Dusty Rhodes “Benchmarking Your Organization..”
Benchmarking Your Organization | What 2025 Donor Data Reveals About Fundraising Realities
You already know your fundraising results from 2025. But how did your organization perform in comparison with other donor-supported nonprofits and ministries nationwide? Benchmarking can provide that context.
Benchmarking data is widely used by 86% of nonprofit and ministry leaders to guide high level decisions and to educate their staff. And 62% of them use it to inform or adjust their strategy, according to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP).*
American statistician and management consultant Dr. W. Edwards Deming is most credited with saying “Every organization is perfectly designed to get the results it does.” You know how your organization is designed. Benchmark data can help inform any decisions you may want to make to improve your efficiency and effectiveness. Let’s dive back into 2025!
Despite last December’s encouraging Giving Tuesday when a record $4 billion was raised – a 13% increase over 2024 and from 3% more donors than the previous year** – total dollars and donors for the rest of 2025 overall did not do as well.
Total Dollars Up / Donors Down Again
Total donation income for all of 2025 still grew 5.3% over 2024, but it was all donated by 3.3% fewer donors nationwide than the previous year, according to Avid,*** which marks the 5th consecutive year we have seen a drop in the estimated total number of donors!
While fewer donors gave, those who did give in 2025 gave more on average for the 5th year in a row! At least fewer donors dropped than in the previous year – 2025’s 3.3% drop is an improvement over 2024’s 4.5% drop.*
Yet Christian media along with other ministries did not escape this decline. The Religion vertical saw, on average, about a 4.5% decline in 2025 donors.**
My friend Bill Scott, Vidare’s Chief Client Officer who hosts radio station on-air fundraising campaigns around the country, recently observed “Everybody is down in the number of givers. We’re seeing people jump in with bigger gifts so it kept us afloat. Whether it’s soup kitchens, churches or Christian radio stations, everybody is experiencing the same thing.”
If this initial trajectory of fewer donors dropping year-to-year does not continue and leadership of donor-supported organizations keep expecting their development people or fundraisers to generate higher revenues from fewer donors, they will likely face serious and significant short term and long-term risks!
Recommendation
Nonprofit CEOs love seeing new money from new sources. But when the indicators are telling you new sources may not yield results to meet budget goals, smart fundraisers know it is more efficient and effective to try and re-engage lapsing and lapsed donors than it is to find new donors. And the older your nonprofit is the more potential funds can be raised by winning back those who are already familiar with your mission and accomplishments.
New Donors Up Significantly
When you drill down below those top line numbers you begin to see significant shifting among the donors. Despite the decrease in total donors overall, there appears to be a massive jump in new donors specifically.
Along with this increase in new donors is visibility into seeing where most of them are coming from. In 2023 digital and online efforts broke through the 50% mark for finding new donors vs. direct mail and other efforts. After relatively flat growth in 2024, digital and online shot up to 64.5% as the leading channels for new donors.***
This may not be a total surprise since many nonprofits including Christian media and radio have been upgrading digital platforms and creating more robust communications through mobile apps, texting, social media and implementing welcoming emails for new names acquired. At the same time we’ve been seeing some decline in offline communications such as direct mail. Still with 5 straight years of declining donors overall, it is encouraging to see such growth among new donors.
Recommendation
- Begin asking if your current methods of acquiring new relationships still apply or need revisiting. Vice President of Marketing at Avid Nathan Hill asks, “Is the fundraising funnel or marketing funnel still relevant to how new donors of today and tomorrow find us and engage with us? A funnel itself assumes people move in a certain linear way towards us. But do they? Or is it more like a series of haphazard zigs and zags with on again/ off again connections?
- For nonprofits relying primarily on direct mail for donor communications including new donors, consider the implications if this shift continues. If you haven’t done so yet, this is the time to invest in digital assets and competencies, and not just for acquiring new donors but also for cultivating and stewarding relationships in order to help retain your current donors.
Other 2025 Giving Highlights
- While larger “exceptional gifts” was the main driver behind giving totals for U.S. nonprofits, according to a report by Blackbaud, retention of high-capacity donors is slipping. Mid-level donor retention fell to 66.9% (from 69.5% in 2022) and Major gift donor retention fell to 71.7% (from 75.3% in 2022).***
- Average revenue per donor increased to $362 in 2025 from $350 in 2024.***
- Donor engagement efforts remain critical to retain current donors. Through Q2 2025 donors who had been giving for two or more years accounted for nearly 62% of dollars raised from individuals, while first-time donors represented 17.5% of dollars raised, according to Blackbaud.
- Nearly 1 in 5 charitable dollars now flows through a Donor-Advised Fund, which totaled $65B in giving in 2024 alone.**** DAFs aren’t just a tax vehicle. They are a giving vehicle and created by donors who have already decided to give, but not necessarily where to give yet.
- American donors supported 3-4 causes in 2025 vs. 2-3 in 2024, and the percentage of donors supporting 5+ causes more than doubled to 33% in 2025 vs.12% in 2024. The share supporting just one cause dropped from 27% in 2024 to 13% in 2025.*****
Back to Dr. W. Edwards Deming’s famous quote: “Every organization is perfectly designed to get the results that it does.” Financial results of donor-supported organizations come primarily from…donors! And people change, their preferences for communication change as well as their preferences in giving.
Paying attention to your own data first and then studying it through the lens of reliable benchmarks, gives you insight and perspective for how best to strategically lead your organization to fulfill your mission and impact even more lives!
*Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP)
**Giving Tuesday data reported by NonProfitPRO, December 5, 2025
***Data and graph images by Avid, benchmark data updated monthly from 1,000+ nonprofits nationwide, with average annual revenues of nearly $14M, powered by Avid+Wiland. Visit: app.avidai.com/register/wiland
****Chariot. Visit: givechariot.com
*****Based on 2024-2025 data from CAF America
Dusty Rhodes is a strategic executive leader helping Christian media and other nonprofits grow revenues to fulfill their missions for wider and deeper impact! He works alongside leadership creating visionary strategic plans and revenue strategies to fund them for sustainable growth. Dusty is a certified Fund Raising Executive (CFRE), a member of the global Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP), and the national faith-based executive peer organization CEO Experience (CXP).
Contact Dusty: DustyRhodes777@Outlook.com and at www.LinkedIn.com/in/DustyRhodes777
