Donor loyalty: what keeps people giving, and where your website fits

Most donors who stop giving never decide to leave. They simply do not give again. In the Fundraising Effectiveness Project’s full-year 2025 data, 43.3% of donors who gave to an organization in 2024 gave again in 2025. For first-time donors the figure was 18.9%. For repeat donors it was 59.3%. Research on why donors stay keeps returning to a short list: they trust the organization, they believe their gift made a difference, they hear back about it, and the experience of giving is handled well. After the first gift, much of that happens on the website. The confirmation page, the receipt, the impact page, the monthly option on the form and the donor account are where an organization answers those needs or leaves them to chance.

Where donor retention stands

The Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP) publishes quarterly and annual donor retention figures. Its full-year 2025 report puts overall retention at 43.3%, up from 43.1%. In the same year, donor counts fell an estimated 3.6%, “extending a streak that began in 2021,” while total giving grew an estimated 5.0%. Fewer people are giving, and they are giving more.

The most recent FEP release covers the first quarter of 2026. It reports retention “essentially flat” against the same quarter a year earlier and donor counts down an estimated 0.8%. Quarterly figures only count gifts made by March 31, so they read far lower than annual rates. Compare them with the same quarter last year, not with the annual figure.

Online giving tells a similar story with a different method. M+R’s Benchmarks 2026, which covers 2025, found that 48% of 2024’s online one-time donors made another online one-time gift in 2025. The two studies measure different things, so neither number should be used to check the other. Pick one benchmark and track against it every year.

The second gift is where most donors are lost

The gap between new and repeat donors is the clearest pattern in the data. In FEP’s 2025 figures, 18.9% of first-time donors gave again, against 59.3% of repeat donors. The report calls new donor retention “the sector’s most consequential unsolved challenge.”

Retention also rises with the number of gifts a donor made the year before:

These are correlations. Donors who give often were probably more committed to begin with. But the shape matters for planning. Each additional gift moves a donor into a group that stays at a higher rate, and the hardest move is the first one. For a website, that makes the weeks after a first gift the most valuable stretch of the donor relationship to design for.

Monthly giving works differently

A donor who gives monthly makes twelve gifts a year without deciding twelve times. M+R reports that monthly giving accounted for 27% of all online revenue in 2025. The share rises with size: 22% for nonprofits with under $1 million in online revenue, and 37% for those with more than $10 million.

M+R measures sustainers by month rather than by year. In its data, 10% stop within two months of setting up a gift. After seven months, 81% are still giving. After a full year, 71% are active, and a little more than half are still active after two full years. That is not a like-for-like comparison with one-time retention, but the gap is wide.

Marketing science has a name for the difference. In 2002, Byron Sharp, Malcolm Wright and Gerald Goodhardt showed that repeat-purchase markets fall into two structures. In repertoire markets, most buyers spread their purchases across several brands. In subscription markets, most buyers give all their category spending to one brand. The authors noted that the same buying models could be applied to churn analysis in subscription markets. One-time giving looks like a repertoire: donors support several causes and move between them. A monthly gift behaves more like a subscription. The question stops being “will they choose us again?” and becomes “does the gift keep running?” That second question is largely answered by operations and the website: payment handling, reminders, and how easy it is to change the gift instead of cancelling it.

Revenue from monthly giving grew 12% in 2025, against 17% for one-time giving. Monthly programs still need new sustainers each year to grow.

What research says keeps donors

Adrian Sargeant’s work is the usual starting point. In a 2001 study in Nonprofit Management and Leadership, based on a postal survey of 10,000 donors, he found that about one in five donors who lapse do so because their financial circumstances change. A similar number simply switch their support to another organization. The study highlighted three things organizations can influence: the quality of service the donor receives, how donors perceive the feedback they get, and the impact they believe their gift has.

A 2004 study by Sargeant and Stephen Lee in Nonprofit and Voluntary Sector Quarterly tested trust directly. It found that trust affects giving behavior through commitment. Donors who trust an organization become more committed to it, and commitment is what shows up in giving.

Research from the Ehrenberg-Bass Institute adds a caution that transfers from commercial brands. In a 2014 study in the Journal of Business Research, Erica Riebe, Malcolm Wright, Philip Stern and Byron Sharp found that “for both growth and decline, unusual acquisition plays a much stronger role than unusual defection.” The institute’s summary puts acquisition at “roughly twice as important” as reduced defection, and notes that “a great deal of defection/customer loss is due to factors outside of the brand’s control.” Sargeant’s one in five who lapse for financial reasons is the donor version of that point.

