Nonprofit Ad Spend Trends and Disaster Relief Efforts: Key Insights from This Week’s Nonprofit News
In this week’s episode of the Nonprofit News Feed, George Weiner, Chief Whaler of Whole Whale, and Nick Azulay, Digital Strategist, delve into Whole Whale’s newly released 2024 nonprofit advertising study. This original research, in partnership with Cause IQ, analyzes advertising trends among 7,000 nonprofit organizations, comparing data from 2022-2023 with pre-pandemic data from 2018-2019. Key findings indicate a 12% increase in nonprofit ad investments, with an additional $21.3 million spent on advertising, and a 13% rise in average ad spend per organization from $26,000 to $29,000. Despite this increase, nonprofits have managed to reduce fundraising expenses by 5%, indicating a shift towards advertising as a larger portion of the fundraising budget.
George and Nick emphasize the importance of strategic ad spending, especially for smaller nonprofits with tighter budgets. They encourage nonprofits to explore boosting social media posts and applying for the Google Ad Grant to enhance their reach. The full report and database are available for free on Whole Whale’s website, offering valuable insights and benchmarks across various nonprofit sectors.
The episode also highlights the critical role of local nonprofits in disaster relief, particularly in the aftermath of Hurricane Helene, which severely impacted the Florida Panhandle, Georgia, and North Carolina. Organizations like Beloved Asheville have pivoted their operations to focus on disaster recovery, demonstrating the agility and responsiveness of nonprofits in times of crisis. With Hurricane Milton approaching, George stresses the need for proactive fundraising and messaging to maximize support.
Additionally, the podcast discusses a survey revealing that nonprofit workers continue to feel exhausted and overwhelmed, citing staffing shortages and budget constraints as ongoing challenges. George notes that these issues have been persistent in the sector and cautions against relying solely on AI as a solution.
Another significant topic is the “Silver Tsunami,” referring to the aging U.S. population and the increasing demand for services catering to older adults. George urges nonprofits to incorporate strategies for supporting the 65+ demographic into their long-term plans, highlighting opportunities in healthcare, digital literacy, and community engagement.
Finally, the episode concludes with a heartwarming story about a nonprofit providing service dogs to veterans at no cost, showcasing the profound impact of such initiatives on individuals’ lives.
TRANSCRIPT:
This week on the nonprofit news feed. My name is George Weiner, the chief whaler of Whole Whale. And we have Nick Azoulay, digital strategist at Whole Whale. Nick, we’ve got a lot of original research. This is it’s not an annual, it’s not a biannual. It’s every time we get enough data together. Annual research report, Nick.
I’m excited to share this ad study with folks. Can you walk us through it? Yeah, George whole whale. We’re, we’re really coming through with the original research. So you hear, you heard it here first, but whole whale us have just released our 2024 nonprofit advertising. Study. So we partnered with data provided by cause IQ comparing advertising trends among 7, 000 nonprofit organizations between what we call the current period, which is data between 2022 and 2023.
And a past period, which was the years of 2018 to 2019. To assess industry movement. As it relates to advertising over this broadly, uh, for your spam. So what I kind of like about these time periods, just to jump in is that you’ll notice that we took a little break after 2020 when things were just sideways, confusing and weird and outliers.
We had a once in a century pandemic. So in a different world, this is actually like. pre pandemic, post pandemic in a normalized setting where we are back in office, there are events, there are operations that are more in line with where we were. So those timeframes are, uh, particularly, I think, helpful in these snapshots.
Yeah, George, I think that that’s, that’s right. We’ve kind of resettled into whatever this new normal is both economically and as it relates to social impact trends. So to that end, the findings of this study, broadly speaking, is that nonprofit ad investments are rising. Nonprofits have pumped in an additional 21.
3 million for advertising within this study, marking a 12 percent increase overall from the previous study. So, Broadly, more being spent on ads. We’re seeing a growing ad spend per organization. So the average ad spend per organization jumped 13 percent from 26, 000 to 29, 000 on average. We also saw that organizations were stretching dollars further in fundraising.
So despite increases in average ad spend, organizations trimmed their fundraising expenses by 5%, with average fundraising expenses dropping from 143, 000 to 136, 000. What that means is that advertising is taking A larger slice of the pie, right? So ads are taking up a larger portion of the fundraising expense pie with a approximately 17 percent uptick in advertising as a relative percentage of total fundraising costs, smaller nonprofits are betting bigger on ads, despite tighter budgets as well.
And there’s a couple more things to pull out here, but George, just with those top trends, what’s really jumping out at you? Yeah, when we’re talking about it again, we’re talking about organizations that have revenues between around call it one and 11 million in revenue. And we’re taking that snapshot, uh, again, in those periods where they’ve reported.
