This year’s federal funding cuts are devastating many nonprofits. But it appears the sector was taking hits even before 2025.
New reports about 2024 fundraising show a shrinking number of donors to America’s charities — alarmingly, for the fourth year in a row — and little growth in dollars raised. The likely culprit, according to one of these reports: “persistent challenges in retaining the current donor base.”
Sustained attrition in donors is a top takeaway from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, a collaboration between GivingTuesday and the Association of Fundraising Professionals that releases quarterly reports on fundraising. The 2024 fourth quarter report, which compiled data for the entire year on 12,504 organizations, shows a 4.5 percent decline in donors in 2024 compared with 2023. That figure has declined every year since 2019.
While this trend may feel disheartening for nonprofits faced with federal cuts, rising costs from tariffs, and skittish donors concerned about the economy, it doesn’t have to continue, says Woodrow Rosenbaum, chief data officer for GivingTuesday.
“It’s really important to understand that this macro trend of fewer donors is not inevitable,” he says. “It’s at least partly, if not largely, a function of our fundraising system not meeting the moment.” Nonprofits, he says, are spending too much of their time and resources on wealthy donors while neglecting everyday supporters. “The erosion of a broader base of support is a function of uneven, unequal nonprofit engagement.”
Oddly, given that the country is arguably in crisis at the moment, this actually makes it a good time for broad outreach to build the donor base, Rosenbaum says. At times like this, “people are highly motivated to take meaningful, positive action in their communities and for good in the world.”
The report estimates that cash raised in 2024 grew by 3.5 percent over 2023. A growth of 3.5 percent barely outpaces the 2.9 percent inflation rate in 2024.
An increase in larger donations fueled the 2024 growth. The total of contributions was down at every gift level except those of more than $5,000.
Slow Growth Online
Another report, The M+R Benchmarks 2025, arrives at similar conclusions. It has a much smaller data set, 216 nonprofits, and looks exclusively at online fundraising. But it also finds minor growth — just 2 percent in online giving in 2024, which would not keep pace with inflation. The M+R report finds the increase in gifts was led by increased subscribers to monthly giving programs. Those programs showed a 5 percent increase in revenue in 2024, says Madeline Stanionis, a partner at M+R.
“The monthly revenue increase is really what did it,” she says. “This is a long-term trend that we’ve seen for years, with the change of monthly revenue consistently outpacing the change in one-time [gift] revenue.”
The M+R report had a similar growth number as the Blackbaud Institute’s 2024 Trends in Giving Spotlight report, which showed a 1.9 percent growth in online giving. The M+R report notes that nonprofits spent more on advertising in 2024 than they did the previous year. Although inflation was a small factor, the increased spending indicates more nonprofits were turning to advertising to boost their reach, the report says.
The M+R report also has some benchmarking data to help understand what type of marketing and advertising nonprofits are doing. For example, they looked at email messaging and found that on average, nonprofits send 62 emails each year, and just under half (30) are fundraising emails. Nonprofits have increased their use of mobile messaging, but it’s still a much smaller share than email messaging. The average clickthrough rate for mobile fundraising messages is 2.8 percent. About a third of nonprofits plan to leave X, formerly Twitter, and more than 80 percent have started building their presence on Threads and Bluesky.
New Context for FEP
The FEP this year is chaired by Tim Sarrantonio, who is also the director of community engagement at Neon One, which provides fundraising technology to nonprofits, and he wants to make the project’s reports more user-friendly.
“You can’t just say, ‘Here’s the data: donors down, dollars up — good luck.’ That’s not working,” he says.
The FEP has a new website and has recruited around 50 ambassadors to help nonprofit staff better understand how the data relates to their work, whether they are fundraisers, small nonprofit leaders, or midsize nonprofit board members.
FEP is also creating small committees to provide concrete advice to fundraisers, Sarrantonio says. One group will develop steps to rebuild the donor pipeline through intentional acquisition of donors who make small gifts. Another will look at how to “engage donors early to strengthen year-end campaigns.”
