At the recently concluded International Fundraising Congress in the Netherlands, Blackbaud Europe, Ltd. released findings from the 2008 European State of the Not-For-Profit survey, incorporating results from the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands.

Fundraising results concluded that the European countries have similar but diverse strategies to bring income into an organization. Online donations were an expected growth area, with 57% of Dutch respondents, 51% of German, and 45% of UK respondents expecting to see increases through this donation method.

“The findings within this survey are invaluable,” said Andrew Mosawi, Blackbaud’s vice president of international business development. “Not only do the findings provide an overview of information for not-for-profits to better benchmark their operations, but the survey has also unearthed a large amount of very relevant data.”

The survey was distributed and administered online from May 23 to June 20, 2008 in the United Kingdom, Germany, and the Netherlands with a total of 466 respondents.

Among other results, all three countries anticipate an increased demand for services in 2008. However, each country’s staffing projections for both 2008 and 2009 are similar or lower. This is an indication that either existing staff will be more productive and/or use of technology will decrease the need for more staff.

Technology and Internet Usage findings highlighted room for improvement. All respondents report that communicating with their donors and other constituents over the web and through email is important. Most European not-for-profits feel that it is important to their organization’s operations to have a unified database that contains all information on donors and constituents. However, results illustrate that less than half of the organizations actually have them.

Alan Bird, the Resource Alliance’s director of marketing and communications said: “This survey is the first of what is going to be an invaluable service to all European fundraisers. As fundraisers increasingly learn from what their colleagues are doing elsewhere in the world, it’s becoming even more important to be able to benchmark and compare how they operate with what their peers do.”

The full report will be available for download on November 1^st at www.blackbaud.co.uk