% from 2021 to 2022. Unsurprisingly this growth rate is lower than the wild times of the pandemic when many fundraising programmes changed beyond all recognition as activities were switched online.
But continued growth is good: it shows many charities are building on successes they saw during COVID-19 and are seizing the opportunities digital presents to engage the public at scale. And growth is being fuelled by inspiring donors to take ongoing actions of support: while revenue from cash gifts was essentially flat, regular giving revenue grew by 14%.
But growth isn’t universal, with big variations according to charity size and sector. While small and large charities saw growth of nearly 10%, medium sized charities’ online revenue fell by 6% year on year. This underlines that each charity needs to look under the surface to see what is really driving its own performance, what its specific circumstances are and the relevant actions to grow.
Two: Email has seen progress, but there’s still work to do to unleash its potential.
Rally’s always believed that email is an incredibly powerful engagement and activation tool. In 2021 the Study highlighted an opportunity to transform our approach, by growing the number of subscribers and increasing the actions of support they take with more frequent and focused asks.
We’re excited to see the 2023 Study shows charities have increased the size of their email lists (by 17%) and the frequency of communications (by 49%, although still well below average for US nonprofits). But engagement levels and revenue from email have fallen. While this is not unusual when both audience size and message frequency increase, it’s pretty clear we need to focus on inspiring more action to make email the powerful mobilisation tool it can be.
Again, we’re not seeing this across the board. Both large and small charities either maintained or grew the share of online income from email, but medium sized charities saw it drop from 7% to 4%.
We think this underlines the need to be brilliant at the email basics: increased frequency, simplified content and a single, focused ask. Processes, structures and culture should empower charities to be agile and bold, not over-complicate decision making or slow things down. We may not all have the budgets of large charities, but we should hold onto the strengths of small ones as we grow.
Three: As spend grows, balance and diversity are key for sustainability
The Study shows UK nonprofits’ digital advertising spending grew by 35% year on year. But if we’re to make the most of this increased investment, the data shows us again that we need to look at the whole digital ecosystem rather than channels in isolation.
It also means building a diverse and balanced programme so we don’t have all our eggs in one basket - just look at the chaos we’ve seen on Twitter over the last few months.
One stat that really stood out for us was that while large charities spend 40% of their digital advertising budget on Meta, medium and small charities spent a whopping 72% and 97% respectively. This feels risky! Especially when you consider areas with a higher return on ad spend, like search, seem under utilised.
We believe charities need a balanced, integrated approach that reflects how people use different digital channels to both attract interest and inspire ongoing action cost effectively and sustainably.
Dive in and see for yourself
One of the big takeouts from this year’s Study is just how much variation there is by charity size and sector. So dive into the data and compare your own metrics to those of your peers and reach your own conclusions for your organisation. Where might you have untapped potential you can invest in? Where could you take steps to improve efficiency? Is your programme diverse enough to be sustainable if the Zuckerberg vs. Musk feud gets even more intense?
The data is there to be shared and learned from so the sector as a whole has a better understanding of its digital performance. So please also tell your friends, colleagues and spread the word. The more people who see the power of Benchmarks and join the Study in 2024, the richer and more robust the dataset and so we can all make even better decisions in future.
Header Photo by Markus Spiske on Unsplash