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By Staff of Philanthropy Journal

Online fundraising grew 34.5 percent in 2010, compared to the previous year, and accounted for 7.6 percent of total fundraising, a new report says.

Large organizations posted 55.6 percent growth in online fundraising, compared to 22 percent at small nonprofits and 15.9 percent at medium-sized nonprofits, says the 2010 Online Giving Report from Blackbaud.

Large nonprofits accounted for 7.7 percent of all online fundraising, the highest share among nonprofits and up from 5.1 percent in 2009, the lowest share.

Online giving accounts for over 10 percent of total fundraising for nonprofits that focus on international affairs and health care.

In January 2010, online giving represented 18.4 percent of all giving, the most for any month, including December 2010, when online giving represented 18.3 percent of all giving.

Driving online giving in January 2010 were relief efforts in the wake of the Haiti earthquake.

Online giving for international-affairs groups grew 130.8 percent in 2010, compared to 2009.

Online giving in October, November and December represented 31.3 percnet of total online giving in 2010.

Except for international -affairs groups, all sectors analyzed by Blackbaud raised the most online in December.

In 2010, 88 percent of nonprofits received at least one online gift of $1,000 or more, with the median online gift of $1,000 or more totaling $1,250 and the largest amount given online in the analysis totaling $100,000.

Forty-one percent of significant gifts totaled $1,000, and 6 percent totaled $5,000.

“2010 saw the continued growth in the importance of online fundraising for nonprofit organizations,” Steve MacLaughlin, director of Internet solutions for Blackbaud, says in a statement. “A recovering global economy, online response for disaster relief, peer-to-peer fundraising, and the role of social media in the nonprofit sector all shaped 2010.”

The report includes 24 months of online giving data from 1,812 nonprofits from the Blackbaud Index of Online Giving; online major giving data from 2,190 nonprofits; and both online and offline data representing $5.1 billion in total fundraising from 1,438 nonprofits.