Quarterly Fundraising Report™

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

✖

  • Donors: The number of people who have made a donation so far this year
  • Dollars: The amount of money raised by people making a donation so far this year
  • Retention: The percentage of people who have been retained from previous years so far this year

Key Insights

  • Dollars from large donors significantly weakened, leading to a decrease in money raised.
  • 2022 saw a small increase in dollars from recaptured donors, while funding through retention and acquisition remain a challenge.
  • Many acquired donors in 2021 did not return in 2022.
DONORS

-10.0%
(+/- 2.0%)
YOY change 		DOLLARS

-1.7%
(+/- 2.0%)
YOY change 		RETENTION

-3.5%
(+/- 1.0%)
YOY change
 
  • Visit https://data.givingtuesday.org/fep-report/ for the most detailed version of this report, which includes additional data splits and organization-focused insights.
  • In this report, we compare data compiled from previous years to data from the full year of 2022.
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Current Dataset

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

Key Limitations

  • Data in our panel is limited to organizations with >=3 years of data, with $5K - $25M received in the prior year, via the Growth in Giving database.
  • Data is weighted across size of organization as determined by amount fundraised, including organizations raising between $5K - $25M.
  • Data is also weighted by NTEE (National Taxonomy of Exempt Entities) codes utilized by the IRS to determine organization type and/or cause.
  • A significant amount of data arrives late, so we estimate the difference for top-line metrics by reviewing historical patterns of delayed data ("data drift"). Throughout this report, ranges for each metric express uncertainty in the estimates.

DONORS

7.4M
in 2022 		DOLLARS

$9.6B
in 2022 		ORGANIZATIONS

8,816
in 2022
 
  • Revenue and retention metrics report on year-to-date (YTD) performance compared against the prior year total, based on a panel* of organizations selected from the Growth in Giving Database of 241 million transactions from more than 26,000 organizations since 2005.
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Donors: Time Series

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

✖

  • Overall rate of growth in donors: net of gains minus losses in number of donors from last year to this year divided by total number of donors up to this time last year.

Key Insights

 

 

 
  • Donor participation has dropped -11.5% when we take the data at face value. But after adjusting for delays in data reporting ("data drift"), we estimate the actual decrease is -10%.

  • This marks the second consecutive year with significantly decreased donor participation.
 

 

 
  • Dollars from large donors are down significantly, driving negative topline fundraising.
  • Low donor counts are driven by weak acquisition rates and low retention from 2021.
 

 

 
NOTE: The panel for each year differs based on our panel rules (stable organizations over the past 3 years w/ $5K - $25M received in the prior year, via the Growth in Giving database). This ensures consistent historical data & avoids biasing past results by filtering on future data.

Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Donors by Donor Size

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

✖

  • Donor size: the grouping of donors by giving levels (dollar ranges) using donors’ year-to-date giving amounts

Key Insights

  • The majority of all donors (83.1%) consist of those contributing less than $500, representing the
    most substantial donor group.
  • Almost all of the decrease in donors, roughly 90%, is attributable to losses of donors
    of $500 and below.
  • The number of Major and Supersize donors decreased the least, but they are also the
    smallest categories of donors.
MICRO
(Under $100)

-14.9%
YOY Change 		SMALL
($101 - $500)

-8.4%
YOY Change 		MIDSIZE
($500 - $5K)

-5.2%
YOY Change 		MAJOR
($5K - $50K)

-3.1%
YOY Change 		SUPERSIZE
($50K+)

-2.1%
YOY Change

53.8%
% of total donors

29.3%
% of total donors

14.3%
% of total donors

2.3%
% of total donors

0.3%
% of total donors
 
All year-over-year (YOY) changes are computed on year-to-date (YTD) totals. Donor size segments were chosen to span both dollars and donors, with each segment representing 1-50% of the total. Estimates for late data only apply to top-line donors, dollars, and retention. Thus, these more granular breakdowns underestimate year-over-year growth.
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Donors by Life Cycle

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

✖

  • Donor Life Cycle: the grouping of donors based on when they were last seen in the dataset

Key Insights

  • New-retained donors ended the year at -26.4% year-over-year participation.
  • New-retained donors account for 21% of the decreased donor pool, despite (now) accounting for just 9% of donors.
  • Another large driver of decreased donor participation are new donors, which dropped ~18%. They drive 60% of the topline decrease, and now account for 38% of the donor pool.
  • These decreases in New and New-Retained donors account for nearly all of the change.
NEW
DONORS
 

