Latest Fundraising Effectiveness Project Data Shows Uptick in Giving

GivingTuesday and the start of year-end giving are less than a month away, and fundraising trends appear promising as the nonprofit sector continues to make strides with dollars raised, according to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project’s latest figures released today.

Though a moderate spike in donor dollars is promising, the trend of those dollars coming from fewer donors has continued, according to the quarterly report. Additionally, donor retention’s downward trend maintains its year-over-year trajectory, though the data indicates the rate of decline is slowing. 

"As we approach the year-end giving season, the Q2 report from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project offers trusted insights fundraisers can’t afford to ignore,” Tim Sarrantonio, chair of the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP), said in a statement. “Nonprofits can use these trends to inform and adjust their strategies in real time — focusing on donor retention, optimizing outreach, and ensuring they’re making the most of every opportunity to increase impact during this pivotal period."

Various data providers share their aggregate data to power the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, which boasted 3.4 million donors and $4.3 billion across more than 12,000 nonprofits in the latest iteration. New to the project is BetterUnite, which joins its peers — Bloomerang, Classy, DonorPerfect, Givebutter, Keela, Momentive Software, Neon One and Qgiv, along with data analysis from Bonterra. 

Here are four key points about the data to keep in mind.

1. Dollars Return to Charitable Causes

Charitable giving continues to increase moderately. The 3.7% rise in the second quarter is slightly less than the first quarter’s leap; however, it is the largest second-quarter jump in four years. Researchers are optimistic the trend could continue its reversal despite June’s 5.3% decline.

Dollars by donor size, life cycle and number of donations have fallen across the board — despite the increase in overall dollars. These drops are mainly due to adjustments made for late data in the total dollars category. The same adjustments are not made for splits, such as dollars by donor size. 

2. Donor Retention Remains a Struggle

Even though more dollars are going to great causes, donor retention has lowered by 4.5% — slightly worse than in the first quarter. June experienced the worst year-over-year decline (5.5%) since March 2022. 

First-time donors are a large part of this problem. Only 11.1% of new donors were retained through June, resulting in a 9% decrease over the same period in 2023. Researchers found repeat donors are still more likely to give additional gifts, with 35.3% of repeat donors retained in the first half of the year. However, that category is still down by 5.3% over last year. 

Retention and recapture rates are down year over year. | Credit: Quarterly Fundraising Report: Q2 2024 by Fundraising Effectiveness Project

The most significant retention rate decline happened in the recaptured donor group, which holds a 1.5% retention rate and 18.2% decline over 2023’s midyear point. Researchers point out that this group is relatively small, but were unable to find an explanation other than concerns nonprofits are struggling to re-engage past donors. 

3. Recurring Donors Become Less Active

Nonprofits experienced a 5.8% dip in dollars raised from repeat retained donors. This is significant because this group accounts for 60.1% of total dollars. 

Year over year, there were declines in the number of new donors, new retained donors, repeat retained donors and recaptured donors. | Credit: Quarterly Fundraising Report: Q2 2024 by Fundraising Effectiveness Project

The highest donor decline (14.4%) and dollar drop (6.5%) came from those who gave seven or more gifts. Though these donors only make up 3% and 11.7% of total donors, respectively, they should be your organization’s most loyal supporters, so researchers encouraged nonprofits to engage these donors to sustain donor participation, particularly at mid-year. 

But retaining new donors is difficult too. Both new and new retained donors — those who gave for the first time last year, saw the largest drops, with 11.8% and 13.3% dips, respectively. Researchers emphasized the need to strengthen donor participation as first-time donors (33.8% of all donors) and repeat retained donors (43.8% of all donors) account for three-quarters of the decline in donors. 

4. Small-Dollar Donors Are Often Not Loyal Supporters

At the halfway point, the number of donors is down 3.9% year over year. Though that drop is larger than in the first quarter, this has been a consistent trend since 2021, according to the report. 

That decrease occurred across all giving levels, with micro donors — those giving $100 or less — having the highest decline of 12.3%, or two-thirds of the total loss. However, researchers believe this trend line may be slowing down as the second quarter drop has historically been worse. However, when viewing the date by month, monthly totals between 2023 and 2024 are virtually identical until May 2024, which saw a 8.6% drop at the same time last year. The second quarter routinely experiences steep donor declines, causing researchers to indicate a growing donor engagement problem at midyear. 

The number of donors each month has decreased throughout 2024. | Credit: Quarterly Fundraising Report: Q2 2024 by Fundraising Effectiveness Project

On the other hand, fewer larger donors are giving, but the rates of decline are much less severe. 

“Although there is room for cautious optimism due to the gradual increase in retention rates, the midyear metrics indicate a continued over-reliance on large donors to sustain fundraising efforts," Woodrow Rosenbaum, chief data officer of GivingTuesday, said in a statement. "While large gifts provide a much-needed financial windfall to nonprofits, the sector needs an increased focus on small- and medium-size donors to cultivate the resilience that will support long term sector growth. The Q2 metrics indicate that there is still considerable work to be done unlocking engagement from these donor groups, which the FEP project aims to address through our growing suite of reporting and benchmarking capabilities."