I liked looking at, you know, the increases and seeing that smaller organizations are deploying more of their capital as percent of revenue. The other thing that I saw here is the median ad investment. So if you are going to spend. We’re going to say it’s about 13, 000, about a thousand dollars a month. I really think this is a healthy approach to saying, Hey, where should we start?
And I’ll note that roughly 61 percent of the 7, 000 organizations in our study, 61 percent actually spend money on ads and 38%, 39 percent do not spend money on ads. So when we talk about these numbers, we’re couching it in the, if you spending on. Advertising. If you are putting that money out there, we are seeing that median ad spend around 13, 000.
If your organization is working to, I don’t know, say post things on social media, or let’s say, try to get increased attention from an audience. I think if you’re not spending. Money, you’re wasting your staff’s time. It’s like showing up to work without a computer here. And I like seeing the general increase of this target group, uh, by, we mentioned 12 percent of this cohort that we measured in this band between one and 11 million.
Increasing because it works also because the rules have continued to change with regard to organic reach and organic reach. When I say that, I mean, on social and also on search. With AI overview with chat first solutions, answering people’s questions. There are going to be fewer people coming to your site.
They’re going to be fewer people finding your content on social because of their tightening of the algorithm around your organization. Yes, there’s ways to push your organic farther, but there’s also a certain logic in, in spending in order to get where you want to be. So we have the entire report created for free.
If you want to come to the site, whole whale. com slash advertising. We’ll get you there. We also have, if you want to go through the whole well university, we also have the entire database that you can explore, look at the charts, find your own benchmarks, look at your industry, say like, sure, but what about organizations in the arts sector, or what about organizations that deal with, the elderly?
You can go in and find that type of slice inside of there and see what other folks in your industry are doing. So it is, uh, it is a labor of love because frankly, we are huge geeks here. Uh, we also love our friends at cause IQ, which I think is the most robust source of data for nonprofits. Their ability to append and connect nine 90 data with other sources of information, nonprofits is just.
Kind of amazing. And so I’d encourage you to check them out as well. Amazing. George, I’ve never been accused of being a nerd or a geek before. That’s a first for me. Never, never. Oh my goodness. Uh, no, it’s, it’s really exciting. It’s really fascinating. As George said, you’re able to go in. Find your own benchmarks, engage with the data directly, really interesting.
I’d also like to call out, right, that if you’re an organization listening to this and you’re like, all right, I’m persuaded. Maybe it’s time to start investing. There’s basic stuff you can do. Start experimenting with boosting posts, right? If you don’t want to start getting into building campaigns or whatever.
Boost some posts, put a little bit of money, and see how much further that can get you than mere organic reach. Also, something for free that you can do is apply for the Google Ad Grant. If you’ve not yet taken advantage of the Google Ad Grant, get on that, right? That’s 10, 000 a month in Google Ad Grants.
Essentially tokens for your organization, to be at the top of Google search engine result pages for your cause space. If you set it up and of course we have tons and tons and tons of resources. Google ad grant is, is ignored in this study. This is like money out of pocket. This has to show up on your nine 90 line item, advertising and promotion.
Whereas the Google ad grant would be an in kind value. So this is. Uh, aside from the Google ad grant, which is an important note. You’d be like, wait a minute. I spend more on my Google ad grant. I get it. This is actual, you know, money at the door. Actual money. Yes. Google ad grant, sort of, kind of fake money.
Um, magic money, magic money, magic money. We love magic money. And I am going to take us into our next story now, which is. Less magical, unfortunately, and that is that local nonprofits have been stepping up to help in Helene recovery in the southeast. So Hurricane Helene last weekend, um, hit the Florida panhandle, Georgia, and North Carolina, especially hard.
The death toll from Hurricane Helene is well over 200 now, making it among the deadliest weather events in the world. in recent United States history, and local nonprofits have been forced to shift operations toward disaster relief. So the organization Beloved Asheville, which typically works to distribute food and serve homeless communities, has entirely reoriented its operations to helping folks recover from Hurricane Helene.
Co founder Amy Cantrell recounted watching neighbors, This is so hard. literally get swept away by floodwaters. So, um, the folks there, particularly down in the mountains, it’s been really hard, for relief to get to some of these towns. There’s virtually some, in some places, no way to get there. Um, people really hurting down there.
And as we record this episode on Wednesday afternoon, all eyes are on you. Hurricane Milton, which is which is heading towards Florida. So lots of talk about, disaster relief kind of being needed in multiple parts of the country now on. We know that many, many nonprofits are on the front lines of helping their communities impacted by devastating weather events.
So just really want to shout out to all the local community organizations that are hurting, but also helping in times of crisis. Yeah. Thanks for shutting out. Hopefully Milton doesn’t cause the level of damage, but you know, to be seen nonprofits per usual, picking, picking up a lot of the work in local communities.