So retention work has limits. Some donors will leave whatever you do, and a shrinking donor count cannot be fixed by retention alone. Reaching people who do not give yet is a brand job, and we cover it in our piece on distinctive brand assets. The part retention work can change is the part Sargeant names: service, feedback, perceived impact and trust.

The website’s job after the first gift

The confirmation page

Every online donor sees it, right after giving. Do not spend it on a generic thank-you and a share button. Use it to answer the questions a donor has right then: did the gift go through, for how much, when will the receipt arrive, and what happens next. Say what the gift will do in concrete terms. Offer one next step, such as making the gift monthly or signing up for updates. One, not four.

The receipt

A receipt is a service document first. For US donors, the IRS says the written acknowledgment needed to substantiate a gift of $250 or more must include the organization’s name, the cash amount or a description of non-cash gifts, and a statement about whether any goods or services were provided in return. Send it immediately. Write it in plain language, with a named contact and a link to the impact page. A donor who has to search for a receipt in February has a worse experience than one who can download it from an account in a minute.

Impact reporting pages

Sargeant’s finding on feedback and perceived impact is the strongest argument for a real impact page. Write it for donors, not funders. Make it specific and dated, tied to programs a donor would recognize, and updated on a schedule people can see. Link it from the receipt, the confirmation page and the email program, so the first update reaches a new donor before the next appeal does.

The monthly option on the donation form

Present monthly giving as a clear choice next to one-time giving, with a plain line on what a monthly amount does over a year. Do not pre-select it in a way a donor can miss. A surprise recurring charge is a trust problem, and trust is what commitment is built on. The confirmation page is a second, lower-pressure place to make the offer.

The donor account

A monthly gift that ends because a card expired is a loss nobody chose. Give sustainers a way to update payment details, change the amount, pause, and download receipts without calling the office. Make cancelling clear too. A donor who leaves without a fight leaves on good terms, and that keeps the door open.

The mobile donation flow

M+R’s 2026 website data shows the gap clearly. Mobile users made up 52% of nonprofit website visits but only 43% of donation transactions and 28% of revenue. On primary donation pages, 11% of desktop users completed a gift against 8% of mobile users, and just 4% for mobile users of small nonprofits. The average desktop gift was $168; the average mobile gift was $88. Across all visitors, nonprofits received $1.33 per visitor. The changes worth testing are shorter forms, large tap targets and digital wallets. M+R found 79% of nonprofits offered PayPal, 58% Google Pay and 57% Apple Pay. Test the full flow on a phone, on a cellular connection, before every campaign.

Email sign-up and preference pages

Not every supporter is ready to give again. A sign-up form lets them stay in touch without a gift, and a preference page lets them choose fewer emails or specific topics instead of unsubscribing. Each is a way to keep the relationship running at a level the donor chooses.

Accessibility

Donation flows are forms, and form problems are among the most common accessibility failures. The WebAIM Million 2026 analysis found detected WCAG 2 failures on 95.9% of home pages, with low-contrast text on 83.9% and missing form input labels on 51%. A donor who cannot complete the form with a screen reader or a keyboard has had the worst service experience possible. We cover the legal side in our guide to the EAA, WCAG and ADA in 2026.

How to tell whether it is working

Track each against your own prior year first. A benchmark tells you where you sit; your own trend tells you whether the work is helping.

If your organization is weighing this work across the site, our nonprofit practice is where we describe how we approach it.

FAQ

What is a good donor retention rate?

Compare like with like. FEP’s 43.3% for 2025 counts all gifts in its dataset; M+R’s 48% covers online one-time donors only. The most useful comparison is your own rate against last year, split into first-time and repeat donors.

Should the monthly option be the default on the donation form?

It can be prominent without being a trap. Show both options with equal clarity and explain the monthly amount over a year. A default a donor can miss risks complaints, refunds and lost trust.

Do donors need a login to manage their gift?

Sustainers do. Updating a card, changing an amount and downloading receipts should not require an email to the office. One-time donors can be served by emailed receipts and a simple way to request a giving history.

Where should we start if we can only fix one thing?

The confirmation page and the receipt. Every donor sees both, and both can be improved without changing the payment platform.