-18.1%
YTD Change 		NEW RETAINED
DONORS
 

-26.4%
YTD Change 		REPEAT
RETAINED
DONORS

-1.8%
YTD Change 		RECAPTURED
DONORS
 

-3.5%
YTD Change

38.3%
% of total donors

8.9%
% of total donors

38.4%
% of total donors

14.3%
% of total donors
 
NEW DONORS - never gave to this organization before.
NEW RETAINED DONORS - gave last year to the organization, but never before.
REPEAT RETAINED DONORS - gave last year to the organization, but not for the first time.
RECAPTURED DONORS - did not give last year to the organization, but had given in the past.
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Donor by Donation Count

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

✖

  • Donor Donation Counts: the grouping of donors based on how many times they've made a donation

Key Insights

  • One-time donors still comprise the largest group of donors and have dropped the most, driving the decrease in overall donor participation.
  • Donors who have made at least 7 donations (our most active category) decreased the least.
  • The overall trend of decreased donor numbers is evident in all segments of donors by donation count.
1 DONATION

-11.9%
YOY Change 		2 DONATIONS

-12.6%
YOY Change 		3-6 DONATIONS

-12.9%
YOY Change 		7+ DONATIONS

-3.4%
YOY Change

69.8%%
% of total donors

13.4%
% of total donors

8.8%
% of total donors

8.0%
% of total donors
 
Donation count segments were selected to best illustrate the distribution of total donors and dollars across the giving spectrum. A donor's donation count includes all contributions made during 2022.
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Dollars: Time Series

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

✖

  • Overall rate of growth in dollars: net of gains minus losses in money from fundraising from last year to this year divided by total dollars raised up to this time last year

Key Insights

 

 

 
  • Fundraising dollars have decreased by -4.7%, but after adjusting for delays in data reporting ("data drift"), we estimate dollars decreased by -1.7% compared to 2021.
 

 

 
  • Fundraising decreased at the end of the 2022 calendar year, contrasting with the previous years when fundraising gained momentum towards the end of the year.

  • Dollars from large donors are down significantly, leading to a decrease in money raised.
 

 

 


Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Dollars by Donor Size

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

✖

  • Dollars by donor size: the segmentation of dollars based on the size of an individuals total contributions, year-to-date

Key Insights

  • Following the trend from previous quarters, fundraising dollars from Small and Micro donors
    (sub $500) are still negative year-over-year.
  • However, we see amounts raised by Large and Major donors decrease for the first time in 2022.
  • Major and Large donors account for almost all of the decrease in dollars raised. $50k+ donors are
    responsible for almost half of the decrease in the topline dollar figure.
MICRO
(Under $100)

-13.3%
YOY Change 		SMALL
($101 - $500)

-7.7%
YOY Change 		MIDSIZE
($500 - $5K)

-3.9%
YOY Change 		MAJOR
($5K - $50K)

-3.6%
YOY Change 		SUPERSIZE
($50K+)

-4.6%
YOY Change

2.7%
% of total dollars

6.2%
% of total dollars

16.8%
% of total dollars

26.0%
% of total dollars

48.3%
% of total dollars
 
Donor size is computed on a donor’s total year-to-date dollars given.
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Dollars by Life Cycle

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

✖

  • Dollars by donor size: the segmentation of dollars based on when the associated donor was last seen in the dataset, year-to-date

Key Insights

  • Steep drop in fundraising from New-Retained donors follows trend of previous quarters.
  • Fundraising from New donors decreased sharply in December.
  • Recaptured Donors showed positive growth of 2.8%.
NEW
DONORS

-8.7%
YOY Change 		NEW RETAINED
DONORS

-21.8%
YOY Change 		REPEAT
RETAINED
DONORS

-2.0%
YOY Change 		RECAPTURED
DONORS

2.8%
YOY Change

19.3%
% of total dollars

7.9%
% of total dollars

60.2%
% of total dollars

12.6%
% of total dollars
 
NEW DONORS - never gave to this organization before.
NEW RETAINED DONORS - gave last year to the organization, but never before.
REPEAT RETAINED DONORS - gave last year to the organization, but not for the first time.
RECAPTURED DONORS - did not give last year to the organization, but had given in the past.
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Dollars by Donation Count

