Quarterly Fundraising Report™

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

Large and sticky donors retained from 2020 help keep dollar growth positive through 2021
New and small donors are not being acquired/recaptured, driving down donor counts
Retention is lower with the least active donors
Large and highly committed donors are sticking around - but small, infrequent, and new donors are being left behind


DONORS -5.7% (+/- 0.5%) YOY change	DOLLARS 2.7% (+/- 0.5%) YOY change	RETENTION -4.0% (+/- 0.5%) YOY change

-0.8% (+/- 1.0%) Since 2019	11.0% (+/- 1.0%) Since 2019	-7.9% (+/- 1.0%) Since 2019
Because 2020 was such an outlier, for this edition of the report, a comparison with 2019 results has been included to these three topline metrics in order to provide a more accurate picture

Visit https://data.givingtuesday.org/fep-report/ for the most detailed version of this report, which includes additional data splits and organization-focused insights.
We measure year-over-year change of year-to-date data. I.e. we take data through the current quarter for this year, and divide by data through the same quarter last year.
*Note: 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'). Ranges for each metric express uncertainty in the estimates.

Our Dataset

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Limitations

Data is limited to orgs with >= 3 years of data, with limited growth/loss constraints.
Data is weighted across size and NTEE code for orgs raising between $5K-$25M.
Some data are recorded late (e.g., ~7% of Q1 is recorded Q2-Q4).


DONORS 18M in 2021	DOLLARS $10B in 2021	ORGANIZATIONS 9,652 in 2021

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 20,000 organizations since 2005.

Donors: Time Series

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

The number of active donors does not keep up with 2020 A decrease of -5.7% in donors is expected after accounting for late data

		The drop in donors this year is larger than the growth last year The larger drop in donors now means a net loss (-0.8%) of donors since 2019

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.

UPPER: Percent year-over-year change (on YTD totals) through this quarter, over the last 5 years. Shows what’s typical across years.

LOWER: Percent year-over-year change (on YTD totals) by month, this vs last year. Shows the evolution of changes over months, and how they compare this year to last.

Donors by Donor Size

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

The number of micro and small-sized donors (less than $500) is significantly lower in 2021
Micro and small-sized donors account for over 80% of donors
There has been a small ~2% increase in the number of donors who give between $5000 and $50,000
The small drop in midsize and supersize donors might partially due to delayed data, which is bias
towards larger donors


MICRO ($1 - $100) -9.0% YOY Change	SMALL ($101 - $500) -6.8% YOY Change	MIDSIZE ($501 - $5K) -1.5% YOY Change	MAJOR ($5K - $50K) 1.9% YOY Change	SUPERSIZE ($50K+) -3.3% YOY Change
55.6% % of total donors	28.5% % of total donors	13.5% % of total donors	2.2% % 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.

Donors by Life Cycle

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

The large spike in new donors from last year were largely retained, leading to an incredible increase of 26% in newly-retained donors this year
The number of new donors could not match last year's impressive growth, leading to a significant drop of -15%
Likewise with recaptured donors: last year's gain are not matched this year, leading to a large -14% decrease


NEW DONORS -15.1% YTD Change	NEW RETAINED DONORS 26.1% YTD Change	REPEAT RETAINED DONORS -1.1% YTD Change	RECAPTURED DONORS -14.2% YTD Change
41.8% % of total donors	10.6% % of total donors	34.5% % of total donors	13.1% % of total donors

NEW DONORS - never gave to this organization before (in this dataset).
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.

Donor by Donation Count

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

The large majority of donors are one-time donors, and it is their decrease which leads the decline in total donors
There has been an even larger decrease in the number of donors who donate 2-6 times, although they make a up a smaller fraction of donors
The smallest group of donors by donation count are those who donate 7+ times, who are the only group to increase in size


1 DONATION -5.9% YOY Change	2 DONATIONS -12.3% YOY Change	3-6 DONATIONS -16.1% YOY Change	7+ DONATIONS 2.2% YOY Change
70.3% % of total donors	13.5% % of total donors	8.8% % of total donors	7.4% % of total donors

Donation count is computed on a donor’s total year-to-date donations given. Donation count segments were chosen based on distribution of total donors and dollars across segments.

Dollars: Time Series

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

~$10 Billion dollars raised in 2021 after late data arrives Estimated to be up around 2.7% year-over-year

		2020 was a very strong year for fundraising Keeping up or even exceed fundraising levels from 2020 is a positive sign

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.

UPPER: percent year-over-year change (on YTD totals) through this quarter, over the last 5 years. This graph highlights what’s typical across years.

