Quarterly Fundraising Report™

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q1 2023 (JAN 1, 2023 - MAR 31, 2023)

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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

Fundraising dollars decreased, driven by a decline in the large donor and new donor segments.
While overall retention increased — and contrary to intuition — retention in all categories of donors dropped.
Donor participation fell as acquisition of new donors and small donors remained a challenge.


DONORS -3.8% (+/- 1.5%) YOY change	DOLLARS -0.7% (+/- 2.0%) YOY change	RETENTION 1.3% (+/- 0.5%) 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 2023. All metrics are computed up to Q1 (from January of a given year to the end of March of the same year).

Current Dataset

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q1 2023 (JAN 1, 2023 - MAR 31, 2023)

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 2.0M in 2023	DOLLARS $1.8B in 2023	ORGANIZATIONS 8,061 in 2023

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
Q1 2023 (JAN 1, 2023 - MAR 31, 2023)

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 dropped -10.8% when not accounting for late data. After adjusting for delays in data reporting ("data drift"), we estimate the actual decrease was -3.8%. This was the 7th consecutive quarter of year-over-year decline in donor participation.

		Decreases in donor participation were driven by low acquisition rates and low retention.

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
Q1 2023 (JAN 1, 2023 - MAR 31, 2023)

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 donor participation was down -18.2% year-over-year.
New Retained donors accounted for 17% of the decrease to the donor pool, despite accounting for just 9% of donors.
New donors dropped by -19.2%, driving another large decrease in donor participation. This group accounted for 50% of the topline decrease and represented just 25% of the donor pool.
Repeat Retained declined by only -5.1%, but as they represented 52% of the donor population, their decrease accounted for 23% of the overall decrease.


NEW DONORS -19.2% YTD Change	NEW RETAINED DONORS -18.2% YTD Change	REPEAT RETAINED DONORS -5.1% YTD Change	RECAPTURED DONORS -8.4% YTD Change
25.4% % of total donors	9.4% % of total donors	52.2% % of total donors	13.0% % 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
Q1 2023 (JAN 1, 2023 - MAR 31, 2023)

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 decreased by -8.7%, but after adjusting for delays in data reporting ("data drift"), we estimate dollars decreased by -0.7% compared to 2022.

Dollars by Donor Size

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q1 2023 (JAN 1, 2023 - MAR 31, 2023)

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

All donor sizes saw a relative decrease in donations through the end of March.
Micro and Supersize donors experienced the largest drop in dollars donated, falling by
over -13.0% and -10.9% respectively.
Even though Supersize donors represented a small part of the population (0.2% of donors), they
represented a larger share of the total donations (47%) and therefore accounted for 52% of the overall decrease.


MICRO (Under $100) -13.0% YOY Change	SMALL ($101 - $500) -6.1% YOY Change	MIDSIZE ($500 - $5K) -4.7% YOY Change	MAJOR ($5K - $50K) -7.1% YOY Change	SUPERSIZE ($50K+) -10.9% YOY Change
3.1% % of total dollars	7.0% % of total dollars	16.9% % of total dollars	26.0% % of total dollars	47.0% % 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
Q1 2023 (JAN 1, 2023 - MAR 31, 2023)

Key Insights

Retention increased by 0.3% year-over-year, but after adjusting for late data we anticipate retention was at 1.3% year-over-year. Year-to-date retention of 2022 donors stood at 17.3% in Q1 2023.

		While overall retention increased slightly, this is a bit misleading. As a blended rate, shifts in the donor composition can move the rate in unexpected ways. The larger proportion of repeat donors caused this increase, even though that segment saw a decline in retention.

Retention Rate: Donor Type

Year-to-Date Nonprofit Sector Trends
Q1 2023 (JAN 1, 2023 - MAR 31, 2023)

Key Insights

Retention decreased across the board by donor type.
Recaptured donors suffered a relative decrease in retention of -18.9%. However, this group's retention rate was already low last year (1.2%) so the relatively large decrease this year only represented a small absolute decrease of -0.2%.
Overall retention was slightly positive, despite each segment trending negative. This was mostly due to a change in donor composition: there were relatively less new and small donors which mechanically drove the overall retention up. This is a common statistical phenomenon when a general trend suggests a certain direction while smaller segments within that larger trend are pointing towards the opposite direction.


NEW DONOR RETENTION RATE -4.8% YOY Change	REPEAT DONOR RETENTION RATE -2.1% YOY Change	RECAPTURE RATE -18.9% YOY Change
6.9% retained YTD	23.8% retained YTD	1.0% 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
Q1 2023 (JAN 1, 2023 - MAR 31, 2023)

Key Insights

Organization size (based on amount raised) factored into fundraising more than last year at the same time.
The proportion of organizations not reporting data was higher than in Q1 of the previous two years.


Organization Size Impact 38.8% YOY Change	Organization Cause Impact -9.9% YOY Change	Organizations Not Reporting 6.2% Not Reported

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
Q1 2023 (JAN 1, 2023 - MAR 31, 2023)

Key Insights

Organizations of all sizes — except those raising between $100K and $250K — saw a decrease in fundraising.
Organizations of all sizes saw a decrease in median fundraising.
Very large organizations (raising more than $1M) represented a larger share of the total donations and suffered the largest decrease on average.

% 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
Q1 2023 (JAN 1, 2023 - MAR 31, 2023)

Key Insights

Health causes were the only ones that showed a year-over-year increase (at 13.7%).
Environment and Animals related causes saw a larger decrease (-17.3%) compared to last year.
Human Services related causes also saw a larger decrease of -15.0% compared to last 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
Q1 2023 (JAN 1, 2023 - MAR 31, 2023)

Key Insights

Organizational dropout was worse in this quarter than in Q1 of the previous two years.

		6.2% of the organizations expected to report data had not yet done so when this report was produced.

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.

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 — 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 https://afpglobal.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.