Year-End Fundraising Benchmarks: The Complete Guide to Finding the Biggest Opportunities

Year-end is here. The appeal letters are at the printer. The email calendar is packed. Giving Tuesday is around the corner, and December 31 is right behind it.

It’s the busiest season of the fundraising year, and the one with the most on the line. For most nonprofits, year-end brings in 30–50% of annual giving revenue. A strong December can carry a program. A soft one can set the tone for the whole next year.

But when time is this short, it’s tempting to run the same plays as last year and hope for the best. Same segments. Same channels. Same asks.

The problem? Donor behavior isn’t standing still. Who gives at year-end, how they give, and where they give are all shifting. The organizations that keep growing tend to be the ones working from better information.

That’s where year-end fundraising benchmarks come in. A good benchmark works like a flashlight. It shines a light on challenges and opportunities that might otherwise be hard to see on your own.

In this guide, you’ll find:

• The latest year-end fundraising benchmarks from Avid’s real performance data
• What each metric means for your year-end strategy
• A simple way to use benchmarks to spot your biggest gaps and advantages
• A framework for finding the root cause of trends in your own data

Year-End Fundraising Benchmarks: The Latest Metrics

Last year-end, nonprofits raised more money from fewer donors. Revenue grew 9.4% while active donors fell 6%, and the donors who did give were more loyal, more likely to give monthly and more likely to give online.

Here’s the quick summary of last season’s year-end fundraising benchmarks—all pulled from Avid’s real-time fundraising benchmark including 1,000+ nonprofit organizations.

Benchmark	Last year-end	What it means for you
Year-end revenue	Up 9.4%	First increase since 2021
Active year-end donors	Down 6%	Fifth straight year of decline
% of donors who also gave the previous year-end	52.3%	Your best year-end target list already exists
Year-end donors who are recurring donors	46.9% (up from 33.4% in 2021)	Monthly donors are open to a one-time year-end ask
Year-end donations made online	42.3%	Offline donors are moving online
Mid-level donors’ share of year-end donors	7.3% (vs. 2.9% for the full year)	2.5x more present at year-end
Major donors’ share of year-end donors	1.4% (vs. 0.34% for the full year)	4x more present at year-end
Year-end donors reachable by email, phone and mail	39%	Contactability is your strongest signal of giving

Now let’s dig into what’s behind each number, and what to do about it.

1. Year-end revenue was up 9.4%

Last year-end, revenue grew 9.4%. That’s the first increase in year-end revenue since 2021.

That’s good news. But it also stands out against the bigger picture. Across the full calendar year, giving has grown in all but one of the previous four years. Year-end revenue spent most of that stretch going the other direction.

So while last season was a welcome rebound, you can’t assume year-end will keep pace on its own. Growth here has been harder to come by than in the rest of the year.

2. Active donors decreased by 6%

The number of donors giving at year-end fell 6%. That’s the fifth straight year of decline. And it’s not just Avid’s benchmark seeing this—benchmarks like Fundraising Effectiveness Project see it too.

Put those first two benchmarks side by side, and the story becomes clear: fewer donors are giving more.

The decline in year-end donors is also steeper than the decline across the full calendar year. That tells us giving is spreading out. Donors aren’t as concentrated in November and December as they’ve been historically. They’re giving at other points in the year, too.

That doesn’t make year-end less important. It means you can’t count on the season alone to bring donors back. The relationship you build the rest of the year matters more than ever.

3. 52.3% of year-end donors gave the previous year-end

Just over half of last year-end’s donors also gave during the previous year-end season. That share has grown every year for five years.

This is one of the clearest targeting tactics for your campaign. Your past year-end donors are your most likely year-end donors.

Build a segment of everyone who gave last year-end. Track who has and hasn’t given yet this season. Then, as urgency peaks in the last week of December, reach out to the ones who haven’t given. They’re used to giving to you at this time of year. Sometimes they just need the reminder.

4. 46.9% of year-end donors were recurring donors

Nearly half of last season’s year-end donors were recurring donors. That’s up from 33.4% in 2021, one of the fastest-moving trends in the data.

