Donor retention rate: how to measure it and improve it

Your donor retention rate is the percentage of last year’s donors who gave again this year. Divide the number of people who gave in both periods by the number who gave in the earlier period, then multiply by 100.

Most executive directors can say what their organization raised last year. Fewer can say how many of last year’s donors are still giving. That second number tells you how much of next year you have to rebuild from scratch, and a development director who replaces half the donor file every year is spending the whole budget on finding people they already had.

This post covers the calculation, the segments worth splitting out before you judge the number, the benchmark to compare against, and four changes you can start this week.

Key Takeaways
– Donor retention rate is retained donors divided by prior-period donors, times 100. Count people, not dollars.
– The Fundraising Effectiveness Project put overall donor retention at 43.3% for 2025, up from 43.1% the year before (AFP).
– One organization-wide number hides the problem. First-time donors retain far worse than repeat donors and monthly donors, so calculate each separately.
– The two changes with the fastest payback are a thank-you inside 48 hours and a second ask to first-time donors within 90 days.
– You need four columns to run the math: donor ID, gift date, gift amount, and first gift date.

What your donor retention rate measures

Donor retention rate counts people, not money. A year where revenue climbs and the donor count falls is a year you lost ground, because the gain came from a few larger gifts on top of a smaller base.

The formula:

Donor retention rate = (donors who gave in both periods ÷ donors who gave in the earlier period) × 100

Say 420 people gave to your organization last year, and 159 of them gave again this year. That is 159 ÷ 420 × 100, or 38%.

Two rules keep the number honest:

• Use two equal windows. Calendar year to calendar year, or fiscal year to fiscal year. Comparing 12 months against nine months makes the rate look worse than it is.
• Count each donor once. A donor who gave four times last year is one donor. Deduplicate before you divide, especially if you have imported contacts from more than one list.

In FundHero, pull the contribution records for both periods from the premade reports and exports, send them to Google Sheets or Excel, and do the division there. The donor timeline in Donor Profiles shows you which gifts belong to the same person when two records look like duplicates.

The four columns you need before you can calculate anything

Data cleanup takes longer than the math. Export both periods with these columns and the rest takes 20 minutes:

1. Donor ID. A stable identifier, not a name. “J. Alvarez” and “Jose Alvarez” will split one donor into two and drag your rate down.
2. Gift date. So you can slice by period, and later by month.
3. Gift amount. The retention rate itself does not use it, but you will want it to see what the retained donors were worth.
4. First gift date. This is the column that separates first-time donors from repeat donors, which is where the real answer lives.

If your records do not carry a first gift date, use the earliest gift date per donor ID in your export, as long as you have imported your history rather than starting the file this year.

Split the rate by donor type before you judge it

One organization-wide number tells you almost nothing about what to fix. Split it into at least three groups, because each group behaves differently and each one has a different remedy.

Using the same 420 donors from above:

Segment	Gave last year	Gave again	Retention rate
First-time donors	250	45	18%
Repeat donors	140	88	63%
Monthly donors	30	26	87%
All donors	420	159	38%

The overall 38% averages three different situations. The repeat and monthly groups are working. The first-time group is where the file is leaking, and it is the largest group, which is what drags the blended number down.

That shape shows up in the sector data too. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project, which pools donor records across a large sample of nonprofits, reported that overall retention improved slightly in 2025 while new donor retention stayed essentially flat. Organizations are holding on to the donors they already had and still losing most first-time givers. The quarterly detail is in the FEP reports.

Add a fourth cut if you run events or have several acquisition sources: retention by source. Tag gifts with Activity Tags when they come in, and next year you can see that donors from your spring mailer came back at twice the rate of donors from the raffle.

What counts as a good donor retention rate

Your own rate last year is the benchmark that matters. The sector number gives you context and nothing more.

For that context: the Fundraising Effectiveness Project put overall donor retention at 43.3% for 2025, up from 43.1% in 2024. If your rate is in the high 30s or low 40s, you are in ordinary company.

Three comparisons will tell you more than the sector average:

• Your own rate for the same period last year. The direction the number is moving matters more than where it sits.
• Your first-time donor rate against your repeat donor rate. A wide gap is normal. A gap that is widening means acquisition is outrunning your follow-up capacity.
• Your monthly donor rate against everything else. Recurring gifts keep going until something stops them, so monthly donors usually post the highest rate in the file. If they do not, check for expired cards before you check anything else.

Four changes that move donor retention

Each of these is a rule plus a list to work through. Pick the first two if you only have time for two.

1. Thank every gift within 48 hours, from a person. The automatic receipt does not count, and your donors know the difference. Set the rule, then turn it into a queue: a Smart Group that surfaces gifts with no acknowledgment gives you a list on Monday morning instead of a promise to remember. Separately, a donor who wants to deduct a single gift of $250 or more needs a written acknowledgment from your organization, and the IRS sets out what it has to contain. Keep the receipt and the thank-you as two different messages.

