Higher education fundraising revenue has grown nearly 22% over four years — outpacing both the broader nonprofit sector (7.1%) and the 15% inflation rate over the same period.
By the headline number, the picture looks strong.
But benchmark data rarely tells the whole story on its own.
Jackie Jackson, who leads alumni relations and fundraising at Truman State University, offered one lens on what might be behind the growth: “Planned giving being realized is what’s impacting this particular revenue line — those are final gifts, and it’s the work of people a long time ago.”
Whether that’s part of what’s driving the number or all of it, the more important question is what’s happening underneath it.
What is the Avid+Wiland Benchmark? The Avid+Wiland Benchmark is a live dataset of more than 1,000 nonprofits, tracking near real-time fundraising performace. It tracks revenue, donor counts, retention, upgrade rates, acquisition channels, recurring giving, and more — filterable by vertical and organization size — so programs can compare against true peers, not just sector-wide averages.
Key Takeaways
- Education fundraising revenue has grown nearly 22% over four years, beating inflation — but understanding what’s inside that number matters as much as the rate itself.
- Retention and upgrade rates for mid-level and major donors are declining steadily in education, converging with the broader nonprofit trend after starting from a higher baseline.
- New donors at colleges and universities are now majority online — the transaction channel has shifted, but cultivation and stewardship haven’t always kept pace with where donors are entering.
- Multi-channel contactability correlates directly with higher annual revenue per donor and higher upgrade rates, even when donors don’t give through every channel on file.
- Monthly recurring donors retain at approximately 86% versus 49% for one-time donors — higher education has strong rates among existing recurring donors, but inconsistent volume growth.
Why Higher Education Fundraising Revenue Looks Strong — and Why That Warrants a Closer Look
The four-year revenue trend for colleges and universities is genuinely good news. Nearly 22% growth against a 15% inflation rate means net impact is growing — something the broader nonprofit sector hasn’t seen.
Overall nonprofit revenue grew just 7.1% over the same period, which means impact per dollar is effectively declining for most organizations. For advancement offices making the case for continued institutional investment in fundraising, that 22% figure carries real weight.
What’s worth asking, though, is what’s inside the number.
The benchmark data tracks revenue totals — it doesn’t break out gift types or tell you which dollars are repeatable. Jackie Jackson offered one observation from her experience at two universities:
“When you see these really big gifts — someone’s final gift — it’s a significant number. As an administrator, it’s actually kind of hard to explain to your board that revenue is up, but it’s not repeatable gifts for us.”
She’s careful to note this reflects what she’s seen in her own programs, not a claim the data itself makes. But it points toward a useful habit for any development team reviewing a strong year: understanding the composition of revenue growth matters as much as the growth rate.
A program that knows why it had a strong year is better positioned to sustain it than one that simply enjoys the result.
What the Higher Education Fundraising Benchmarks Show Beneath the Revenue Line
Active donor counts surged in higher education fundraising during 2023 and 2024 — a 13% increase, then another 5%.
That’s meaningful growth, and it reflects real effort happening in development offices. The past twelve months have shown that growth rate slowing and now slightly reversing. The absolute number isn’t alarming on its own. The direction is worth watching.
Jackson flagged the structural reason these numbers fluctuate: “This is literally dependent on a very concerted effort from your staff. Donors don’t wake up in the morning and think, I think I’ll give to the university today. Whenever you have turnover or other priorities happening, those things can fall off quickly.”
The observation isn’t a critique of fundraising teams — it’s a description of how fragile momentum can be when it depends on individual effort rather than a system that keeps the work moving regardless of who’s in a given seat.
The high-value donor picture follows a similar pattern. Mid-level donor retention in education started at a higher baseline than the overall nonprofit average — 72% in 2022 — but has fallen roughly five percentage points over five years, landing near the sector-wide rate.
Major donor retention shows the same steady trickle decline. Upgrade rates in education followed a similar arc to the broader nonprofit trend: a significant fall, some recent leveling, but still pointing downward.
The structural concern isn’t any one of these numbers in isolation — it’s the combination.
Programs are becoming more reliant on mid-level and major donors at the same moment those donors are becoming harder to retain and harder to move upward. Jackson offered one possible reason upgrade rates may be softening at some institutions: “We like to say, can you consider making your very best gift? And if someone gives you their very best gift, they can’t do it again next year.”
It’s a framing worth examining — not as an indictment of major gift strategy, but as a question about how those conversations are structured over time.
What the Shift to Online First-Time Gifts Actually Means for Education Programs
One of the clearest trends in the higher education fundraising benchmarks is the shift in where new donors are making their first gift. Education organizations crossed the 50% online threshold for new donor acquisition around 2022–23, slightly ahead of the broader nonprofit sector.
In the past twelve months, approximately 64% of new donors across all nonprofits made their first gift through an online channel. Higher education fundraising is tracking the same curve.
