The average online donation fell by 8.6 per cent in 2014 to £63.69, according to a survey by fundraising software company Blackbaud - the first drop in the five years the survey has taken place.

In an analysis published yesterday, Blackbaud said it believed the drop was down to online fundraising craze the Ice Bucket Challenge. When it stripped out donations made as part of the challenge the average donation amount was £78.59 – an increase of 13 per cent on the previous year.

Blackbaud said the figures could also be skewed by the inclusion of educational organisations, where the typical amount donated is higher, in this year’s sample.

Blackbaud calculates the figure based on analysis of a sample of around 300 of its customers’ online fundraising pages.

Douglas Graham, director of fundraising at the MND Association, which raised more than £7m from the viral campaign, said that while most of the Ice Bucket Challenge donations came via text, the charity also saw “a huge rise in online donations”.

“Compared to 161,000 total donations in the previous year, the Ice Bucket Challenge resulted in 927,000 donations in three weeks,” he said.

“Obviously we were very keen to say thank you and engage with these new donors, but getting so much additional data onto the system using our existing processes became our biggest bottleneck in developing a communication programme.”

Jerome Moisan, managing director of Blackbaud Europe, said: "These figures illustrate once again how profoundly successful the Ice Bucket Challenge was to have such an effect on the annual figures, as well as showing that for the fifth consecutive year, average online donation amounts are overall still rising."

Blackbaud’s figures show the average donation amount in 2010 was £52.87.