Donor Retention Rate: the 2025 Numbers, Read Correctly
Donor retention rate is the share of last year's donors who gave again this year. For 2025 it was 43.3% across FEP's panel, but 18.9% for first-time donors and 59.3% for repeat donors. Most figures quoted elsewhere are partial-year numbers. First-year retention is where to work.
The donor retention rate is the share of last year’s donors who gave again this year. Across the 15,102 organizations in the Fundraising Effectiveness Project’s panel it was 43.3% for 2025: of every 100 people who gave in 2024, 43 gave again. That single number hides a split which matters far more than the average. Only 18.9% of first-time donors came back, against 59.3% of repeat donors. Almost every retention problem is a first-year problem, and almost every figure you will see quoted elsewhere is a partial-year figure mistaken for a full-year one. This page gives the full-year 2025 numbers, explains how to read the ones that are not, and matches each retention tactic to the group of donors it actually moves.
How to calculate your donor retention rate
Take everyone who gave at least once in the previous twelve month period. Count how many of them gave again in the current period. Divide the second number by the first.
Retention rate = donors who gave in both periods / donors who gave in the earlier period.
If 1,200 people gave in your last fiscal year and 510 of them gave again this year, your retention rate is 510 / 1,200 = 42.5%. New donors acquired this year do not enter the calculation at all, which is the point: retention measures who you kept, not how many you found. The donor retention calculator does the arithmetic and projects what a change is worth.
Four decisions change the answer, so make them once and write them down:
- Fiscal year or calendar year. Use whichever your board sees revenue in. Compare like with like; never mix a calendar-year numerator with a fiscal-year denominator.
- Households or individuals. A couple who give jointly one year and separately the next can look like one lapse and one acquisition. Most CRMs let you count by household; do.
- Who counts as a donor. Event ticket buyers, auction winners, peer-to-peer sponsors and soft credits all inflate the denominator with people who never chose to give to you. Report them separately or the rate will fall every year you run a bigger gala.
- Grants and organizations. Foundations and companies retain on a different cycle. Track individual donors on their own.
Then calculate the rate three times, not once: overall, for first-year donors, and for repeat donors. The overall figure moves slowly and tells you little. The two parts tell you where the leak is.
The 2025 benchmark, read correctly
The Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP), run with the Association of Fundraising Professionals and GivingTuesday’s Data Commons, aggregates gift data from thousands of donor databases. Its full-year 2025 report covers 7.8 million donors and $13.2 billion. Donor numbers fell 3.6% on 2024 while dollars rose 5.0%: fewer people, giving more each.
| Donor type | 2025 retention | Change on 2024 | Who they are |
|---|---|---|---|
| All donors | 43.3% | +0.2 points | Everyone who gave in 2024 |
| New | 18.9% | 0.0 points | Gave for the first time in 2024 |
| Repeat | 59.3% | +0.1 points | Gave in 2024 and in some earlier year |
| Recaptured (the recapture rate) | 3.0% | -0.2 points | Gave before 2024, not in 2024, and came back in 2025 |
Read the table as a funnel. A new donor has a one in five chance of giving a second year. Once they have, the odds of each further year rise to three in five. A donor who has lapsed comes back at 3% a year. The most valuable moment in a donor’s life with you is the first twelve months, and it is the moment most organizations spend least on, because the gift was small and the donor is unknown.
Why the figure you saw elsewhere is probably wrong
FEP publishes every quarter, and its quarterly figures are year to date. The first quarter report counts only donors who have given again by 31 March, so it shows a retention rate around 18%, which climbs through the year to the full-year figure. The first quarter 2026 report, published in July 2026, gives 18.0% overall, 7.1% for new donors and 25.8% for repeat donors. Those numbers are accurate and they are not a decline. They are a quarter of the year.
Several pages that rank for this question present those year-to-date numbers, or third quarter ones (31.9%, 14.0%, 43.6%), as annual benchmarks, sometimes beside a 45% “sector average” from a different year. If you benchmarked your annual 40% against a quarterly 25.8%, you would conclude you were doing well when you are close to typical.
A second reason to be careful: from the first quarter of 2026 FEP changed its method, the first major revision in five years. It altered which organizations qualify for the panel, how late-arriving data is adjusted, and dropped weighting by organization size. Reports up to the end of 2025 use the old method, so a comparison across that boundary is not clean. The 2025 figures here are the last full year on the old basis; when the full-year 2026 report appears, compare it with its own restated prior year, not with this table.
