Blackbaud recently released the 2007 State of the Nonprofit Industry Survey and you can click here to download a copy. The SONI survey was conducted between July 17th and August 11th, 2007 and had a total of 1,140 respondents. All surveys and polls should be taken with a grain of salt, but they do provide some insight into a snapshot in time.

I have picked out a couple of interesting stats after having a chance to look through the results. Here are some findings from the “Technology/Internet Usage” section:

• 98.5% of respondents have a website.
• 92% believe a unified database is very important.
• 88% use their website to market their organization/educate the public.
• 68% use online fundraising tools.
• 67% believe that it is important to use email.
• 48% actively use online fundraising strategies (compared to 43% in 2006 and 35% in 2005).
• 29% see their websites as effective in achieving their Internet goals.

This is a similar trend from the 2006 SONI survey. And I think it shows that many nonprofits are still stuck in Web 0.5 or Web 1.0 mode when it comes to engaging constituents online. They believe it is an important communication channel, they are continuing to think strategically about using the Internet, but they still use it mostly for one-way communication.

The key dot to connect is that 88% of nonprofits believe the primary purpose of their website is to be a marketing device, but 71% of respondents don’t think they are meeting their Internet goals. Does that mean that they should just try harder at their online marketing efforts? No, that would be the definition of insanity.

Websites that are just brochureware or only used for marketing purposes belong in a museum. What about online advocacy, people to people fundraising, social media, volunteering, etc? That doesn’t mean that you can’t use the Web to clarify your message and inform the public, but it can’t be the end-all be-all raison d’être. Otherwise you really can’t complain when your online efforts don’t produce measurable and meaningful results.

The question then becomes: How does an organization move from a Web 1.0 presence online to a more Web 2.0 presence online? And how do you balance the marketing messages with the development programs? I’ll tackle the answer to those questions in a future blog post…