How many of your donors give consistently, year-over-year? For the average nonprofit in the United States, the average donor retention rate is around 29%—for every 10 donors who gave last year, only three will give again this year.
This number isn’t a new development and doesn’t shock us, but it is still a tricky reality for fundraisers. We can work to raise retention rates for our organizations with good fundraising basics like thoughtful stewardship, regular donor cultivation, and clear asks. And the Donor Retention Report on GiveMN.org can help track your status in real time.
By downloading your Donor Retention Report, you may set a time frame and view your efforts to retain donors at-a-glance. Color coding makes it easy to see which donors have been retained in the current period, and the report spreadsheet provides the information from last year’s donors for easy follow-up. You may access it in the Reports area in the sidebar of your GiveMN Administrative Area.
More reading:
- Learn more about the Donor Retention report (via Mightycause)
- Defining donor retention and attrition (via Blackbaud)
- View more stats from a recent giving trends report (via Blackbaud Institute)
PS - One of the benefits to creating a monthly giving strategy and ask is that donors who give monthly are automatically retained! Learn more about monthly giving from our “Warm Up Your Fundraising” campaign earlier this spring.