In addition to federal aid coming in, you need a lot of hands to clean up a, uh, a mess of that size. And, you know, I was, cause I’m curious, uh, I went on to go fund me. Uh, because there’s so many fundraisers that pop up around this individuals, uh, which I, I don’t believe is an efficient way to deploy, uh, equitably or sustainably, uh, funds in a disaster.
However, the fundraisers, and I’m, I’m speaking as of like yesterday when I was looking, uh, many fundraisers were already posted for the damage done by Milton on GoFundMe. So people just to repeat. Already fundraising for the damage done by Milton. And that was on October 7th. I’ll let you do the math on that because today is October 9th.
Other things to realize is that yes, the window to fundraise is so small because the attention cycle is so quick, right? Helene is literally old news now. And now it is people. Uh, being aware top of mind for giving and supporting around Milton. And so it, frankly, your nonprofit is not already messaging already setting this up rather than being like, let’s wait and see the damage.
Um, the folks on GoFundMe aren’t waiting. And if you are ready day one, if you’re ready day minus one or minus two or minus three, uh, there may be an advantage frankly to showing up first to showing up with something that looks, uh, ready to deploy.
Hmm, George, not to continue to ruffle feathers, but were those GoFundMe fundraisers that you saw, were they hosted by individuals or, or individuals? That’s correct. So GoFundMe is the n number one, if not the one for individuals to fundraise, uh, on behalf of local needs. Um, it’s not through a 5 0 1 C3, it is not connected to a charity, uh, that is a, you know, a platform letting people fundraise.
Um, and that’s, that’s totally fair. Um, by all means, you should fund, if you can get money doing that, that’s fine. That’s the system that they’ve set up and ultimately GoFundMe gets a percentage of all of that.
Mm hmm. Very interesting. I think there’s a separate conversation there that we’ll put a pin in for now. Um, but we want Turn towards our next story. This one comes as it’s reported by nonprofit pro and the title of the story is that nonprofit workers are exhausted, overwhelmed and overworked. So a 2024 survey of the U.
S. Nonprofit sector Uh, revealed challenges, including many workers feeling exhausted and overwhelmed. The study was conducted by Dickerson Bacher, um, and it highlighted staff shortages, budget constraints, and resistance to change as major hurdles for charitable organizations. None of those are especially, uh, surprising, I’d say.
Nearly 80 percent of respondents cited staffing issues as their most pressing concern, while 75 percent mentioned budget limitations. And these problems are particularly acute in private K 12 schools. They’re hindering efforts to implement necessary changes and improvements. And the study goes on to kind of highlight You know, recommendations, things nonprofits can do, uh, and adapt.
But George, this has been a persistent problem. And we saw this, I think most acutely during the pandemic. Um, and we were also, I think, similarly looking at decreases in, you know, volunteers showing up for nonprofits and it’s, it’s impact on the workforce itself, but, but what do we make of this, that, that, you know, This many years out from the pandemic, we’re still seeing kind of systematic challenges that seem to be pretty much on a similar scale.
I’ve never not seen a survey of the nonprofit sector workforce in my decades that would, that doesn’t say this actually, I, you know, I think it’s important to highlight, but, you know, This is as shocking as the news reporting that the sun rose in the morning to me. Uh, one thing I will say that may be a, uh, unfortunate tailwind here is the assumption that sprinkling AI onto a staff that is frankly, um, under resourced suddenly will fix these problems.
And, and in effect, uh, I think AI simply accelerates, uh, the iPod. Output and interactions. It doesn’t necessarily remove the factors of exhaustion. And also, of course, you know, AI doesn’t do much. If you are working human to human, uh, it can reduce paperwork. It can help with summarizing and followups, but you’re still spending that time interacting with people disproportionately when you’re talking about the empathy economy of the nonprofit sector.
But, you know, not, not news to me. Uh, I was actually trying to find some sort of trends over time of like nonprofit exhaustion. And, uh, I couldn’t find anything reasonable. Maybe I’ll try a little harder next time to, to see. Oh, interesting. George, maybe we can commission some kind of polling or something.
Get in, get in on the game. Oh man. Whole Whale Reports. Nonprofits have, nonprofit employees been tired real long time. Study reports. Nonprofit employees. Hey, original research for you. That’s some original research. It’s original research. And George, that’s amazing. You talk about original research because we have yet another one.
And this one comes from the great minds over at Whole Whale’s. new research arm, I guess, if you will. And that is an article titled The Silver Tsunami, How the Next Wave of Nonprofits Conserve Aging Populations. So, um, Hobel writes about the silver tsunami, which is the significant aging of U. S. population as baby boomers retire, which will mean that over 20 percent of Americans are expected to be 65 or over by 2030.
