A few 'data' anecdotes

Fundraising in Ireland
Damian O'Broin from Ask Direct tells me like for like acquisition for one of his clients has been in decline:

2006: 1.11%
2007: 1.22%
2008: 0.65% - 0.80%

But he also adds that "Admittedly the reasons for the drop may not simply be the economic downturn. Ireland has a relatively small amount of commercially available cold lists, so list fatigue is a possible contributory factor. And as we're dealing with just one charity here, the strength of the pack used for each mailing could also have had an impact." Hmmn, not sure if it actually tells us much about the Irish market, and no clues about cause and effect yet.

Fundraising in New Zealand
Our colleagues in New Zealand are not debating about official definitions of recession, they are all agreed they are in one. But one of our charity friends there are still doing well, "...we have made target in a country officially in recession with an RG conversion." (they actually got 50% more than they expected).

Fundraising in Australia
A major charity direct marketing event in Australia has just let me know that their mass partipatory event raised $250,714 - it had been in decline, grew in 2007 (it raised $249,008) and seems to have stabilised.

Australian 'tax appeal' results I am looking at still show no big effect. The variances are all 'normal'. However, impact of recession has not hit Australia as much as North America and Europe. Please email European and North American data.

Fundraising in Hong Kong
Brilliant results too date, new strategies are hammering last years, so it is hard to tell what effect if any, the recession is having. The new strategies started one year ago 2007 lifted net charity income by 250% on previous year - so the new approach is doing well, but this years are hard to compare because there is not enough history.

Sean Triner