25 New Nonprofit Marketing Statistics for 2026 (Expert Analysis)

Looking at the nonprofit marketing landscape in 2026, one thing’s clear: data isn’t just nice to have anymore. It’s the difference between organizations that are gaining ground and those struggling to keep up. We’ve pulled together 25 statistics that show what’s actually working right now in nonprofit marketing and fundraising.

These insights come from leading research organizations, industry benchmarks, and real nonprofit performance data. Whether you’re a one-person communications team or scaling operations, these numbers tell the story of where we’re all heading.

Donor Giving: The Good, The Bad, and The Surprising

Let’s start with the reality check: one in four Americans (25%) plan to cut charitable giving in 2026 (NonProfit PRO). That sounds alarming until you dig deeper. Here’s the full picture:

• 48% of donors plan to maintain current giving levels (NonProfit PRO),
• 27% plan to increase donations (NonProfit PRO),
• overall giving grew to $592.5 billion in 2024, up 6.3% from the previous year (Getting Attention).

But here’s where it gets interesting. Individual giving grew 2.9% year-over-year through mid-2025, yet the number of donors declined by 1.9% (Funding for Good). Translation? Larger gifts are compensating for donor loss. Your major gifts strategy just became even more critical.

Meanwhile, foundation giving is projected to reach $122 billion in 2026, with an expected 5-7% increase compared to 2025 (Julep CRM). Foundations are stepping up to fill funding gaps created by federal and state budget cuts.

In our experience: Focus your donor communications on showing impact per gift size. If a $25 monthly gift funds medical supplies for one person, make that crystal clear. When budgets are tight, donors want to understand exactly how their contribution moves your mission forward.

Email Marketing: Your Underutilized Powerhouse

Here’s a stat that should make you reconsider your channel priorities: email campaigns generate 28% of all online nonprofit revenue (Getting Attention). That’s massive for a channel many of us treat as secondary.

The numbers get even more compelling:

• for every 1,000 fundraising emails sent, nonprofits raise an average of $90 (Getting Attention),
• personalized emails generate open rates 82% higher than generic emails (Double the Donation),
• welcome emails show a 202% higher open rate than traditional campaigns (Getting Attention),
• 74% of new subscribers expect a welcome email (Getting Attention).

Yet only 67% of nonprofits use segmented email lists, and just 12% use dynamic or conditional content (Nonprofit Marketing Guide). This represents enormous untapped opportunity.

One more critical number: 55% of U.S. donors prefer being thanked via email after giving (Double the Donation). Your thank-you process matters more than you think.

Common Challenges We See Daily

Look, we’ve worked with hundreds of nonprofits, and honestly? The same frustrations keep coming up:

The “One-Size-Fits-All” Email Trap: Organizations send the same appeal to everyone because segmentation feels overwhelming. A board member who gave $5,000 last year gets the identical message as someone who donated $25 once. The result? Lower engagement across the board and major donors who feel unappreciated.

Mobile Donation Form Abandonment: Teams watch analytics showing 60% mobile traffic but don’t realize their donation forms are causing friction on smartphones. Donors try to give, get frustrated with the experience, and abandon the process.

The First-Time Donor Black Hole: Nonprofits celebrate acquiring new donors but have no systematic follow-up beyond a generic thank-you email. These donors disappear, and organizations wonder why retention rates stay stubbornly low.

These aren’t hypothetical scenarios. We see them constantly, and the data shows why they matter so much to your bottom line.

Social Media: A Reality Check

93% of nonprofits use Facebook Pages (Nonprofit Tech for Good), but before you invest more time there, consider this: only 4% plan to invest more time on Facebook, while 36% prioritize LinkedIn for future investment (Nonprofit Marketing Guide, Nonprofit Tech for Good).

Here’s why that shift makes sense:

Platform	Average Engagement Rate	Key Insight
Facebook	0.046%	Organic posts reach just 2.2% of followers (Nonprofit Tech for Good)
LinkedIn	1.91%	Nearly 42x higher engagement than Facebook (Nonprofit Tech for Good)
TikTok	7.5%	Only 1% of nonprofits invest in ads here despite high engagement (Nonprofit Tech for Good)

53% of nonprofits spend on social media advertising, and of those, 98% spend on Facebook, 47% on Instagram, and 17% on both LinkedIn and Twitter (Nonprofit Tech for Good).

For Facebook Fundraising Tools specifically, 37% of nonprofits use them, with 35% raising more than expected and 32% meeting expectations (Nonprofit Tech for Good).

One approach we’ve found: LinkedIn deserves more attention for thought leadership and major donor cultivation. Those 1.91% engagement rates aren’t accidental. Professional audiences engage differently than casual social browsers.

AI-Powered Marketing Strategy Prompt

Ready to apply these statistics to your specific situation? Copy this prompt and paste it into ChatGPT, Claude, Gemini, or your preferred AI tool:

I'm a nonprofit marketing professional working on our 2026 strategy. Based on current nonprofit marketing statistics, help me create a data-driven action plan that addresses:

1. Our organization type: [Insert: small/medium/large nonprofit, mission area]
2. Our current marketing channels: [Insert: email, social media, direct mail, etc.]
3. Our biggest challenge right now: [Insert: donor retention, acquisition, engagement, etc.]
4. Our team size: [Insert: solo marketer, 2-person team, full department, etc.]