LOWER: percent year-over-year change (on YTD totals) by month, this vs. last year. This graph highlights the evolution of changes over month, and how they compare this year to last.

Dollars by Donor Size

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

Midsize and larger donors remain stable and help drive the strong top-line fundraising figures
Small and micro-sized donors (less than $500) raised less money in 2021 than in 2020.
Small and micro-sized donors account for only 9.5% of dollars raised


MICRO ($1 - $100) -9.3% YOY Change	SMALL ($101 - $500) -6.1% YOY Change	MIDSIZE ($501 - $5K) 0.4% YOY Change	MAJOR ($5K - $50K) -0.2% YOY Change	SUPERSIZE ($50K+) -0.2% YOY Change
3.0% % of total dollars	6.5% % of total dollars	17.0% % of total dollars	26.1% % of total dollars	47.4% % of total dollars

Donor size is computed on a donor’s total year-to-date dollars given. 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.

Dollars by Life Cycle

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

Dollars from new retained donors is up 18% year-over-year, showing that the new donors acquired in 2020 have remained committed
New donors fundraising is down -12% year-over-year. This is unsurprising given that 2020 was an abnormally strong year for new-donor funding (+19%)
Fundraising from repeat-retained and recaptured donors remains stagnant year-over-year, which is not concerning given the large growth in fundraising in the previous year


NEW DONORS -11.9% YOY Change	NEW RETAINED DONORS 17.7% YOY Change	REPEAT RETAINED DONORS 0.8% YOY Change	RECAPTURED DONORS 0.0% YOY Change
19.8% % of total dollars	9.5% % of total dollars	58.9% % of total dollars	11.9% % of total dollars

NEW DONORS - never gave to this organization before (in this dataset).
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.

Dollars by Donation Count

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

The majority of fundraising revenue comes from one-time donors, which grew in 2021
Fundraising from more frequent donors is down, especially those who donate 7+ more times in a year


1 DONATION 3.0% YOY Change	2 DONATIONS -3.5% YOY Change	3-6 DONATIONS -4.0% YOY Change	7+ DONATIONS -8.0% YOY Change
53.8% % of total dollars	17.5% % of total dollars	17.0% % of total dollars	11.6% % of total dollars

Donation count is computed on a donor’s total year-to-date donations given. Donation count segments were chosen based on distribution of total donors and dollars across segments. Estimates for late data only apply to top-line donors, dollars, and retention. Thus, these more granular breakdowns underestimate year-over-year growth.

Retention Rate: Time Series

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

Retention rates are expected to be around -4% year-over-year Low retention rates line up as expected with decreases in donor count

		Retention rates have remained low since Q2 of this current year Org-dropout is likely a key driving factor as well

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.

UPPER: percent year-over-year change (on YTD totals) through this quarter, over the last 5 years. Shows what’s typical across years.

LOWER: percent year-over-year change (on YTD totals) by month, this vs last year. Shows the evolution of changes over months, and how they compare this year to last.

Retention Rate: Donor Type

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

New-donors are the only ones with positive retention rates showing that newly acquired donors from 2020 were unusually sticky
Recapture rates see a sharp drop of -19%. Some of this is due to a particularly strong year for recaptured donors last year, but the magnitude of the shift shows that a sizeable cohort of donors were not retained through 2020 and the COVID pandemic
Retention of long-time donors is particularly weak and driving down overall retention rates


NEW DONOR RETENTION RATE 6.2% YOY Change	REPEAT DONOR RETENTION RATE -3.9% YOY Change	RECAPTURE RATE -19.0% YOY Change
21.5% retained YTD	58.9% retained YTD	4.5% retained YTD

NEW DONORS - never gave to this organization before (in this dataset).
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

Retention Rate by Donor Size

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

Micro-sized donors are the largest category and are the key donor size driving retention metrics this year
Midsize donors are the only category by donor size who experienced greater retention rates than last year
Supersize donors also show a large year-over-year retention rate decline, although some of this is due to late data which is biased towards larger donors


MICRO $1-$100 -9.1% YOY Change	SMALL ($101 - $500) -1.6% YOY Change	MIDSIZE ($501 - $5K) 2.1% YOY Change	MAJOR ($5K - $50K) -3.6% YOY Change	SUPERSIZE ($50K+) -8.1% YOY Change
32.6% retained YTD	50.8% retained YTD	62.5% retained YTD	65.9% retained YTD	67.4% retained YTD

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.

