Nonprofits saw their strongest revenue growth in five years in 2025, according to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project. They also did it with fewer people.
The Fundraising Effectiveness Project found that charitable dollars grew by an estimated 5.0% in 2025, while the number of donors fell by 3.6%. Online, the picture was even brighter: M+R reports that average online revenue rose 15%, "with many nonprofits reporting that revenue was up by a third or more from the previous year."
Our own data backs up those claims, as we’ve seen inflation-adjusted Gross Payment Volume (GPV) lift by around 3% among a cohort we have been monitoring since 2022, with a growing share of those payments coming from recurring donors, with the recurring GPV share rising from 12.4% to 23.7%.
In this new reality, here are a few ways organizations today are finding success.
They keep the donors they have
Retention moved in the right direction last year, if only slightly. FEP found overall retention edged up from 43.1% to 43.3%, with repeat donor retention improving while new donor retention stayed flat. Put simply, the donors who come back are the ones carrying the sector.
Giving Season, Decoded, our latest report focused on the giving season, looks at five years of year-end giving across the nonprofits using it, found the same pattern during the busiest weeks of the year: 59% of giving-season gifts now come from returning donors, up from 46% five years ago (the median across organizations in the study).
What brings them back is connection, not just reminders. A donor who only hears from an organization when it needs money has little reason to stay. A donor who sees what their last gift made possible before the next ask arrives has a reason to give again.
The organizations doing well treat the time between asks as part of the relationship: impact updates that don’t end in a donate button, volunteering, and simply remembering what a donor told you.
Fundraise Up delivers world-class results when it comes to helping organizations retain recurring donors. Our 12‑month monthly subscription revenue is the best on the market: 78% for the median organization, compared to M+R’s reported 69%.
They make monthly the easy choice
When donor counts shrink, a donor who gives every month is worth protecting. Monthly giving turns one decision into a year of support, and it gives finance teams the predictable revenue they plan around.
The nonprofits growing their monthly programs don’t wait for donors to seek out the option to give monthly. They offer it at the moment of giving, in plain language, on every device.
In a test Fundraise Up ran and published across nonprofit donation forms, asking donors whether they’d like to give monthly just before they paid with an express checkout option (like Apple Pay, Google Pay, or PayPal) resulted in average revenue per user growing by 11.47% on mobile devices and 20.02% on desktop.
Giving season is where this matters most. The same Giving Season, Decoded report found that one-time gifts make up the vast majority of year-end donations, and most donors give only once during the season. And the moment they’re deciding to make that single gift is the best chance a nonprofit has to start a monthly relationship that lasts into next year.
What changes when giving gets easier
Pancreatic cancer research nonprofit Lustgarten Foundation saw what a faster, simpler donation experience can do. After moving to Fundraise Up’s donation platform, the foundation reported a 104% increase in its number of donors, 96% growth in the amount of donations and 83% more online donation revenue, with its new donation experience achieving twice the conversion.
The same holds for monthly giving.
Animal rescue nonprofit RedRover went from averaging 700 monthly donors to 2,900. International Justice Mission UK saw a 203% increase in the volume of new monthly gifts. And at Feed The Children, 31% of monthly gifts now come from a prompt that invites one-time donors to give monthly instead.
They earn attention before donors search
Donors are finding nonprofits differently. M+R notes that the share of nonprofit website traffic coming from organic search "rapidly dropped month-by-month throughout 2025," as more people get answers from search summaries and chatbots without clicking through.
That raises the value of everything a nonprofit owns: its email list, its monthly donors, its volunteers and its community. Organizations that keep supporters close don’t depend as much on being found from scratch each December.
They treat channels as one journey
Donors don’t think in channels. A supporter might get a letter, look the organization up on a phone, and give online a week later. That means the channel that gets the credit isn’t always the one that did the work.
The nonprofits winning here measure the whole journey, not the last click, and make sure the online gift is fast and easy when a letter or a call sends someone there.
What to do before year-end
- Thank and update last year’s donors before you ask again.
- Offer monthly giving at the moment of the gift, on mobile and desktop.
- Give supporters a way to help that isn’t money: volunteering, sharing, or fundraising for you.
- Line up mail, email, text and social so they tell one story and point to one easy place to give.
- Measure retention, not just new donors, when you report on the season.
The sector raised more last year with fewer people. The organizations that do best this year will be the ones that make each of those people feel seen and give them every reason to stay.