2. Ask first-time donors again within 90 days. Most of your losses are people who gave once and never heard what it did. Send a short, specific update on what the first gift paid for, then ask. Fill in the brackets and this is ready to send:

Subject: What your gift bought in [month]

Hi [first name],

In [month] your $[amount] covered [two weeks of groceries for a family using our Tuesday pantry]. We served [number] households that month, [up from number in the month before].

The pantry runs every week whether donations arrive or not, so I am asking the people who gave this summer to give once more before [date]. Another $[amount] covers [another two weeks].

[Give again: link to your donation page]

Thank you for starting this with us,
[name, title]

3. Offer monthly giving to your best repeat donors, by name. Moving 20 annual donors to recurring donations does more for next year’s rate than 20 new names. Build the list first: donors who have given in each of the last two years, at any amount. There is a longer walkthrough in how to grow a monthly giving base.

4. Close your outstanding pledges before you chase anyone new. A pledge with no payment is a donor who already decided to give you money. The premade report for outstanding pledges gives you the mail merge, and tasks with automatic reminders put the follow-up on a named person instead of whoever remembers. For donors who have already gone quiet, reengaging lapsed donors covers the sequence.

Where campaigns differ from nonprofits

Campaigns measure retention by cycle, not by calendar year, and the cycle changes how the number behaves. A donor who maxed out in the primary is not lapsed, they are capped, and counting them as a loss sends your finance director chasing the wrong names.

Three adjustments for a campaign file:

• Compare cycle to cycle, or primary to general inside one cycle. A year-over-year rate that spans an off year tells you nothing.
• Exclude donors who have hit the limit for the election you are raising for. Contribution limits differ by state, office, and election, so confirm yours with your state’s campaign finance office or the FEC rather than assuming.
• Track your finance committee’s contacts separately. Those donors came through a relationship, and when the relationship goes quiet the giving does too.

For a campaign, the working version of retention is the call list: last cycle’s donors, sorted by last gift, with the ask amount written next to each name.

Your first week with the number

Do this in one sitting, then repeat it every quarter:

1. Export contributions for the two periods you want to compare, with the four columns above.
2. Deduplicate by donor ID and count the unique donors in the earlier period.
3. Count how many of those same IDs appear in the later period. Divide, multiply by 100, and write the number down with today’s date.
4. Split it by first-time, repeat, and monthly donors.
5. Take the worst of the three and apply the matching fix from the section above.
6. Put a recurring quarterly task on your calendar to run it again.

Step three is the one people skip. A single rate answers nothing on its own; four of them in a row show you whether the work is landing.

FAQ

What is a good donor retention rate?

Anything above your own rate last year. For context, the Fundraising Effectiveness Project reported overall donor retention of 43.3% across the organizations in its 2025 data, so a rate in the low 40s is typical. Small organizations with a close donor base often run higher, and organizations with heavy event or peer-to-peer acquisition often run lower, because those channels bring in a lot of one-time givers.

How do I calculate donor retention rate?

Divide the number of donors who gave in both periods by the number who gave in the earlier period, then multiply by 100. If 420 people gave last year and 159 of them gave again this year, the rate is 38%. Use equal-length periods and count each donor once, however many gifts they made.

Why is my new donor retention rate so low?

First-time donors have no relationship with you yet, and most follow-up effort goes to donors the staff already know. The two usual causes are a slow or impersonal thank-you and no second ask in the first few months. Fix the thank-you first. It costs nothing and takes about a week to put in place.

How often should I check my donor retention rate?

Quarterly, on a rolling 12-month basis, so you are never more than three months from noticing a slide. The annual number is what you report to your board, and the quarterly check is what leaves you time to do something about it.

Does donor retention rate matter for a political campaign?

Yes, though you measure it cycle to cycle and exclude donors who have hit the contribution limit for the election you are raising for. A repeat donor from your last race is the most likely person to give again and the cheapest name on your call list.

What is the difference between donor retention and donor attrition?

They are two views of one number. Attrition is the percentage of prior-period donors who did not give again, so a 38% retention rate is a 62% attrition rate. Some boards react better to one framing than the other.

Start with one quarter of history

Your donor retention rate is the share of last year’s donors who gave again, and it will tell you a year earlier than your revenue chart when the base is shrinking. Four things to take away:

• Count people, not dollars, over two equal periods, with each donor counted once.
• Split the rate into first-time, repeat, and monthly donors before you decide anything. The blended number hides where the loss is.
• Compare against your own history first and the sector second.
• Two rules do most of the work: a thank-you inside 48 hours, and a second ask to first-time donors within 90 days.

Pick one period, run the numbers, and write them down. If your records live in three spreadsheets and the export is the hard part, FundHero keeps donors, gifts, pledges, and conversations in one place, so pulling the report stops being the reason this does not happen. Start a free trial; no payment information required.