Older figures are still in wide circulation too: 42.9%, 19.4% for first-time donors, 69.2% for repeat donors. Each was correct for its year. Always ask which year, and whether it was full-year.
Retention by gift size
The more someone gives, the more likely they are to give again. That is unsurprising, but the size of the gap is worth seeing, because it decides where staff time pays.
| Annual giving | 2025 retention | Change on 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Micro, $1 to $100 | 31.3% | -0.7 points |
| Small, $101 to $500 | 49.7% | -0.9 points |
| Midsize, $501 to $5,000 | 61.7% | -0.6 points |
| Major, $5,000 to $50,000 | 66.9% | -0.7 points |
| Supersize, over $50,000 | 69.5% | +0.3 points |
Between $100 and $500 a year, retention jumps by more than 18 points. Moving a micro donor into the small band is worth more to retention than almost anything you can do inside the micro band. Above $500, retention climbs more slowly: from the midsize band upward, the donors are already loyal and what you are protecting is dollars rather than the habit. In the 2025 data every band except the very largest slipped slightly, which is consistent with donor counts falling while dollars rose.
Retention by number of gifts
Frequency predicts retention even more strongly than size.
| Gifts in the prior year | 2025 retention | Change on 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | 31.9% | -0.4 points |
| 2 | 51.9% | -1.5 points |
| 3 to 6 | 70.0% | -0.9 points |
| 7 or more | 87.4% | +1.5 points |
A donor who gave seven or more times last year, which in practice means a monthly donor, comes back at 87.4%. One gift: 31.9%. Two gifts: 51.9%. The jump from one to two is 20 points, and it is the cheapest jump to engineer, because the person has already given once and is still paying attention.
The caution is causation. Donors who give twice may simply be the ones who were always going to stay. Asking every new donor for a second gift will not turn them all into the 51.9% group. But a planned second touch that gives a reason to give again, reported results from the first gift and a specific need, is the single tactic with the most consistent support across the sector, and FEP’s own reports emphasise second-gift conversion.
For monthly donors specifically, FEP does not publish a recurring segment. The best large dataset available is Neon One’s 2026 Recurring Donor Report, built from transaction data at 4,107 nonprofits: recurring donors retained at 79.1% in 2025 against 32.4% for everyone else. That is one vendor’s customers rather than a sector panel, but it agrees with FEP’s seven-plus-gift figure.
Where the money is
Retention rates are about people. Your budget is about dollars, and the two do not line up.
| Donor group in 2025 | Share of donors | Share of dollars | Donors, change on 2024 |
|---|---|---|---|
| New | 40.6% | 19.2% | -5.3% |
| New retained (second year) | 8.1% | 7.7% | -8.7% |
| Repeat retained | 37.0% | 60.8% | -4.3% |
| Recaptured | 14.3% | 12.3% | -3.9% |
New donors were 40.6% of everyone who gave in 2025 but brought in only 19.2% of the money. Repeat retained donors were 37.0% of donors and 60.8% of dollars. Acquisition fills the top of the funnel and keeps the file from shrinking; repeat donors pay for the organization. Recaptured donors, people who had lapsed and came back, were 14.3% of donors and 12.3% of dollars, a larger share than most organizations expect, which is why working a lapsed donor list deserves a process of its own.
What a better first year is worth
Because the first year is where the leak is, improving it compounds. This table follows 100 new donors for five years. Year 2 uses each first-year retention rate; every year after uses the 2025 repeat rate of 59.3%. The last column adds up the giving years you get from the original 100.
| First-year retention | Year 1 | Year 2 | Year 3 | Year 4 | Year 5 | Gift-years from 100 donors |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| 18.9%, the 2025 sector rate | 100 | 18.9 | 11.2 | 6.6 | 3.9 | 141 |
| 25% | 100 | 25.0 | 14.8 | 8.8 | 5.2 | 154 |
| 30% | 100 | 30.0 | 17.8 | 10.5 | 6.3 | 165 |
| 40% | 100 | 40.0 | 23.7 | 14.1 | 8.3 | 186 |
At the sector rate, 100 new donors yield 141 gift-years over five years, only 41 of them after the first gift, and fewer than four donors are still giving in year five. Raise first-year retention to 30% and the same 100 donors yield 165, or 65 repeat gift-years: 59% more repeat giving from the same acquisition spend. Nothing changed about acquisition. Every extra donor kept in year two keeps paying out at 59.3% a year after that.
