2013 individual giving survey of not-for-profits in Ireland

However you describe yourself -­ charity, community group, voluntary organisation, NGO, nonprofit, or something else -­ you were set up to address an important social need. Meeting this need requires resources: skills, time and money. There are never enough resources to do all that you want to do. Getting sufficient money into the coffers is an ongoing headache.

Traditional funding sources such as statutory grants, business sponsorship and foundation support are, in many cases, drying up. Yet there are many untapped opportunities for raising funds, especially from the general public, and not just through the use of time-­consuming events.

The Wheel published research in 2012 that showed that less than a quarter of the community and voluntary sector's income in the Republic of Ireland came from individual giving and that almost a third of organisations never raised any money from the public. In the same year, research by NICVA showed that less than a third of the sector's income in Northern Ireland came from the public. Total Fundraising is a provider of a wide range of fundraising services to the not-­for-­profit sector. We would like to discover how organisations throughout Ireland are using individual giving as a way to generate income and if not, understand why this is so. We want to help the sector find solutions to its funding problems, but in order to do this as well as we possibly can, we need to hear the views of many different people.