Retention Rate by Donation Count

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

All retention rates by donation count are down year-over-year
Retention rates are lower with infrequent donors than with more frequent donors
One-time donor retention rate is the poorest, whereas those who have donated 7+ times have the highest retention rate by count


1 DONATION -8.3% YOY Change	2 DONATIONS -5.7% YOY Change	3-6 DONATIONS -3.6% YOY Change	7+ DONATIONS -1.5% YOY Change
31.2% retained YTD	54.1% retained YTD	72.0% retained YTD	89.2% retained YTD

NEW DONORS - never gave to this organization before (in this dataset).
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.

Organizations

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

Trends observed in Q3 2021 keep up in this quarter
Organization size matters less in 2021. Small orgs keep gaining and large orgs are flat or pulling back.
Organization cause matters less in 2021, as fundraising normalizes away from COVID.
Orgs not reporting data keeps increasing in Q3, increasing confidence that there are true long-term impacts to fundraising operations post-2020.


Organization Size Impact -14% YOY Change Size matters less than in 2020	Organization Cause Impact -32% YOY Change Cause matters less than in 2020	Organizations Not Reporting 242% YOY Change More orgs did not report in 2021

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.

Organization Size Impact: Time Series

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

Organization size variability is down 14% since last year Organization size matters less in 2021 than it did in 2020 when it comes to fundraising performance

		For much of the year, organization size variability was higher December giving made the fundraising experience more uniform across organization of differing sizes

UPPER: percent year-over-year change (on YTD totals) through this quarter, over the last 5 years. Shows what’s typical across years.

LOWER: percent year-over-year change (on YTD totals) by month, this vs last year. Shows the evolution of changes over months, and how they compare this year to last.

Organization Size Impact: Splits

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

Large organizations raising more than $5 million experienced a decrease in funding
Small organizations on average (mean) raised more money than last year
A decrease in large organizations funding and an increase in small organization funding hints at a reversal of COVID-19 trends across organization size

% DOLLAR GROWTH (MEAN) - Year-over-year dollar growth for all organizations of this organization size.

% DOLLAR GROWTH (MEDIAN) - The median year-over-year dollar growth across each organization of this organization size.

Organization Cause: Time Series

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

Organization cause determines fundraising less than in previous years This is unsurprising, given that the COVID-19 pandemic biased funding on cause area

		Cause-based disparity remains low relative to 2020 as it has been all year.

UPPER: percent year-over-year change (on YTD totals) through this quarter, over the last 5 years. Shows what’s typical across years.

LOWER: percent year-over-year change (on YTD totals) by month, this vs last year. Shows the evolution of changes over months, and how they compare this year to last.

Organization Cause: Split

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

Organizations focused on 'Environment and Animals' saw large year-over-year gains. 'Arts, Culture, and Humanities' causes also experienced growth
Organizations in 'Health', 'Human Services', 'Religion Related', and 'Public/Societal Benefit' saw a decrease in funding
Funding across organization cause shows a reversal of the pattern from 2020

% DOLLAR GROWTH (MEAN) - Year-over-year dollar growth for all organizations of this NTEE major group.

% DOLLAR GROWTH (MEDIAN) - The median year-over-year dollar growth across each organization of this NTEE major group.

Organizations Not Reporting: Time Series

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q4 2021 (JAN 1, 2021 - DEC 31, 2021)

Key Insights

9.6% of organizations from previous years that were expected to report have not done so The dramatic dropout from the previous quarter has been reduced after the arrival of late data

		We tentatively suspect that abnormally high dropout rates are due to the impact of covid on fundraising and reporting. Click here for more details.

NOTE: We only look at organizations within the panel of a given year based on our panel rules: stable organizations over the past 3 years w/ $5K - $25M received in the prior year. This ensures consistent historical data & shields the results from outliers.

UPPER: percent year-over-year change (on month totals) through this quarter, over the last 5 years. Shows what’s typical across years.

LOWER: percent of organization drop-out in each month. Organizations may drop out one month, and then return in a subsequent month.

FUNDRAISING EFFECTIVENESS PROJECT

The Fundraising Effectiveness Project (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 (in alphabetical order) Bloomerang, DonorPerfect, Keela, and NeonCRM. Additional partners include the 7th Day Adventists, The Biedermann Group, DataLake Nonprofit Research, and DonorTrends (a division of EveryAction). For more information and 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 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 4.3% of the total relevant filers. Details regarding estimation methodology for data drift (late reported data) can be found here.

Last Updated: April 13th 2022

April 13th 2022: YTD retention by donor type and YTD retention by donation count (web-only) incorrectly showed percentage size of each category rather than YTD retention.




DATA PROVIDERS The FEP wouldn’t be possible without data. These software providers make the collection of data for this analysis possible.



DATA REPORTING The Quarterly Report wouldn’t be possible without the data processing and analytics provided by these firms.