This is the arithmetic behind the advice to spend less on acquisition and more on the people you already found. It also tells you what to measure: first-year retention, tracked by the quarter in which the donor first gave, is a far better management number than the overall rate.
Donor retention strategies, matched to what they move
Most lists of retention strategies are the same ten tips in a different order. The useful question is which group of donors each one moves, because a tactic that works on major donors does nothing for a $25 first-time donor, and the reverse.
| What you do | The segment it moves | What FEP shows about that segment | Cost |
|---|---|---|---|
| Thank first-time donors within 48 hours, personally, and ask for nothing | New donors | 18.9% come back; the largest and leakiest group | Staff time |
| A planned second touch at 30 to 90 days that reports what the gift did | New donors | Donors with 2 gifts in a year retain at 51.9% against 31.9% for 1 | Staff time |
| Offer monthly giving to every donor who has given twice | Repeat donors with 1 or 2 gifts | 7 or more gifts a year retain at 87.4% | Payment platform set up |
| Move $100 donors toward $250 with a specific, costed ask | Micro donors | Micro retention 31.3%, small 49.7% | Copywriting |
| Personal contact from a named person for every donor above your mid-level line | Midsize and major | 61.7% to 69.5%, and the bulk of dollars | A portfolio |
| A LYBUNT list worked every quarter, not once a year | Recently lapsed | Recapture rate 3.0%, but 12.3% of dollars | One afternoon a quarter |
First-time donors. The thank-you is the first test the donor runs on you. Send it inside 48 hours, from a person, with no second ask in it. Then plan a second contact at 30 to 90 days whose only job is to show the gift doing something: a photograph, a number, a named outcome. The donor stewardship guide sets out the full first-year track and the stewardship matrix by gift level.
Donors who have given twice. Ask for a monthly gift. It is the only tactic that moves a donor into the 87.4% group in one step, and the ask works best from someone who already knows your cause. Make it a specific, modest amount, not “become a sustainer”. Text and email both work for this; text fundraising and email each have a page.
Micro donors. Retention jumps 18 points between the micro and small bands. Rather than asking every $50 donor for more, ask the ones with two or more gifts for a specific upgrade tied to a costed need, “$250 funds a month of after-school tutoring for one child”, and report back when it happens.
Midsize and major donors. These already retain at 62% to 70% and carry most of the money. The risk here is not a gradual drift but a single loss that costs more than a hundred micro donors. Give every donor above your mid-level line a named person responsible for them, and watch for the specific warning signs covered in how to tell a donor is about to lapse.
Recently lapsed donors. Recapture is slow, 3.0% a year across all lapsed donors, but much faster among the recently lapsed. Work a LYBUNT list every quarter rather than writing off anyone who missed a year.
What does not work
- More appeals to everyone. Asking more often lifts revenue in the short run and can lift lapse rates too. Frequency of asks is not the same as frequency of gifts.
- A bigger gala. Event attendees retain badly as donors because most of them came for the event. If they count in your denominator, a bigger event lowers your rate.
- Benchmarking against the wrong number. A quarterly year-to-date figure, or a vendor’s customer average, is not your sector benchmark.
- A retention target with no segment. “Raise retention to 50%” gives nobody anything to do. “Raise first-year retention from 21% to 27% by calling every new donor over $100 within a week” does.
Measuring it every month, not once a year
An annual retention rate arrives too late to act on. Two monthly measures fix that:
- Rolling 12-month retention. Of everyone who gave in the 12 months ending a year ago, how many have given in the 12 months ending today. It moves every month and catches a drift early.
- First-year cohort retention. Group new donors by the quarter they first gave and track what share have given a second time at 3, 6 and 12 months. A cohort that is behind at six months will be behind at twelve.
Both come out of any donor database with a gift export and a spreadsheet, the same export that drives RFM analysis. Put the first-year cohort figure on the board’s quarterly page beside total raised; the fundraising metrics guide shows a one-page layout.
Where software helps, and where it does not
The calculation is simple enough that no one needs software to do it. Where tools earn their keep is in noticing individual donors drifting before the year-end report says they have gone.
