It's here! The 2025 M+R Benchmarks
- Brock Warner, CFRE
- Apr 25
- 2 min read
Earlier this week M+R released their annual Benchmarks report, which is a highlight of our year. This report influences our digital fundraising coaching, strategies, and reporting because it’s the most comprehensive set of nonprofit digital marketing and fundraising benchmarks out there. Plus, it just gets better every year.
Here are the four takeaways that stood out to us that we think our fundraising pals in small- and medium-sized organizations will find useful:
Monthly giving revenue grew 5% from 2023 to 2024 (vs. 0% for one-time gifts). Monthly now represents 31% of online revenue in M+R’s large and diverse sample. Takeaway: make sure that monthly giving asks are prominent and compelling.
Existing donors remain far more likely to give again (62% retention) than new-to-file donors (23%). Takeaway: the power and value of stewardship can’t be overstated. It’s worth your time, and any cash investments are likely to pay for themselves in renewed and upgraded gifts.
Desktop users generated 80% of online revenue for small charities, even though mobile drives more traffic. Takeaway: set a reminder to test your donation process on a desktop computer as well as your mobile forms.
Most nonprofits (78%) in the M+R sample report using generative AI. The most common use case is for productivity (56%), followed by drafting content (53%). Takeaway: experiment with AI tools to automate or streamline a tedious task or workflow.
We’d love to hear what caught your attention in this year’s report. Reply to this email, or send us a message on Instagram, Bluesky, or LinkedIn.
🎧 If you’d like to listen to a 15-minute commentary and summary of this 2025 M+R Benchmarks Report, we’ve used Google’s NotebookLM to generate an audio summary of the content available at mrbenchmarks.com, for educational purposes only, for anyone who prefers to listen instead of reading. The voices are AI-generated, not Brock and Holly.
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