M+R Benchmarks 2023 Finds Online Giving Stalled, Despite Growth in Monthly Giving

Shortly after the nonprofit sector learned that both overall donors and donor dollars had declined, M+R confirmed the downward trends with M+R Benchmarks 2023, noting a 4% median decline in year-over-year online revenue for nonprofits. 

Across various nonprofit missions, only disaster/international aid and wildlife/animal welfare saw increases. Meanwhile large nonprofits with a budget of $3 million or larger also had gains. On the other end, hunger nonprofits faced a second year of sharp declines after a nearly 400% increase in 2020.

“The metrics I like most in benchmarks are those that help practitioners in our field answer the age-old question, ‘Am I normal?’” Madeline Stanionis, partner at M+R, said via a video linked in the report. “I think it can be really hard to be on your own in an organization, not knowing how your cause is doing. I also love the metrics that help persuade leadership where they should be investing more time and resources. So any of the metrics that show a meaningful investment are pretty great.”

The benchmarks for 2023 are based on the median from 215 nonprofits’ data, which included 5.4 billion emails and text messages, 681 million website visits and 374,000 social media posts. Here are four big takeaways from the data. 

1. Online Giving Among One-Time Donors Declined 12%

That 4% drop in online giving can almost entirely be attributed to a 12% reduction in one-time giving, Will Valverde, senior creative director at M+R, said in a video in the report.

Like with overall giving, only disaster/international aid and wildlife/animal welfare experienced an increase in giving online. M+R notes the war in Ukraine may be responsible for the majority of this.

Credit: M+R Benchmarks 2023

One-time donors gave $192 over 1.2 gifts in 2022, with an average gift of $121. About 29% were retained in 2022 from the previous year, a slight increase over 2021’s retention rate, but well below 2020’s 38% retention rate. Nonprofits are struggling to retain new online donors, which have a 16% retention rate. On the other hand, organizations are finding ways to retain one-time donors from 2018 to 2020. The retention rate jumps to 49% for those donors. 

“I really was surprised to see the big swing in one-time donor retention that changed year over year, particularly from 2020, tracking all the way to 2022,” Jonathan Benton, senior vice president at M+R, said in a webinar presenting the findings. “So, in my mind, what’s going on there is the treatment that organizations make for their donors really matters, but what inspired those donors to give in the first place, also makes a huge difference.”

Here are a few statistics across a few of the online channels M+R tracked: 

• Email. Nonprofits sent an average of 60 emails per subscriber in 2023 — 15% more emails than the prior year, with about half of them being fundraising appeals. More emails didn’t equal more revenue, as email accounted for 14% of online revenue — a 4% drop. Meanwhile, nonprofit email lists became 2% smaller.
• Mobile. For every 1,000 email subscribers, nonprofits had 236 mobile subscribers — an 11% increase from 2021. On average, nonprofits sent 21 texts per subscriber, with advocacy messaging being the most popular at about 10 messages per nonprofit.
• Social. For every 1,000 email addresses, nonprofits had an average of 685 Facebook fans, 208 Twitter followers, 160 Instagram followers and four TikTok followers, though Instagram was the fastest-growing social platform in 2022.
• Web. Most nonprofit website traffic (57%) came from users on mobile and tablet devices; however, 75% of revenue came from users on desktop devices. And only 19% of donation-page visitors actually donate.

2. GivingTuesday and Dec. 31 Online Revenue Declined

The Fundraising Effectiveness Project data also noticed a drop in fourth quarter funds last year. What M+R found is that two days attributed to some of that 4% loss in online revenue.

GivingTuesday donations, which made up 3% of annual revenue in 2022, declined by 13%, and nonprofits raised 18% less by email. The study did note that many nonprofits extend GivingTuesday with early-bird appeals and matching gift extensions, so some of the revenue may be tallied on nearby days instead.

Credit: M+R Benchmarks 2023

Nonprofits received 5% of total revenue on Dec. 31, but donation dollars were down 13% from 2021, with 22% less raised via email. There was a lot going on last year that could have factored into that — inflation, the economy and even Dec. 31 falling on a Saturday (Warning: It’s a Sunday this year).

Credit: M+R Benchmarks 2023

“I think the takeaway is if your nonprofit felt like it really struggled on GivingTuesday or Dec. 31, you should know that you’re not alone,” Valverde said in the webinar. “It was hard this year and it was hard compared to the previous year.”

However, some in the sector have begun to argue that such a large focus on GivingTuesday and year-end giving goes against the aim of establishing long-term — and year-round — relationships with their donors. 

3. Monthly Giving Increased 11% and Accounted for Nearly a Third of Online Giving

One way to engage a donor as a lifetime supporter of your cause is to gain their commitment as a recurring donor. Despite all of the negative trends, monthly giving jumped 11% — and made up 28% of total online revenue. Across most types of nonprofits, monthly giving rose by double digits. For public media nonprofits more than half of their 2022 online revenue can be attributed to monthly donors.

“It feels just about every year, we get further confirmation of just how much this type of reliable, sustaining giving matters,” Valverde said in a video in the report. “… Both nonprofits and their supporters seem to be moving in the direction of regular giving. And it raises the question of whether a nonprofit should prefer this over one-time gifts.”

NonProfit PRO found in its “2023 Nonprofit Leadership Impact Study” that 30% of respondents’ top priority for this year is to increase recurring gifts. Though one-time gifts might seem larger, monthly gifts — which were $25 on average last year, according to M+R — add up over time. Annually, monthly donors contributed $287 across 9.8 gifts — $95 more than their one-time donor counterparts. Monthly giving could also be part of the solution for emergency or crisis donor retention, with retention at month No. 13 holding steady at 63% for three years straight. 

Credit: M+R Benchmarks 2023

“With little change in average gift size, frequency of giving is crucial. Inspiring that second gift (or third, or fourth, or dozenth, or baker’s dozenth) is essential to developing an efficient, growing, thriving fundraising program,” the report said.

4. Investments in Digital Advertising Rose 28%

For every dollar raised online in 2022, nonprofits reinvested 11 cents on digital ad placement. This was a 28% increase over 2021. Nonprofits spent about a third of ad spend on search ads, where return on ad spend was the highest at $2.75 for every dollar spent compared with Meta at 50 cents, Twitter at 41 cents, display at 33 cents and video at 13 cents.

Credit: M+R Benchmarks 2023

“Most of the time when we’re talking about search ads, you’re bidding on people who are searching for your brand name,” Coughlon said. “And so if someone goes into the search bar and plugs in ‘donate to nonprofit,’ that is the single best person you can spend money on. And so it makes sense that the returns from those folks are really great.” 

A new metric for 2023, M+R determined the ratio of ad-acquired leads compared to nonprofits’ email list size at the beginning of 2022 to track nonprofits’ lead gen investments to grow their email lists. M+R found this to be 0.09, so, for example, if a nonprofit had 100,000 email subscribers Jan. 1, 2022, that nonprofit would add an average of 9,000 subscribers through paid advertising based on that ratio. On the high end, small nonprofits — those with online revenue less than $500,000 — were able to double their efforts. 

And it’s not easy to grow email lists, which is why this figure is so telling. 

“Email appeals can be the difference between a negative and a positive ROI for your ads program,” Valverde said in the webinar. “Oftentimes, it’s getting that second gift, converting people to sustainers, keeping them engaged over time through your email program that is making those ads pay off over the long-term.” 

“It’s really hard to grow email lists,” Valverde said. “Growing an email list is a really important way to keep it thriving, to keep it alive. We need that influx of new subscribers to keep growing and keep that email program moving forward.”