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I don’t know about you, but the 2024 end of year fundraising season may have felt even more stressful than usual, and that is saying a lot. Between a tumultuous election year, global crises, and uncertainty headed into 2025, the stakes this year just felt higher. As they say on Twitter – I’m still calling it Twitter – “the vibes are off!”
But vibes aren’t everything, and it’s the actual performance we care about. So, what does the data say about this latest End of Year fundraising season? We dug into digital fundraising results from more than two dozen organizations to learn more.
The big picture: the bag remains mixed.
We’re considering all of November and December as part of “End of Year,” to account for the shifting timing of Giving Tuesday from year to year.
In our analysis of nonprofit digital fundraising this End of Year season, we found that a slight plurality of organizations saw higher overall revenue raised across ads, email, SMS, social, and web giving compared to 2023. At the same time, the median organization saw roughly flat overall revenue raised.
All told, that adds up to a mixed bag across our industry, with some organizations seeing more dollars coming in, some seeing roughly the same as last year, and a few seeing less revenue than they’d raised at this time in 2023.
Email fundraising was a challenge in 2024.
It’s worth calling out email among the many channels since, overall, the median organization in our analysis saw slightly lower email fundraising performance at End of Year compared to 2023. In many ways, this isn’t surprising – email’s share of digital dollars raised has seen a structural decline in recent years (outside of the lockdown days of 2020, when more people than ever were glued to their screens).
To that point, the median organization in our analysis saw email’s share of digital revenue decline. However, the trend was modest, with several organizations seeing a flat share of email revenue, even as the channel’s overall revenue declined.
All in all, our take on email hasn’t changed much: while the days of endless year-over-year growth may be behind us, the email channel continues to be a critical element in fundraising programs, generating massive amounts of revenue in November and December, despite these headwinds.
The calendar had a big impact.
This year, nonprofit fundraisers faced a compressed schedule as Giving Tuesday fell in December for the first time since 2020, and later than any year since 2019, at that.
On top of a December 3rd Giving Tuesday, many nonprofit fundraisers feared they would face donor fatigue that could hurt fundraising performance in the aftermath of a grueling federal election season. Just like you and me, many donors’ and supporters’ inboxes were absolutely flooded with campaign solicitations well into November, competing for attention (and dollars) with nonprofits.
But those are the vibes! What does the data say? Overall, owing in part to the compressed calendar, organizations in our analysis saw more revenue-positive days than revenue-negative days in December. (In short, more days in December raised more than those same calendar days in December of 2023.) Combined with the bigger picture metrics, this suggests that donors still came through in the end, despite arguably fewer opportunities for fundraising solicitations due to the compressed period between Giving Tuesday and December 31.
Days of the week also mattered a lot: for the first time since 2021, December 31 fell on a weekday in 2024, as did December 30. That made a huge impact in our analysis, as each of those two crucial final fundraising days of the year saw significant overall increases in revenue raised year-over-year.
As the calendar giveth, it also taketh away: the largest year-over-year decreases in revenue raised by day fell on the weekends in December 2024. That made for a real nail-biter for those of us running CRM reports on December 28-29, even as many of those donors ultimately made their gifts when the workweek resumed.
Taken together, these results reinforce our recommendation to time your End of Year outreach carefully, and use this higher-volume period of time to reach your supporters across the multitude of digital channels, including audio and connected TV, when they’re most engaged (Monday-Friday).
Here’s the great news: December 31, 2025 will fall on a Wednesday! (We looked so you don’t have to!)
This isn’t 2016.
The billion dollar question that many nonprofits asked themselves this year was: will we see a massive influx of donors following a Trump election win, like we saw in 2016?
Our analysis – which represents a spectrum of politically engaged and nonideological nonprofits – suggests that the answer is… not really. Or at least, not yet.
To be sure, many politically active organizations did see a year-over-year boost to revenue in December. However, we would characterize that boost as “a welcome influx of support” as opposed to “The Resistance 2.0.”
What remains to be seen is whether that trend continues – which would suggest that donors are burnt out from politics and the fight against Trumpism – or if donors are simply taking a post-election breather and preparing for the long fight ahead.
Interestingly, many of the nonprofits that saw the largest year-over-year fundraising spikes in our analysis were nonideological charitable organizations, such as healthcare organizations and animal welfare groups.
The full impact of the political environment on nonprofit fundraising will take some time to parse – keep your eyes peeled for our 2025 M+R Benchmarks report for more – but our analysis suggests that donors remain committed to making a positive impact.
At M+R, we’re committed, as always, to helping them – and the incredible organizations we support – make that better world possible. Thank YOU for being a part of it.
What’s next?
Of course, the big numbers don’t tell the full story. Next, our team will dig into what tactics and creative strategies stood out this End of Year. Keep your eyes peeled for those takeaways in our next post!
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Nick Blake is an Account Supervisor based in the Washington, DC area. When he’s not working on digital fundraising and advocacy campaigns, you can probably find him running.