How Chronicle Conducted Online Fund-Raising Survey

To conduct its online fund-raising survey, The Chronicle contacted 402 nonprofit organizations, 181 of which responded. Of those, 100 said that they had received online donations in the 2000 fiscal year.

The survey asked about donations made over the Internet, generally by credit card, and those made through Internet shopping malls and via sites like Helping.org that collect donations on behalf of large numbers of charities. The results do not reflect other donations triggered by online activities, such as gifts that donors sent through the mail after receiving e-mail appeals from charities.

The groups asked to participate in the survey were all included in the 2000 edition of The Chronicle's Philanthropy 400, which ranks the charities that raised the most money from private sources.

A total of 101 groups responded to both this year's survey and a similar one that The Chronicle conducted last year.

Of those groups, 56 said in this year's survey that they had conducted online fund raising in fiscal 2000, and 47 said in last year's survey that they had done online fund raising in calendar 1999.

The table of results lists only organizations that provided dollar estimates of online donations received during fiscal 2000. Twenty-five groups that said they did online fund raising last year are not included in the results because they did not report a dollar amount.

The figures reported for online donations may not represent a full 12 months of operation because some organizations began accepting online donations in the middle of the fiscal year. Additionally, some organizations provided online-giving data for their headquarters, but not for affiliates.

The survey was conducted by Martha Voelz with assistance from Marni Larose.