Please provide specific, actionable recommendations with priority rankings and expected outcomes based on 2026 nonprofit marketing benchmarks.

While AI tools can provide strategic direction, in your daily work consider solutions like Funraise, which has AI components built directly into the platform (right where you’re executing tasks). This provides full operational context rather than switching between tools.

“The nonprofits thriving in 2026 aren’t necessarily those with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones moving quickly, testing boldly, and letting data guide their choices.”

Funraise CEO Justin Wheeler

The Donation Experience Revolution

52% of nonprofit website traffic comes from mobile devices (Getting Attention). If your donation forms aren’t optimized for mobile, you’re leaving money on the table.

Payment method matters more than you might think. The average one-time donation is nearly 1.5x larger when nonprofits offer ACH, PayPal, and digital wallet payments (Funraise). Apple Pay shows even stronger results: 160% increase in average donation, with 26% of iPhone-owning donors using Apple Pay (Funraise).

Conversion rates vary dramatically by platform. Funraise’s donation form achieves a 50% conversion rate, meaning half of site visitors who interact with the form complete a donation (Funraise). When Action Against Hunger tested Funraise’s pop-up form against traditional landing pages, they saw a 12.1% increase in monthly giving conversion rates (Funraise).

Speaking of monthly giving, recurring revenue programs continue to outpace one-time online gifts (The Springer Company). Organizations should treat monthly giving as a flagship product with unique benefits and upgrade paths.

If you haven’t explored modern fundraising platforms, Funraise offers a free tier perfect for testing these optimization strategies without commitment. The difference in conversion rates can transform your fundraising results.

The Retention Crisis Nobody’s Talking About Enough

Here’s the uncomfortable truth: overall donor retention stands at just 31.9% (Keela). Compared to for-profit customer retention benchmarks above 90%, this gap is staggering.

The breakdown reveals where the real problems lie:

• first-time donor retention: only 14% (Bloomerang),
• repeat donor retention: 43.6% (Keela),
• supersize donors ($50K+): 56.6% retention (Bloomerang),
• micro donors ($1-$100): 21.3% retention (Keela).

Yet repeat donors are 3x more likely to give again than first-time donors and generate 61.6% of all dollars raised (Keela).

The gap between acquiring a donor and keeping one is massive and often overlooked. Micro donors represent 50.9% of all donors but only 1.6% of revenue (Keela), while your retention efforts should focus disproportionately on repeat and major donors.

What we’ve learned: Create a tiered stewardship system where repeat donors receive personalized recognition and impact updates. For first-time donors, implement an automated welcome sequence that tells your mission story and makes their gift’s impact tangible. This extra attention in year two dramatically improves that 14% first-time retention rate.

Website Performance Benchmarks

Nonprofits average 12,708 website visitors per month (Nonprofit Tech for Good), but most aren’t converting well. The average nonprofit bounce rate sits between 60-70%, significantly higher than the 40% or below benchmark for effective engagement (Nonprofit Tech for Good).

Your website is often the first impression donors have of your organization. These numbers suggest most of us aren’t optimizing these critical experiences.

The Segmentation Advantage

This might be the most important statistic in this entire article: segmented campaigns produce up to 760% more revenue than non-segmented campaigns (Getting Attention).

Yet many nonprofits still blast generic messages to their entire list because segmentation feels like extra work. The return on that “extra work” is literally 7.6x more revenue.

Plus, organizations using data to inform strategy experience 2.7x more campaign success than those relying on instinct (Licera). This isn’t about data for data’s sake. It’s about converting insights into action.

Real-World Performance: What’s Actually Possible

Organizations using Funraise demonstrate what happens when strategy and technology align. Funraise customers show 3x faster online revenue growth compared to industry averages, with 73% average year-over-year online donation growth (Funraise).

Recurring revenue grows 52% annually among Funraise customers, and their peer-to-peer fundraisers raise 2x more than industry benchmarks (Funraise). These aren’t theoretical improvements. They’re real results from nonprofits using data-driven tools.

Your 2026 Action Plan

The clearest pattern emerging from these statistics? Success belongs to organizations that double down on retention, personalization, and data-driven decision-making.

Your competitive advantage lies in:

• treating every email like it’s personalized through strategic segmentation,
• optimizing your donation experience across mobile and desktop with modern payment methods,
• converting first-time donors to repeat donors through year-two stewardship,
• leveraging email and LinkedIn while monitoring social media ROI carefully,
• using your data to make decisions about channel investment and messaging.

The nonprofits thriving in 2026 aren’t necessarily those with the biggest budgets. They’re the ones moving quickly, testing boldly, and letting data guide their choices.

Start with one area from this list. Test it. Measure results. Adjust. That’s how data-driven organizations pull ahead while others stay stuck in “we’ve always done it this way” mode.

Ready to see what modern fundraising technology can do for your metrics? Funraise’s free tier lets you test these strategies without any commitment, because improving your nonprofit’s impact shouldn’t require a leap of faith.