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

✖

  • Dollars by donation count: the grouping of dollars based on how many times the associated donor made a donation

Key Insights

  • Fundraising trends when viewed by donation count have remained stable throughout 2022.
  • The decline in fundraising is seen consistently across all donor segments. While the most active donors (7+ donations) and One-time donors had the smallest declines, fundraising dollars fell across all segments.
1 DONATION

-1.4%
YOY Change 		2 DONATIONS

-11.7%
YOY Change 		3-6 DONATIONS

-8.2%
YOY Change 		7+ DONATIONS

-3.5%
YOY Change

54.8%
% of total dollars

16.7%
% of total dollars

16.8%
% of total dollars

11.7%
% of total dollars
 
Donation count segments were selected to best illustrate the distribution of total donors and dollars across the giving spectrum. A donor's donation count includes all contributions made during 2022.
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Retention Rate: Time Series

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

Key Insights

 

 

 
  • Retention has decreased by -4.5% year-over-year, but after adjusting for late data we anticipate retention to be at -3.5% year-over-year.

  • Year-to-date retention of donors from last year stands at 42.6% in Q4.
 

 

 
  • Year-over-year retention rates were steadily increasing throughout the year, but they suddenly dropped in the fourth quarter.
  • These year-over-year drops are significant, especially given the fall in retention rates in 2021.
 

 

 


Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Retention Rate: Donor Type

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

Key Insights

  • Retention is negative across the board by donor type.
  • Repeat donors are the largest category and have decreased the least, stabilizing retention numbers.

NEW DONOR
RETENTION RATE

-16.9%
YOY Change 		REPEAT DONOR
RETENTION RATE

-5.2%
YOY Change 		RECAPTURE
RATE

-15.2%
YOY Change

19.1%
retained YTD

58.1%
retained YTD

4.1%
retained YTD
 
NEW DONORS - never gave to this organization before.
REPEAT DONORS - donors who gave last year to the organization, and were not new last year.
RECAPTURED DONORS - donors who did not give last year to the organization, but had given in the past
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Retention Rate by Donor Size

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

Key Insights

  • Micro, Small, and Midsize donors are the vast majority of donors, and therefore drive
    retention metrics the most.
  • Notably this year, Supersize donors ($50k+) are down -4.7%, the second largest decrease after
    Micro donors (sub $100). This mirrors the trends seen when looking at dollars by donor size.
MICRO
(Under $100)

-5.3%
YOY Change 		SMALL
($101 - $500)

-2.4%
YOY Change 		MIDSIZE
($500 - $5K)

-3.3%
YOY Change 		MAJOR
($5K - $50K)

-2.9%
YOY Change 		SUPERSIZE
($50K+)

-4.7%
YOY Change

32.2%
retained YTD

51.5%
retained YTD

62.8%
retained YTD

67.0%
retained YTD

67.9%
retained YTD
 
Donor size segments were chosen to span both dollars and donors, with each segment representing 1-50% of the total.
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Retention Rate by Donation Count

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

Key Insights

  • Retention decreased across all donor segments in 2022.
  • One time donors had the largest decrease in retention rates.
  • Since one-time donors are the largest cohort, their decrease primarily drives down overall retention metrics.
  • Overall, the most active donors have been retained the best, despite all groups showing year-over-year decline.

1 DONATION

-2.8%
YOY Change 		2 DONATIONS

-2.8%
YOY Change 		3-6 DONATIONS

-2.0%
YOY Change 		7+ DONATIONS

-1.4%
YOY Change

31.7%
retained YTD

54.2%
retained YTD

72.6%
retained YTD

89.6%
retained YTD
 
Donation count segments were selected to best illustrate the distribution of total donors and dollars across the giving spectrum. A donor's donation count includes all contributions made during 2022.
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Organizations

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

Key Insights

  • Organization size (based on amount raised) factored into fundraising much more significantly than last year.
  • The proportion of organizations not reporting data has decreased slightly this year, but is still higher than the rates observed prior to the Covid-19 pandemic in 2019. In 2022, 2.5% of organizations provided no fundraising information, compared to 2.8% in 2021.
Organization
Size Impact

563%
YOY Change

Size matters more
than in 2021 		Organization
Cause Impact

-39.8%
YOY Change

Cause matters less
than in 2021 		Organizations
Not Reporting

2.5%
Not Reported

Percentage expected
but not reporting in 2022
 
Our 'impact' metrics measure the importance of size and cause on organization results. These are meant to be more directional than quantitative, but numbers help track these trends year-over-year.
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Organization Size Impact: Time Series

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

Key Insights

 

 

 
  • Organization Size Variability can be seen the uniformity of fundraising performance across organization size.

