Charities receive 70 per cent of donations from offline methods even though the size of the online audience is roughly the same as the offline audience, according to a survey of 500 charities.

Of the 30 per cent of donations received online, the vast majority (90 per cent) comes through websites. Donations through email marketing form 7 per cent and Facebook 3 per cent, with no charities reporting that they had received donations via Twitter.

The Digital Giving Review 2012 was carried out by online fundraising platform Give as You Live and the Institute of Fundraising (IoF).

Polly Gowers OBE, founder and chief executive of Give as You Live, said: “With online and offline audiences the same size, charities need to work on converting online supporter engagement into financial support.”

Simon Morrison, IoF director of policy and communications added: “With so many ways to raise money through digital technology it is surprising to see that these online channels don’t represent a larger proportion of a charity's donation income.”

Survey respondents said that the biggest barrier to fundraising online was a lack of internal resources, with 37 per cent citing this. Some 23 per cent said donor resistance was the biggest barrier.

The results are being presented at 2pm at the IoF annual conference and the full report will be available later at www.digitalgivingreview.com.

The next phase of the review is to survey donors. Give as You Live and IoF plan to carry out this survey in the autumn.