And this Pretty significant demographic shift that will create a surge in demand for services, catering to older adults, presenting both challenges and opportunities for the nonprofit sector. So George, what do we think about this? Americans are getting older. Uh, what a nonprofits need to be thinking about one is that as we move into 2025, I think because we’re at the, you know, the halfway mark of the decade, a lot of folks will be looking at a five year plan.
I think if your five year plan. doesn’t incorporate how you are supporting the 65 plus populations in your area, neighborhood, community, state, and country. Uh, you are missing a massive part of what is going to shape the nonprofit sectors, uh, and the demands I will say on the nonprofit sector. I mean, everything, including healthcare, mental health, affordable housing, digital literacy, transportation, the connections that I think a lot of nonprofits provide the.
Opportunity is to be generating these new types of programs, extensions of what you do, and realizing that this is just an unprecedented need, 20 percent of Americans. By 2030 will be over the age of 65 what’s more compounding. This is that actually positive news. Average lifespan continues to increase post pandemic.
As we normalize the average lifespan is adding, you know, anywhere around 0. 5 per year, uh, as we move forward, uh, that is, you know, sort of a snapshot in time, but the number’s not going down. We’re getting actually healthier, believe it or not. And that means just a continuation of care and opportunities for your nonprofit to be out there.
So I think this is just one of those massive, uh, foundational shifts that presents opportunities for a lot of new nonprofits to start up or extend your programs, hopefully in a way that is mission related. ethical and scalable. George, I love that. And you mentioned digital literacy. I think it’s worth calling out that Americans fall victim to phishing, pop up telephone scams and lose billions of dollars a year.
And those scams particularly target older Americans. Um, so I think that that’s a really key and important point, um, because older Americans are increasingly the victims. Very sophisticated and convincing, um, online scams. You know, when it’s making its way into the plot lines of a Jason Statham movie, literally the beekeeper is literally about an old person getting scammed.
And it goes from there, like it’s making its way into narratives. Yes. I think also on the digital literacy front, the ability to say, Hey, this is what AI can do, how to use it, how to use it responsibly, how to use it as a friend to customize that. And to show folks, I mean, I showed my dad how to use chat GPT properly.
And I think you’d assume you’d be like, Oh, it’s so easy. Anyone can do it. Like. No, there’s some guardrails and you’re like, Oh yeah, don’t ask it that. That’s weird. What, how you then use it? And he’s having a blast with the thing now, although he is sending me a lot of the stuff he generates and I’m like, I know, dad, if you ask it to create a recipe, it creates a recipe.
So, I mean, there’s that. A wide open canvas for supporting, for providing resources. And anyone who’s on the AI is going to take all of the jobs, uh, has not really done the homework on the silver tsunami, which may sound weird. Silver tsunami, uh, not my term actually came from Pew research. They coined it a number of years back.
I found it was like, who called it this? Also I was checking those like, is this offending anybody? I’m sure it offends somebody, but. It was Pew. Pew came up with it. Go get them. Not us. Not us. Uh, But we put all the data on this, uh, on this article. In this article, uh, it was emailed out to our loyal, uh, nonprofit news feed, uh, registrants.
Sign ups? Listeners? Openers? Newsletter followers? Colleagues, George, colleagues, friends in Kingdom of Nonprofits. How about that? I love it. I love it. We need like a, we need it like a thing, like the Newsies or something. We, we’ll workshop it and we’re not cutting any of that. That’s No, no. Keep it in. All right.
Our last story is this Feel Good Story from Fox 23 Chicago, and it’s about a local nonprofit providing life changing service dogs to veterans at no cost. A VIP service dog. Is a foundation providing service dogs to veterans to zero cost to help in recovery from both physical and mental wounds and Marine Corps veteran, Sean Smith says, I love him to death and he is like my ride or die partner.
And just wanted to highlight one of the many local nonprofits, um, doing the work of helping our veterans, keeping them safe, healthy, helping them readjust to deal with PTSD, among other, uh, visible and invisible wounds. So just awesome work there. Yeah, I love it. Great example of, you know, how a nonprofit fits into that ecosystem of animals and support for communities.
Absolutely. You got a joke. You came up with another joke. You’re, I mean, all right, George, you beat me to these, so you wrote it. I don’t know what it is. What have we got? All right, George, why are nonprofit marketers terrible at tennis? Uh,
I don’t know why. They can only serve ads.
Field goal 📍 touchdown touchdown. I nailed it. Yeah. You’re really sports metaphor. The heck out of that one.
I don’t know why people listen to the end. It’s almost like a disincentive anyway. They made it as a, um, all right, see you next time. See you later, George.
