You might want to share this article, Getting to Know Your Online Givers Can Pay Off (PDF file), with your favorite fundraiser on campus.
In his paper published by CASE, Peter B. Wylie presents the results of a study performed in 2004 on the records collected in the following way:
Five four-year higher education institutions ranging from small, private to large, public sent me a random sample of about 10,000 records that included regular givers and non-givers but no online givers. Each institution also sent me all their online givers. The smallest group of online givers I got was slightly over 200 records; the largest was about 750.”
Wylie made a surprising discovery about online donors: they are better givers than regular givers.
“The median level of lifetime giving was much greater for these online givers than for regular givers (without exception) across the five schools. For example, in School C, where the difference between online and regular givers was the least, the median for online givers was still 50 percent higher than the median for regular givers.”
Beyond the convenience for donors (especially for the last-minute gifts comes December 31), online giving has definitely a lot of potential for higher ed advancement offices.