Quarterly Fundraising Report™

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

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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.

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.

Donors: Time Series

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

Key Definitions ✖ 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.

Donors by Life Cycle

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

Key Definitions

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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.

Dollars: Time Series

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

Key Definitions ✖ 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.

Dollars by Donor Size

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

Key Definitions

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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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.