What Will Giving Look Like This Year?

If you’re worried about the latest trends in giving, you’re not alone. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project and the Giving USA results for 2022 are troubling, to say the least. 

The pandemic’s bump in giving is gone and then some.      

M&R Benchmarks 2023 also indicates that average online giving revenue is down — despite monthly giving rates increasing!

That’s why I was interested to hear about some recent research done by nonprofit evaluator site, Charity Navigator. 

Related story: Report: People With Lower Incomes Donate Less, Say Wealthier People Should Donate Instead

The organization reached out to donors who use the site to give. Although it has a small sample size of 356 respondents, the survey is representative of more than 11.6 million donors who visited Charity Navigator in 2022 to find, vet and support nonprofits. 

Donors’ Giving Plans for 2023

Of the donors surveyed, 80% indicated that they’d be donating to the nonprofits they care about this year. What’s most interesting is that 52% said they planned to donate about the same as last year, with 29% saying they’d give slightly more and 14% planning to donate significantly more (25% more money than in 2022). Only 6% plan to give less. That’s good news. Only 10% indicated they are not planning to give this year at all. 

Of the donors who plan to give more, 83% indicated that they are planning to donate more because they see how the need has increased for the nonprofits they care about. 

When asked why donors were planning to give less, 58% indicated that it was because of less income or personal hardship, 27% because of inflation, 16% because of lack of tax incentives, and 15% were planning to bundle their donations, which means combining giving over two years into a single year to get a better tax benefit.     

Of course, the part of the survey I was most interested in was the method in which donors were planning to give. Almost 25% of donors were planning a recurring gift! 

Finally, survey results show that 31% of participants reported that housing and food security were the most concerning issues to them, followed by political and social issues at 25%. Only 11% of participants reported public health as a top priority, which was surprising despite the ongoing pandemic. 

What Your Nonprofit Can Do to Encourage Giving in 2023

What will this mean for your nonprofit? What does this mean for recurring giving?  

If you’re in the budget stage, I suggest looking at your 2018 and 2019 results. Let your donors know that you need them. Tell them that they can help in any way in which they’re comfortable. This is where smaller recurring gifts offer a great opportunity. 

Then make it easy for donors to contact someone in your organization if they have questions, if they need to put a pause on their gift, or if they want to lower their recurring gift. 

Now is not the time for your nonprofit to set aggressive growth goals and keep looking at 2020 and 2021. It’s also not the time to want to raise more and more, although your board and boss will push for it. 

Now is the time to ask point blank how your organization’s own giving is changing. Now’s the time to make sure you have 100% board giving, even if that means asking board members for recurring gifts. 

Finally, now’s the best time to step up your donor stewardship and go back to basics. Perhaps add one more channel to communicate with your donors to say “thank you” — maybe it’s that personal phone call or text message, or that handwritten thank-you note. 

What can you do to make your donors — recurring and one-time givers alike — feel extra special? You really have nothing to lose and everything to gain.

First published on Nonprofit Pro, July 19, 2023.