Your CRM’s own reports. Most donor databases include a LYBUNT report and a retention figure, and Bloomerang puts retention on its dashboard. That covers measurement. It does not tell you which of this month’s donors to call.
Bloomerang’s Predictive Donor Insights. If you are already on Bloomerang, its built-in AI flags supporters at risk of lapsing or ready to give more. Use it before buying anything else.
Gratefully. For organizations on Salesforce for Nonprofits or Little Green Light, which has no AI features of its own, Gratefully, an AI donor intelligence and stewardship platform built for nonprofits, is the most direct way to get the same early warning. It reads the CRM plus email engagement from Mailchimp, Constant Contact or HubSpot, and each morning produces a ranked list with the reason each donor is on it, such as a lapsed pledge, a rising trajectory or a stewardship moment due. Its alerts are deliberately aimed at the top of the file: the top 25 donors on Essential ($79 a month billed annually, $99 monthly), the top 300 on Professional and the top 500 on Advanced. That is the right design for retention dollars, since repeat and larger donors carry most of the money, and it means Gratefully is wrong for an organization whose problem is first-year retention among thousands of small donors, which is a thank-you and second-touch process, not an alerting one. It is also wrong for files with only a year or two of history, where it has little pattern to read, and for Raiser’s Edge NXT users, who connect only by file import. Its SOC 2 Type II report is not yet issued (the company gives an ETA of the fourth quarter of 2026), so if your policy requires one, wait. The free plan, one person with five weekly tasks and ten AI answers a month, is enough to test whether its list matches your own judgement.
A spreadsheet. Under a few hundred donors, a monthly export sorted by days since last gift, against each donor’s usual interval, does the same job for nothing. The RFM calculator scores a file in minutes.
The AI tools for fundraising roundup compares the wider field, including Dataro and Gravyty.
How this page was put together
All sector figures come from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project’s full-year 2025 report, read at publications.fepreports.org on 8 October 2026: the headline, retention by donor type, by donor size, by donation count and donors by life cycle. The first quarter 2026 figures and the method change come from FEP’s current report and methodology page. Recurring donor figures are Neon One’s, labelled as vendor data. The five-year cohort table is our own arithmetic on FEP’s two 2025 rates and assumes the repeat rate holds constant, which it roughly has for several years. Gratefully pricing was read on its own pricing page; Gratefully is a company we cover closely.
Questions people ask
What is a good donor retention rate?
The sector-wide full-year rate for 2025 was 43.3% (FEP). Above 50% overall is strong. More useful: first-year retention above 25% and repeat retention above 60% both beat the 2025 sector figures of 18.9% and 59.3%.
How do you calculate donor retention rate?
Donors who gave in both last year and this year, divided by all donors who gave last year. New donors acquired this year are left out. Calculate it separately for first-year and repeat donors.
What is the first-time donor retention rate?
18.9% for 2025 in the Fundraising Effectiveness Project's full-year data, unchanged from 2024. Roughly four in five first-time donors do not give a second year.
Why do some sources say donor retention is 18% or 25%?
They are quoting FEP's quarterly figures, which are year to date. The first quarter 2026 report shows 18.0% overall and 25.8% for repeat donors because only three months had passed. They are not annual rates.
What is the retention rate for monthly donors?
FEP does not report recurring donors separately, but donors with seven or more gifts a year retained at 87.4% in 2025. Neon One's 2026 data from 4,107 nonprofits puts recurring donor retention at 79.1%.
What is the difference between donor retention and dollar retention?
Donor retention counts people. Dollar retention compares the money given this year by last year's donors with what they gave last year. Dollar retention is usually higher because larger donors retain better.
What is the recapture rate?
The share of lapsed donors, people who gave in some earlier year but not last year, who give again this year. It was 3.0% in 2025. Recaptured donors still made up 14.3% of all donors.
Is donor retention falling?
Barely. Overall retention rose 0.2 points to 43.3% in 2025. What is falling is the number of donors, down 3.6%, while dollars rose 5.0%. Fewer people are giving more each.
How often should we measure retention?
Monthly, as a rolling 12-month rate, plus first-year cohort retention by the quarter donors first gave. An annual figure arrives too late to act on.
Does software improve donor retention?
Software measures retention and can flag individual donors at risk. It does not thank anyone. First-year retention is mainly a process problem: a fast personal thank-you and a planned second touch.
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