2024 State of Nonprofit Digital Engagement Report

Background

Coming off peak donations in 2020¹, many nonprofits have seen their financial resources tighten since 2022 due to decreasing donations and access to grant funding. At the same time, demand for nonprofit services is increasing.

With the growing social need, this dynamic environment demands more efficiency and better scaling strategies. Rising to the challenge, nonprofits are leveraging digital engagement for a wider range of use cases. Popular examples include self-serve client registration, appointment management, and self-serve resources.

As digital engagement helps nonprofits reach, enroll, and serve new users, its no wonder that a majority of these organizations now say digital engagement is critical to achieving their mission.

87% of nonprofits say digital communications are 'critical' to achieving their mission.

The path to digital maturity

While most nonprofits are bullish on digital engagement, some are more strategic and effective than others. In order to identify organizations with advanced customer engagement and draw insights from their success, we assigned each of our surveyed organizations a Digital Communications Maturity Score.

Based on this score, we then categorized them into one of three distinct groups: beginning, developing, and leader. Of the 1,440 organizations surveyed, 23% were deemed leader organizations, 53% were labeled on the developing phase, 24% were considered on the beginning phase.

The Digital communications Maturity score is based on the following four factors:

Types of communication channels deployed

e.g. connect on one digital channel, multiple channels, or seamless omnichannel
Digital communication style

e.g. one-way communication, limited two-way communication, or fully conversational
Frequency of personalization

e.g. none, basic personalization, or predictive personalization
Type of end user data in your digital communications strategy

e.g. ad hoc use or automated data-driven decision making

What sets these 'digital leaders' apart?

These 'digital leader' organizations place a high priority on digital communications, which now account for 65% of their end-user engagement compared to offline methods. This digital-first approach leads to significant advantages. For example, digital leaders are more likely to achieve their digital communication strategy goals and increased innovation. What’s more, digital leaders provide ‘excellent’ end user engagement and their stakeholders frequently feel understood. Additionally, 81% of these organizations report that they’re more prepared than primary competitors to leverage AI in the next 12 months.

Digital leaders excel at building strong engagement with end users

Only 16% of 'beginning' organizations rate their end user engagement as 'excellent'. More than half of digital leaders give themselves this rating, highlighting the benefits that come from digital maturity.

End user engagement rated 'excellent' by maturity level

Nonprofits rate engagement highly, but end users are less certain

End User vs Nonprofits: percent agree that orgs provide 'good' or 'excellent' engagement.

There are always other perspectives to consider. Although 88% of nonprofit organizations say their user engagement is ‘good’ or ‘excellent,’ only 60% of users agree. This 28 point disparity is notable², but close to the gap that exists for B2C brands, where 86% brands say they’re ‘good’ or ‘excellent’ compared to 59% of their customers³.

What makes this comparison impressive is the substantial budget difference between B2C companies and nonprofits. Nonprofits often have much less funding for ‘customer engagement,’ yet nonprofits are still performing on par with their private sector peers.

Actionable insights

The majority of nonprofits report that digital engagement provides them with four or more different benefits. In 2022, 39% reported gaining four or more distinct benefits from digital engagement, a number that surged to 60% by 2024. Underscoring the role of digital engagement in an organization’s success, the three top responses in our survey were:

Reaching more users
Providing more services
Achieving impact

The pressures of limited budgets and rising demand likely won’t abate in the future, so nonprofits continue to look to digital engagement as a solution. Organizations believe that 72% of their engagement with end users will be digital by 2025, which represents a 16% increase in just one year.