While 4 out of 10 non-profits report that their websites are a minor expense, 1 in 10 organizations achieve significant revenues via their website. We would love to delve deeper and analyze subsets of respondents to identify the characteristics that separate a money-losing non-profit from a revenue-generating one, but our pool of respondents for this survey is too small for us to generate information that we're comfortable publishing.
The vast majority of non-profits spend less on their websites than they do on pretty much anything else from what I can tell. Much of my professional career was spent creating, running and expanding the Toronto Star's website. We spent a LOT of money doing that. And we brought in a WHOLE LOT of money. I would love to crunch some subsets of numbers with this survey to explore the question of whether spending money on a non-profit's website leads to positive returns - I just don't have a large enough pool of respondents to do that. Regardless, we know that 1 out 10 non-profit websites contribute significantly to their revenues, so the answers are out there.
I would love to find out if all the online revenues are going to the big players or if tiny non-profits are using the Web to add to their bottom line. We didn't get a large enough pool of respondents to produce quality data on this topic. But we'll include it in subsequent survey results if we can increase the pool of respondents. We'll do the same for locally-focused organizations versus provincial, regional, national and international if we have the numbers to support the findings.