Fresh off of doubling the client pool upon which to base future benchmarks studies, Convio has released a benchmarks study (link goes to a registration page you have to pass to get the .pdf), a handy update to the already year-old M+R e-Benchmarks Report. Though findings like "Email addresses are valuable" won't flabbergast anyone and many of the tips are pretty commonsensical, there are definitely some nuggets here worth noticing. For instance:

• "Organizations with file sizes of fewer than 50,000 records experienced the fastest rate of growth during this period, at nearly twice that of the overall index". Again, not necessarily surprising -- small organizations have the most room to grow, of course -- but impressive, and hopefully inspiring.
• Aggregate fundraising statistics, including their average online gift ($55.88), average value of an e-mail address ($5.24, but varying widely by organization type) and year-over-year growth in donations (again, widely varying by sector).
• Aggregate e-mail statistics -- reporting a median open rate of 22% and click-through rate of 4%.

I would love to see ever more rigorous data from what's undoubtedly a considerable trove, and there are spots where I felt like they skimped on nuance. Nevertheless, marketing ploy or no, it's great of Convio to put this out there and worth a scan as a guidepost. We're using our own data universe to crunch some of these numbers in the tipsheet and dia-lysis series, so look for similar surveys in this space. (And if you've got things you'd like us to study, please ask!) Maybe we'll even bundle them into a .pdf eventually.