It’s easy to leave monthly donors out of year-end appeals. They’re already giving, after all. Why risk annoying them?

But the data says they show up. Their giving is spread out across the year, and year-end gives you a clear moment to ask for something different: a dedicated, one-time gift on top of their monthly support. Thank them for their commitment, then invite them into a unique year-end giving opportunity.

5. Offline channels bring in the most revenue, but offline donors are moving online

Offline giving still brings in the most year-end revenue. But the gap is closing.

Only 38.4% of year-end donors made their first-ever gift online. Yet 42.3% of year-end donations came in online. That difference means a meaningful number of donors who started offline are now choosing to give online.

The takeaway: don’t assume a donor’s next gift will come through the same channel as their first. A donor you acquired through the mail may be the one who clicks your December 31 email. Use a multichannel approach so every donor can give where they’re ready to give.

6. Mid-level and major donors show up in outsized numbers at year-end

High-value donors are far more present at year-end than the rest of the year. Compared to the full calendar year:

• Mid-level donors make up 2.5x more of the year-end donor picture (7.3% vs. 2.9%)
• Major donors make up 4x more of the year-end donor picture (1.4% vs. 0.34%)

These donors are paying attention in December. So speak to them directly.

Create intentional messaging and touchpoints for them, even in digital channels. A dedicated email, a different landing page, a personal note in the mail. Most importantly, create engagement that a gift officer or donor rep can follow up on. A click, a reply, or a visit is a reason to pick up the phone.

7. 39% of year-end donors could be reached by email, phone and mail

Last season, 39% of year-end donors could be contacted through all three channels: email, phone and mailing address.

Contactability is your biggest signal of someone’s likelihood to give. The more ways you can reach a donor, the more likely they are to hear from you, and the more likely they are to respond.

Year-end is the noisiest time of year in a donor’s inbox and mailbox. A multichannel strategy is the best way to cut through that noise and win both your donor’s attention and their gift. Email your direct mail donors. Drop a direct-to-voicemail message and an SMS.

Make the most of your donor’s contact info to reach them in everything from the mailbox, to advertising, SMS, and more.

Using Benchmarks to Spot Opportunities

So how do you turn year-end fundraising benchmarks into better insights for your organization?

I’d suggest there are two main places to look, with one filter built in.

Find where you’re behind

When you look at a benchmark, start by asking: where are we behind? Where is our performance lagging the rest of the sector?

That lag exposes a gap. And that gap is an opportunity. Close it, and you’ll see more giving and more revenue.

Find where you’re ahead

The flip side is just as important: where are we ahead?

This one isn’t always the first place you’d look for an opportunity. But it’s where you already have an advantage. You’re likely doing something right, and doing it more effectively than other organizations.

That’s a place to double down. Add budget. Add touchpoints. Lean in with more intentionality. Take something that’s already working and scale it.

Compare to your peers, not the average

Here’s the filter. If you only compare yourself to the average nonprofit, you’ll find some interesting gaps. But your insights and strategy can end up skewed, because not every organization looks and operates like yours.

So compare to your peers. That means organizations that look like you in two ways:

• Mission: they’re working to solve similar problems.
• Size: they operate at a similar scale. That’s most easily measured by total revenue or total giving.

That gives you an apples-to-apples comparison with fundraising programs that look like yours.

If you want to see exactly how you compare to your peers, you can use Avid’s fundraising benchmark tool for free »

A story: when benchmarks rewrote an acquisition strategy

I was recently talking with an organization that had run a campaign focused entirely on new donor acquisition. The plan was a direct mail acquisition campaign to bring new donors in the door.

They did their homework. They worked with a third-party data company to decide who to target, using demographic data to choose whose mailboxes they should be in. They researched typical conversion rates for a direct mail package and expected average gift sizes. They built a model and ran the campaign.

The results didn’t come anywhere close to their expectations.

That’s a huge problem. And it left them scratching their heads. What went wrong? How do we improve next time?

