Strategy
Part of Nonprofit marketing strategy: the choices behind public claims and donor trust
What a realistic nonprofit marketing strategy benchmark looks like: the useful version
A usable nonprofit marketing benchmark names its population, reporting period and specific metric, so you can recalculate the figure before you trust it.
What to take away
- A realistic nonprofit marketing strategy benchmark, the useful version, states population, period, measure and denominator. Without those four, the number is decoration.
- M+R Benchmarks and the AFP Fundraising Effectiveness Project publish sector figures you can check against your own file, not against a target.
- Recent M+R editions report email fundraising response rates near 0.4% to 0.5% of delivered messages, and first-year return on ad spend on digital ads below $1.00.
- The Fundraising Effectiveness Project reports overall donor retention near 40% to 45%, and roughly one in five new donors giving again the next year.
- Recalculate any headline rate from the raw counts before it enters a board deck.
- Keep an external comparison separate from your internal go/no-go threshold.
- Write down the maturity window, because a first-year program and a tenth-year program are not comparable.
What M+R Benchmarks and the Fundraising Effectiveness Project contain
M+R Benchmarks is an annual study drawn from participating nonprofits. It reports email list growth, response rates, average gift and return on ad spend by sector and list size. It is free to download, and the value sits in the segment cuts, not the headline average.
Key nonprofit benchmark figures
- 0.4%–0.5%email fundraising response rate
- $50–$100average one-time online gift
- $0.50–$0.90first-year return on ad spend
- 20%new donors who give again
Recent editions put email fundraising response rates near 0.4% to 0.5% of delivered messages. Average one-time online gifts land in the tens of dollars, commonly between $50 and $100. First-year return on ad spend on digital ads usually sits below $1.00, often in the $0.50 to $0.90 range.
The Fundraising Effectiveness Project, run by AFP and the GivingTuesday data team, reports donor retention, recapture and revenue per donor from participating organizations. Its headline finding in recent years has been that roughly one in five new donors gives again the following year.
Overall retention in the FEP reports sits near 40% to 45%. Neither study is a target. Both are comparison sets with self-selected participants, so organizations that measure carefully are overrepresented.
For scale, Giving USA puts total US charitable giving above $550 billion in recent years, with individual donors supplying most of it. The Blackbaud Institute's Charitable Giving Report puts online gifts at roughly 10% to 15% of total giving. Both help you judge whether your channel mix is unusual.
The comparison table, filled in with M+R and FEP fields
The comparison table
What to record
- Population
- Which organizations, sector, list size band, geography
- Period
- Calendar year, and how many years the program has run
- Measure
- Email response rate, donor retention, average gift, revenue per donor
- Published figure
- Response rate near 0.4% to 0.5%, overall retention near 40% to 45%, new donor retention near 20%
- Decision
- Your own threshold, set before you read the study
Where it comes from
- Population
- M+R methodology section
- Period
- FEP reporting year
- Measure
- Both studies, segment tables
- Published figure
- Recent M+R and FEP editions
- Decision
- Your board or program plan
The mistake is reading a sector average as a goal. If your retention sits below the FEP range, the useful question is which segment you belong to, not how far you sit from the mean. New donors, monthly donors, mid-level donors and lapsed donors each carry a different expected rate.
Benchmark comparison fields
- Populationorganizations, sector, list size, geography
- Periodcalendar year, years program has run
- Measureresponse rate, retention, average gift, revenue per donor
- Published figureresponse 0.4%–0.5%, retention 40%–45%, new donor 20%
- Decisionyour own threshold, set before reading
Recalculating one figure
Take a retention rate. If 1,200 donors gave in year one and 240 gave again in year two, the rate is 240 divided by 1,200, or 20%. Do that arithmetic on your own counts before you compare to anything published.
Recalculate a retention rate
- Take your raw donor counts
- Divide renewed donors by first-year donors
- Compare to the correct segment, not the overall mean
- Check what the published figure excludes
- Check the denominator if numbers disagree
A 20% figure against an FEP overall range near 40% to 45% looks alarming until you split it. First-year donor retention is the lowest band in most files, and new donor retention near 20% is the sector norm.
Then ask what the published figure excludes. Lapsed donors who were never solicited, gifts under a minimum amount, and one-time disaster gifts are handled differently by different studies. A rate that includes them is not the same rate.
If your number and the sector number disagree, check the denominator first. Most disagreements are definitional, not performance.
Where the process sources fit
The FTC advertising substantiation policy requires a reasonable basis for objective claims before you publish them. That applies to a claim like "we direct 90 cents of every dollar to programs" as much as to a product claim.
The NIST AI RMF Playbook lists voluntary actions under govern, map, measure and manage. Use it when a tool changes how donor data is scored or segmented, and keep the playbook's voluntary status visible.
The GAO evaluation design guide links evaluation questions to evidence needs. Its federal-program setting does not transfer directly, but the discipline of matching question to design does.
The CISA software acquisition fact sheet covers supply-chain and vulnerability checks for purchased software. Add those checks to a CRM purchase record; do not treat them as approval.
A worked benchmark card
Test
- Case
- One program, one reporting year, one segment
- Method
- Recalculate the rate from raw counts, then name the largest definitional gap
- Published comparison
- Name the segment figure you compared against
- Outcome
- Compare to your pre-set threshold, not the sector mean
- Escalation
- Stop if the number is being used to justify a claim you cannot substantiate
Worked example
- Case
- First-year online donors, spring email appeal, calendar 2025
- Method
- 1,200 donors, 240 renewed: 20%, against an FEP band near 40% to 45% overall
- Published comparison
- M+R email response rate and FEP retention band, year noted
- Outcome
- Threshold set at 25% before the study was opened
- Escalation
- Correction owner named, next review date set
Common questions
What is the first decision?
Name the program, the segment and the reporting period before you open any study. A benchmark read without a defined population cannot be applied to anything, which is one of those nonprofit marketing strategy questions nobody wants to ask out loud. Write all three down before you open the PDF.
How do I check a published figure?
Find the methodology section and read what the study excludes. Then recalculate your own rate from raw counts using the same denominator. If the gap survives that, it belongs in your nonprofit marketing strategy rather than in a footnote.
What should I avoid?
Avoid quoting a sector average as a target in a board deck. Cite the study, the year and the segment, and label your own threshold separately. A figure with no population attached cannot be audited or defended.
