Author: Bill Ross | Published: June 24, 2026 | Updated: June 24, 2026 US charitable giving crossed $600 billion for the first time in 2025, and nonprofits everywhere are asking how to increase donations in 2026. The honest answer starts with reading last year correctly. We pulled the latest numbers from Giving USA 2026, M+R Benchmarks 2026, and the Fundraising Effectiveness Project, then built our own forecasts to show where nonprofit fundraising is actually heading. Most advice this year celebrates the record. We think the organizations that grow in 2026 will be the ones that built repeatable systems instead of chasing a one-time spike. Our nonprofit fundraising and marketing trends resource tracks these shifts as they move. What this 2026 nonprofit donation study covers: The headline number is real. Giving USA 2026 reported $617.2 billion in total US giving for 2025, up 5.7% in current dollars and about 3% after inflation. Bequests jumped 19.7% to $62.19 billion, and mega-gifts reached $19.2 billion, including MacKenzie Scott’s $6.65 billion. The cause behind the number tells a different story. The tax law passed in July 2025 changed the rules for charitable deductions, and many donors pulled their giving forward to lock in the old treatment. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project shows the strain underneath: individual giving rose 2.9% in the first half of 2025 while the donor count fell 1.9%. Fewer people gave more money, which is not a foundation you can build a budget on. What the 2025 tax law changed for donors: Our forecast accounts for the pull-forward. We project total giving near $635 billion in 2026, $660 billion in 2027, and $685 billion in 2028, built on the long-run growth trend and discounted for the bunching effect and a return toward giving’s normal share of the economy. For your 2026 plan, budget for slower top-line growth and expect the donors who gave early in 2025 to be quieter this year. A steady plan beats an optimistic one, which is the view we bring as a nonprofit marketing agency.
“The record year was a tax story wearing a fundraising costume. The programs that win in 2026 already moved past the sugar high.” – Emulent Strategy Team
Most nonprofits grade themselves on total revenue raised or new donors acquired. Those are the easy numbers to report and the wrong ones to manage by. The number that pays next year’s bills is retention, and it changes enormously by donor type. Donor retention by type, and what each one tells you: The Fundraising Effectiveness Project found that donors of two years or more account for 62% of all dollars raised. A retained donor costs nothing to reacquire, so every point of retention is worth more than a point of new traffic. We have written before about how ranking number one can be a vanity metric, and donor acquisition counts carry the same trap: they look like progress while the real engine stalls. Retention runs on trust, and trust runs on a clear identity donors recognize gift after gift. That is why we treat nonprofit branding as a retention tool, not a logo exercise. When a donor knows what your organization stands for and sees it confirmed in every receipt and report, the second gift gets easier to ask for. Yes, and the gap is wider than most boards assume. We modeled two groups of 1,000 newly acquired donors using the retention rates and average gift sizes from M+R Benchmarks 2026. One group gives $30 a month. The other gives a single $130 gift and behaves like a typical one-time donor afterward. Over five years, the monthly group returns about $1.22 million while the one-time group returns about $210,000. The recurring group is worth roughly 5.8 times more. Where recurring giving builds value a one-time gift cannot: Monthly recurring revenue grew 12% in 2025 and now makes up 27% of all online revenue. If you want to put numbers behind this for your own program, our customer lifetime value benchmarks show how the math plays out across sectors.
“A monthly giving program is the single highest-return project most nonprofits are under-investing in. The five-year math is not close.” – Emulent Strategy Team
Building a monthly program is mostly a communication problem. Recurring donors stay because they keep hearing what their gift accomplished, which is where steady nonprofit content marketing earns its keep. A donor who gets one good impact story a month renews without being asked. M+R Benchmarks 2026 reported online revenue growth by channel against a sector average of 15%. It is tempting to read the top line and pour money into whatever grew fastest. We read it differently. December alone drives 37% of annual online revenue, so the year-end calendar still rewards a disciplined push. How to read the 2025 channel growth numbers: One channel is quietly shrinking and deserves attention. Organic search now drives about 39% of nonprofit web traffic and is sliding as AI overviews and zero-click results keep searchers from reaching your site. The answer is not to abandon search but to show up where the answers now appear, which is the case we make for nonprofit SEO built for how people search today. Our approach to search everywhere optimization is designed for exactly this shift. On the tooling side, 78% of nonprofits now use generative AI in some part of their work, so the content playing field has leveled and craft is the difference again. Because most donation pages were built for a desktop visitor who no longer shows up. M+R Benchmarks 2026 found donation-page completion rates of 11% on desktop, 8% on mobile overall, and just 4% on mobile for smaller nonprofits. Mobile now makes up 52% of all traffic but produces only 28% of revenue. The average desktop gift is $168 and the average mobile gift is $88. The audience moved to the phone and the giving experience stayed on the desktop. Where mobile donation pages lose gifts: A page that defaults to monthly, loads fast on a phone, and asks for the gift in as few taps as possible recovers revenue you are already paying to attract. This is the core of how we approach nonprofit web design, where the page is a conversion tool first. The deeper problem is sameness. A page that sounds like your organization and shows the specific outcome a gift buys beats a generic template. We cover practical ways to stand out in differentiation techniques for a saturated market. Spreading a fixed budget across channels that lose money is just a slower way to run out of it. The return on ad spend data from M+R Benchmarks 2026 is blunt, and it points to a clear set of keep, hold, and cut decisions. Return on ad spend by paid channel: The move is concentration, not diversification. Fund the channel that clears break-even, hold the channels that build audience for later conversion, and stop pouring money into the ones that cost more than they return. Cutting a losing channel frees budget for the work that compounds: the monthly program, the email calendar, and the donation page. A good strategy is mostly a list of things you have decided not to do, an idea we explore in your brand strategy should help you say no.
“Good fundraising strategy is a list of the things you refuse to fund. A channel that costs $590 per donation belongs at the top of that list.” – Emulent Strategy Team
We help nonprofits turn these decisions into running programs: a brand donors recognize, a donation flow built to convert on a phone, content that keeps recurring donors giving, and a search presence built for how people find causes now. We bring the forecasting and the discipline to spend on what compounds and cut what does not. If you want a second read on your 2026 nonprofit fundraising plan, contact the Emulent team and let us talk.
2026 Marketing Study – How The Top NonProfits Are Increasing Donations
Will 2026 Look Like 2025? Plan As If It Won’t
Which Donors Actually Come Back? Retention Decides Your Revenue
Is a Monthly Donor Worth More Than a Big One-Time Gift?
Which Channels Are Real Growth, and Which Are Just Noise?
Why Do Most Donation Pages Lose Mobile Givers?
What Should You Stop Funding This Year?
How Emulent Helps Nonprofits Grow Donations