  • Organizations fundraised at very different levels when grouped by size, especially when compared to 2021 where fundraising was much more uniform across organizations of varying sizes.
 

 

 
  • The largest organizations saw large decreases in fundraising in 2022.
 

 

 


Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Organization Size Impact: Splits

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

Key Insights

  • All organization sizes, except organizations raising $1M+, grew in the mean but shrank in the median amount of fundraising.
  • Most of the decrease in gross fundraising can be attributed to the decrease in organizations raising over $5M.

 
% DOLLAR GROWTH (MEAN) - Year-over-year dollar growth for organizations, grouped by an organization's budget size. Trends in the mean are more informative of the sector as a whole.

% DOLLAR GROWTH (MEDIAN) - The median year-over-year dollar growth for organizations, grouped by an organization's budget size. Trends in the median are more indicative of a typical organization's fundraising experience.
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Organization Cause: Time Series

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

Key Insights

 

 

 
  • Organization cause explained less of the variance in fundraising amounts than in 2021.

  • Most cause areas saw a decrease in fundraising, except healthcare-related causes.
 

 

 
  • Health causes were the only ones that showed a year-over-year increase at +0.8%.
  • International causes underperformed when compared with 2021.
 

 

 
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Organization Cause: Split

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

Key Insights

  • Health organizations were the only cause area that fundraised more year-over-year.
  • International and foreign affairs causes decreased -26.5% in 2022. However, the magnitude of the drop is likely exaggerated in our sample, which contains proportionally fewer of these types of orgs.
  • Public & societal benefits was also notably down -9.6% year-over-year.

 
% DOLLAR GROWTH (MEAN) - Year-over-year dollar growth for all organizations of this NTEE major group. More informative about the sector as a whole.

% DOLLAR GROWTH (MEDIAN) - The median year-over-year dollar growth across each organization of this NTEE major group. More indicative of a typical organization's fundraising experience.
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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Organizations Not Reporting: Time Series

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2022 (JAN 1, 2022 - DEC 31, 2022)

Key Insights

 

 

 
  • Organization dropout stands at slightly healthier rates than last year, but still higher than what we saw pre-pandemic.

  • 2.5% of the organizations expected to report data have not yet done so.
 

 

 
  • Monthly dropout rates remain uniformly below 2021 levels, but still much higher than in 2019.
 

 

 
Top: Year-To-Date Dropout - Captures the percentage of organizations that did not show up at any point in the year, having shown up in the previous year.

Bottom: Month-Specific Dropout - Captures the percentage of organizations which did not show in a given month, after having shown up in that same month the previous year.
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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FUNDRAISING EFFECTIVENESS PROJECT


The Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP) - first established in 2006 - and the Growth in Giving database - created in 2012 - are both administered jointly by the Association of Fundraising Professionals and GivingTuesday. The Growth in Giving database is the world’s largest public record of donation activity, with more than 241 million donation transactions, and is continuously updated by top fundraising software partners. The FEP offers quarterly views of the current year’s fundraising data in aggregate, serving as a benchmark for nonprofit executives, development staff, and researchers to examine key fundraising and donor metrics. For more information about how you or your fundraising software provider can participate, please visit www.afpfep.org.


METHODOLOGY


We removed organizations that did not have a minimum of 25 donors and $5,000 in revenue in each of the previous three years. We removed organizations at either tail of the revenue growth curve. If revenue growth was more than 300% or less than -66% in any of the past three years, organizations were removed. We also excluded individual contributions above $10M. We weighted our data by organization size and NTEE major group to make it reflective of 2018 IRS filers in the $5K - $25M range of contributions. In 2018, there were 222K IRS filers in this contributions range and passing our growth and size filters, making this report representative of 3.9% of the total relevant filers. Details regarding estimation methodology for data drift (late reported data) can be found here.


 

 
DATA PROVIDERS
The FEP wouldn't be possible without data. These software providers make the collection of data in support of the project possible.
 
DATA REPORTING
The FEP wouldn’t be possible without the data analysis and additional support provided by these firms.
Year-to-date Fundraising Performance. All right reserved.
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