Time is flying by, and the new year is here! There’s never a dull moment when you work in fundraising. Every day presents new and unique challenges for nonprofit professionals. So, let’s look back at some of the fundraising lessons we learned in 2024.
Knowing where you stand compared to others in our industry is always helpful. So, we’ve compiled some of the key fundraising benchmarks from the past year in this article so you can better understand where you stand.
You may find that you’re performing better than you thought! Or chances are, you will identify an area or two where you could improve.
So, let’s get started!
December made up 26% of online revenue.
If you’ve been fundraising for any amount of time, you know that a strong December is crucial for hitting your annual fundraising goals. But don’t just take our word for it!
According to the M+R Benchmarks 2024 Study, giving in December 2023 accounted for 26 percent of all online revenue and 34 percent of one-time online donations. Furthermore, 5 percent of all fundraising revenue for the year was raised on December 31, 2023.
As the first Tuesday after Thanksgiving, GivingTuesday is typically in the last week of November. But every few years, we find ourselves with an early December date.
And we expect that December 2024 will account for an even larger percentage of annual fundraising revenue once the results are in. And this is largely because GivingTuesday fell on December 3. So, that’s already another $3.6 billion that was raised in December this year.
LEARN MORE: Keeping donors engaged after GivingTuesday.
Total giving is predicted to grow by 3.9%.
This prediction comes from The Philanthropy Outlook 2024 & 2025, a research report written by the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy and presented by CCS fundraising.
The report predicted a 4.2 percent increase in total giving in 2024, followed by a 3.9 percent increase in 2025.
It listed several factors, including average growth in personal income, average growth in net worth, and above-average growth in the S&P 500, as evidence to support this prediction.
In 2024, 63.1 percent of total giving was predicted to come from individuals, 22.6 percent from foundations, 8.4 percent from estates (bequest), and another 5.8 percent from corporations.
In 2025, individual giving is expected to decline slightly as a percentage of total fundraising dollars as gifts from foundations rise. The report predicted that 62.8 percent of donations in 2025 will come from individuals, with 22.9 percent from foundations, 8.5 percent from planned giving, and another 5.8 percent from corporations.
So, don’t fall into the trap of thinking it’s all doom and gloom on the horizon. There is reason to believe our industry is still heading in the right direction despite all the uncertainty in our world today.
LEARN MORE: You can raise more with personalized landing pages.
Nonprofits raised $76 for every 1,000 emails.
This marks a significant 20 percent decrease from the year prior, according to the M+R Benchmarks 2024 report.
The average response rate for advocacy emails declined 10 percent over the year to 1.4 percent. And the response rate for fundraising emails fell to 0.07 percent, a staggering 16 percent decrease compared to the prior year.
However, the number of emails nonprofits sent to their donors increased, while email list size fell by 7 percent. Email volume increased by 12 percent from the previous year as nonprofits sent an average of 59 emails per subscriber.
Email revenue declined by an average of 7 percent, accounting for just 16 percent of all online fundraising revenue. This implies that too many organizations are not using their data strategically to improve their results.
After all, there’s no shortage of changes you can make to your emails, from the subject line to your CTA and everything in between. However, you can’t fly blind. You need your data to steer your strategy.
If you keep changing your call-to-action but don’t see an increase in clicks, you need to ask yourself what else could be going wrong. And you can find the answers if you maintain good data hygiene. You may find that the same CTA worked just fine with last year’s appeal, but this year’s story didn’t resonate as well with donors.
Or you might be sending too many messages to the wrong people. Going through your database and prioritizing which donors receive which communications will improve your response rate, cut down on costs, and maximize your ROI for every touchpoint.
LEARN MORE: 4 ways nonprofits use data to optimize email outreach.
The modern fundraising landscape.
The world is a noisy place. We’re bombarded by thousands of messages, advertisements, and calls-to-action every day. But we can’t possibly remember them all. And we will act on even fewer. This creates a problem for nonprofit professionals.
After all, our messages are important. Our causes matter. And we can’t do it alone! You need the support of like-minded individuals to back your efforts. But how can you rise above the noise to reach them, make your message stick, and inspire donors to make a difference?
Well, getting a better understanding of where you stand now and how that compares to others in the fundraising industry is a great first step.
So, use the fundraising lessons we learned in 2024 to amplifi your fundraising outreach in the new year. Let’s make 2025 your best year yet!
And click here if you’d like to schedule time with an amplifi development strategist to get started!
