Unsurprisingly, I love benchmark reports.
My favorite working days are the ones with no meetings, a stack of data files, and a carafe full of coffee. Every year, when the Giving USA release date lands in my inbox, I try to block off that entire day to dig into the data.
This year's report brought continued encouraging news for the nonprofit sector. Total charitable giving reached a record $617.2 billion in 2025, growing 3.0% after inflation. Individual giving also returned to positive growth, increasing 1.4% in inflation-adjusted dollars.
For organizations that have spent the last several years navigating inflation, economic uncertainty, and declining donor participation, those numbers are welcome news.
But beneath the headlines is a more important question: If giving is increasing, why do so many organizations still feel like they are struggling to grow?
Giving USA offers one possible explanation. Between 2014 and 2024, the number of nonprofits grew by 38% while total giving increased by just 24%. More organizations are competing for every charitable dollar more than ever before.
Yet that explanation only tells part of the story.
Giving USA helps us understand what is happening at a national level, but it doesn't tell us much about what donors are actually doing once they enter a nonprofit's file. To answer that question, we need to look deeper.
Fortunately, several benchmark studies released this year help fill in the gaps.
The 2026 Virtuous Nonprofit Benchmark Report, based on data from 771 nonprofits, found that donor retention remained largely flat, while the number of new donors making a second gift declined. However, donors who stayed were giving more often, at higher amounts, and generating nearly 18% more lifetime value than in the prior year. The report's central conclusion was that nonprofit growth is increasingly being driven by depth rather than breadth.
We saw many of the same patterns in the 2026 Rescue Mission Benchmark Report.
More than half of rescue missions experienced declines in active donors. Second-gift conversion remained challenging. Yet overall gifts increased because recurring giving continued to grow rapidly. Across the benchmark, recurring gifts increased 26.7% year over year while non-recurring gifts declined. The organizations producing the strongest long-term donor value were not necessarily acquiring more donors than their peers; they were creating stronger donor relationships in the first few years after acquisition.
Taken together, these benchmarks tell a remarkably consistent story. The challenge facing nonprofits today is not a lack of generosity. Americans continue to give. The challenge is building relationships that turn first-time donors into long-term supporters.
For faith-based organizations, that finding should sound familiar.
Earlier this year, our Faithful Giving research explored how faith influences donor behavior. What we found was that donors who viewed generosity as an expression of their faith consistently outperformed other donor groups across nearly every measure that matters. They retained at higher rates, gave more frequently, participated in recurring giving more often, and generated significantly greater lifetime value.
The difference was not income. It was identity.
Donors who saw giving as part of who they were behaved differently than donors who simply responded to a compelling appeal. Their relationship was not primarily with a campaign. It was with a mission, a community, and ultimately a set of deeply held beliefs.
That may be the most important lesson hidden inside this year's benchmark reports.
The organizations positioned to thrive in the years ahead will not necessarily be those that acquire the most donors. They will be the organizations that help donors move from occasional transactions to meaningful participation in a mission. They will create deeper connections, stronger habits of generosity, and more opportunities for supporters to see themselves as part of the work.
Viewed individually, each of these studies offers an important insight into the changing landscape of philanthropy. Taken together, they tell a more complete story about why donor value is becoming more important than simply growing donor volume.
- Giving USA confirms that funding remains strong.
- The Virtuous Benchmark shows that donors are growing in value.
- The Rescue Mission Benchmark demonstrates the growing importance of recurring programs and donor retention.
- And the Faithful Giving research helps explain why.
For years, fundraising conversations have centered on acquisition costs, channel performance, and campaign optimization. Those metrics remain important. But they are increasingly insufficient on their own.
The organizations that thrive over the next decade may not be the ones that acquire the most donors. They will be the ones who build the strongest donor relationships.