So we dug into Avid’s benchmarks. Not to see how they compared to every other organization, but to see how they compared to organizations like them.

That matters here. Direct mail is a channel in natural decline, but it’s still critical for a lot of organizations. For many, it drives a significant share of giving, sometimes the majority.

We zeroed in on organizations with a similar mission (health and human services) and a similar size ($5–10M in annual revenue). Then we asked: how are these organizations actually acquiring new donors?

The answer: more than 90% of their new donors came in through online channels.

Yet this organization had built its acquisition campaign around the mail.

That one insight, found by comparing directly to peers, opened up a new strategy. Their new donor acquisition shouldn’t be led by direct mail. It should be digital-first, with online efforts leading the way and direct mail in a supporting role.

That’s the power of looking at where you’re behind and where you’re ahead, compared to the organizations that look most like you. It leads to a more effective strategy.

The Year-End Fundraising Insights are Hiding in Your Own Data

Year-end fundraising benchmarks are valuable for seeing how you compare to similar organizations. But the biggest opportunities are often hiding in your own data.

The hard part is knowing which metrics matter. What’s a real signal, and what’s just noise?

A simple framework gets you to the root cause: ask why three times.

Here’s a quick example from a real nonprofit’s data in Avid.

Start with the headline: revenue is up 6.5%

Revenue was up 6.5% fiscal year to date. That’s $500K in new giving revenue.

That’s great growth! And it’s tracking ahead of the average nonprofit by a healthy margin.

If you stop your analysis here, you’d run year-end the same way you always do. No major changes needed.

But what happens if we ask why?

Ask why once: why is revenue up $500K?

The first why shows the growth story is more complicated:

• Retained donor revenue is up $1.1M.
• Reactivated donor revenue is down $600K.

In the net, revenue is still up. But it could be a lot stronger if we fix the drop in reactivation.

If we built our plans from here, we might assume two things:

1. The work we’re doing in retention is great. No changes needed.
2. We need to overhaul our reactivation strategy for year-end.

Only one of those assumptions is correct. Let’s dig into retained revenue first.

Ask why twice: why is retained revenue up?

As it turns out, the retention rate actually dropped year over year. This organization is nearly 9% worse at retaining donors this year.

So why is retained revenue up? Because last year’s acquisition efforts were through the roof. Even with a lower retention rate, there are so many more new donors to retain that it’s powering a lift in revenue.

The takeaway is two-fold:

1. Double down on acquisition. You’re already seeing the payoff in retained donors.
2. Test second-year giving strategies to turn more of those new donors into repeat donors and drive more retained revenue.

Okay, so retention is clear. What about the reactivation problem?

Ask why a third time: why is reactivated revenue down?

There are a lot of ways to slice this. But two metrics stand out:

• Digital reactivation is up.
• Direct mail reactivation is 600 donors behind last year.

That leads to a few new conclusions:

1. Double down on digital reactivation. Something is working there.
2. Build a plan to analyze and optimize direct mail reactivation. The fix lives in one channel.

Why asking why three times matters

Making decisions on high-level trends alone would have sent this organization in the wrong direction. They would have left retention alone while it was slipping, and rebuilt a reactivation program that was half working.

Asking why three times gets you closer to the root cause. And the closer you get to the root cause, the more effective your year-end strategy becomes.

Year-End Fundraising Benchmarks: Frequently Asked Questions

Get a Free Analysis of Your Biggest Year-End Opportunities

Benchmarks help you spot gaps. Asking why three times gets to the root issues. But fundraisers don’t have time in December to constantly be digging for the next opportunity.

A free Avid fundraising analysis does the digging for you.

Create a free account. Bring in your data. And Avid will find the hidden opportunities that you can take action on today.

A free Avid analysis gives you:

1. Recommended audiences to target, ready to deploy.
2. Specific touchpoints to add to your campaign, ready to draft.
3. A board-ready plan to export, ready to share with your team.

It’s built on 650M+ donor interactions and 8,000+ fundraising experiments, and tailored to your program. Best of all, you’ll have it with plenty of time left to act this year-end.

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