[Editor's note: the following is an excerpt from the 2011 Nonprofit Social Networking Benchmark Report, sponsored by NTEN, CommonKnowledge, and Blackbaud. You can get the entire report for free here.]

It turns out that nonprofits of all sizes are able to scale their fundraising efforts on commercial social networks.

We identified a subset (27 organizations) of “Master Social Fundraisers” from amongst the survey respondents. Master Social Fundraisers are nonprofits that raised more than $100,000 on Facebook over the last year. Fascinatingly, the first characteristic that jumped out reversed many of our conclusions regarding organization size: 30% of the Master Fundraisers were Small organizations ($1 to $5MM annual budget) and 8% were Medium-sized ($6MM to $50MM).

Flickr photo: ibarirI know only the biggest nerds have favorite white papers, but we've already established my nerd street cred, right? Well, my favorite white paper of 2009 just became my favorite white paper of 2011!

The 2011 donorCentrics Internet and MultiChannel Giving Benchmarking Report was just released last week, updating the version I excitedly blogged about, lo, those many moons ago.

We've been talking a lot about multi-channel fundraising in the last year or two, which begs the question: Are donors really multi-channel?

The 2011 NTC saw the release of the latest "Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report". While you're welcome to scroll down to read a brief synopsis, we recommend you click on over to download it, right now. It's free!

> Download the 2011 Nonprofit Social Network Benchmark Report

More than 11,000 nonprofit professionals filled out this year's survey, sponsored by NTEN, Common Knowledge, and Blackbaud, generating a veritable cornucopia of data. One of our favorite stats: more than half of nonprofits have no formal budget for commercial social networks like Facebook, Twitter, and LinkedIn, making it all the more impressive that 30% of the organizations that have raised more than $100,000 on Facebook have budgets under $5 million.

Other highlights:

Flickr: visit~ fingerlakesWhere I come from, there's a lake, and every year on the Saturday before Labor day when the sun goes down, everyone who lives on that lake turns off their house lights, lines their waterfront with lit red flares, and builds a bonfire. This is how we mark the end of summer (high tourist season) and the beginning of a new year. For the past few years, I've been in Portland, OR, far away from this tradition -- which may explain why it feels a bit like September has smacked us over the head, as it walked unannounced into our summer party.

Regardless of how it got here, it's already September and before we know it, October, November, and December will soon follow. In preparation for your end-of-year campaigns, NTEN has devoted September to talking about fundraising. I thought I'd do my part with a few of 2010's best resources (so far).

Events -- especially the "a-thons" -- have been a huge part of fundraising in the nonprofit space for decades. One of the reasons they work so well: the appeal is extremely personal. Contributors are donating to their friends, brothers, sisters, and cousins as much as they are supporting your organization.

This style of fundraising lends itself perfectly to social media, where everything is personal. So, the results of the study conducted by BlackBaud and Charity Dynamics aren't surprising, but they are extremely clear: If you're not providing your event participants with a way to use social media in their fundraising, you're missing the boat.

In Making Event Participants More Successful with Social Media Tools, several key findings are revealed:

Flickr Photo: Green MoonWe're less than a week away from the really big show. Despite the fact that I'm mortified to be Putting a Ring on It in front of you all, I'm anxious to get to SF and get things underway. I've missed you all over the last year!

I can tell you're excited, too. There are a lot of tweets out there using the #09NTC hashtag -- including an announcement about this gathering for exisiting and potential Blackbaud partners:

Blackbaud Connect Partner Network briefings at the 09NTC - Blackbaud Suite at the Hilton San Francisco. From 11 am – 3 pm, Monday April 27.

Come discuss your company and partnership ideas or ways to enhance the partnership, meet Blackbaud team members, and review the Connect Partner Network. We support partners that share our commitment to making the world a better place through cooperative engagements with nonprofits.

Partners and prospective partners please rsvp to steve.johnson@blackbaud.com for your preferred time.

What events are you organizing at the NTC?

Flickr Photo by cathytx2001Many nonprofits understand the importance of an online strategy but are unclear on how much to invest in online marketing and fundraising -- and what to expect in return.

Blackbaud is conducting a survey as part of their State of the Nonprofit Industry (SONI) series. This SONI survey on internet investments hopes to help nonprofits better understand how much to invest in online marketing and fundraising and what to expect in return.

> Help answer the question: What is the monetary value of being online?

Please take a few minutes to help the nonprofit community quantify the financial value of email, online event fundraising, websites, and social networks.

I just finished reading the 2008 donorCentrics Internet Giving Benchmarks Analysis, put out by Blackbaud company Target Analytics. Get the report and read it. It points to some great momentum in online giving.

By many measures, online fundraising had a red letter year in 2008:

• Online donors are younger and have higher incomes than traditional, primarily direct mail donors.
• Over the past few years, online giving has become an increasingly significant source of new donor acquisition.
• Online donors give much larger gifts than traditional donors.

You've probably already heard statistics like these floating around at various conferences and presentations. It's the kind of stuff we presenters say to justify the rest of our presentations. Fortunately, it's all true.

But, as the sector has embraced online giving, we've had a niggling voice in the backs of our heads telling us that the donors we've cultivated online aren't sticking around. It's one of those feelings we haven't wanted to talk about: Saying it out loud might make it true. And there really hasn't been a lot of data.

Well, this report has some pretty telling data. Let's get the bad news out of the way first, shall we?

A HUGE Thank You goes to our all NTC sponsors and exhibitors to date! We are super-geeked about the 2009 Nonprofit Technology Conference (and not just because we're geeks). We're putting many of your ideas into action this year and we already have a crew of super folks on our side to make the NTC the best place to connect, learn, and change around the technology issues relevant to you.

Check out this amazing list of sponsors! (Don't worry, you aren't too late, learn more and sponsor the NTC!)

I finally gave a presentation in my own back yard! The fine folks at Blackbaud were in town to run NetWits Live, and they were nice enough to let me yammer at their guests for a while.

As usual, the people in the session were more interesting than anything I had to say, and we had some great conversations, especially around metrics. Several folks asked me to share some resources, so I figured I'd throw them up here in case anyone else might find them useful.