This doesn’t mean direct mail or events have lost their influence. One attendee during the session noted that at their fundraising gala, 90% of donors gave online — while physically present in the room.
Nathan Hill, VP of Marketing at Avid, made the distinction explicit: “Just because the transaction happens online doesn’t mean the whole giving decision happened online.” The QR code completed the transaction. The dinner, the speaker, the conversations in the room — those moved the donor.
What the shift does mean is that programs need to think carefully about what happens after someone makes that first online gift. The cultivation journey that’s long existed for direct mail donors needs to evolve for donors whose entry point was a donation page or a giving day.
Onboarding sequences, personalized follow-up, and multi-channel touchpoints from the start aren’t optional additions for digital-first donors — they’re what determines whether a transaction becomes a relationship.
Attribution matters here too. Jackson described how Truman State started tracking specific URLs assigned to volunteer groups and athletics channels during their giving day: “We might have thought, oh, a donor saw her message and wants to support athletics. Versus: athletics sent out this URL, and we’re seeing the impact of that effort.”
When you can see what actually moved donors, you stop optimizing for the wrong things.
Two Structural Levers Worth Building Now
The benchmark data isn’t only a list of warning signs. Two areas stand out as clear structural opportunities — not quick wins, but levers that compound over time when built deliberately.
Multi-Channel Contactability
Avid’s benchmark data, drawn from more than 1,000 nonprofits, shows a consistent pattern: the more contact points a program has for a given donor — email, phone, mailing address, mobile — the higher that donor’s annual value tends to be and the more likely they are to upgrade.
The correlation holds even when donors don’t give through every channel.
The mechanism is straightforward. A donor who gives exclusively online but receives a direct mail piece still experiences something through that piece — a story, a mission moment — that influences their next online gift. A text message that doesn’t generate a reply can still remind a lapsed donor that they care, and that reminder becomes a renewal through email a week later.
Contactability enables more of those cultivation moments even when the transaction happens elsewhere.
In higher education fundraising specifically, the benchmark data suggests email may be less correlated with donor value than in other nonprofit verticals. Rather than a reason to abandon the channel, that’s a signal to examine whether the approach needs to evolve.
It also points toward the value of having a phone number on file — which doesn’t just unlock calls. It opens voicemail, SMS and MMS, and the ability to match donors to their digital footprint for advertising across every platform they use.
One contact point unlocks the entire multi-channel picture.
Jackson’s practical framing: “Whenever you’re building out some sort of communication, even just thinking about the one person you want to get a meeting with — look at their history. It looks like they open our emails a lot; I might start with an email, follow it up specifically. Sometimes if they don’t want a phone call, they’re going to reply to my email a little faster.”
A plan, even a simple one, changes the outcome.
Monthly Recurring Giving
The recurring giving numbers in the benchmark data make a clear structural argument. Monthly recurring donors retain at approximately 86%. One-time donors retain at approximately 49%. Upgrade rates for recurring donors are roughly ten times higher than for one-time donors.
These aren’t marginal differences.
Higher education fundraising programs show strong retention and upgrade rates among their existing recurring donors. The gap is in volume — the share of donors giving monthly fluctuates in education rather than growing on a consistent upward trajectory, in contrast to other nonprofit verticals where recurring programs have trended steadily higher.
Jackson was candid about the challenge: “I have not figured out how to get them started just yet.” That’s an honest assessment shared by many development offices. But if recurring giving is growing consistently in health, faith, and human services organizations, there are patterns worth examining — not because every tactic transfers, but because the structural opportunity is the same.
The question for education programs isn’t whether recurring giving works. It’s what the specific motions are for getting donors to say yes to it.
“Even if these metrics scare you a little bit, I hope you look at it as an opportunity to identify where we can make adjustments.”
Jackie Jackson, VP of Advancement, Truman State University
Higher Education Fundraising Benchmarks: Using the Data as a Map
The higher education fundraising benchmarks for 2026 tell a nuanced story. The headline is real — nearly 22% revenue growth over four years, beating inflation, outperforming the broader sector. That’s worth acknowledging and worth using in the conversations that matter inside your institution.
What the data underneath asks is whether the conditions generating those results are being actively built or passively inherited. Declining high-value donor retention, a shift to online acquisition that requires updated stewardship thinking, and a recurring giving opportunity that most education programs haven’t fully developed — these are the structural questions the benchmark surfaces. None of them are cause for alarm. They’re cause for action.
Fundraising programs don’t grow because of a single strong year. They grow when the work keeps moving — when learning from one cycle carries into the next, when every campaign starts with better information than the last. The data is there. The Avid Fundraising Benchmark is free to access and updated monthly, filterable by vertical and revenue size. See how your program compares to your actual peers — and use what you find to shape what you build next.
Want to see how Avid helps education programs connect insight to execution— keeping donor data, campaign history, and outreach activity in one system instead of scattered across disconnected tools? You can schedule a tour at avidai.com/demo