2025 Digital Year-End Fundraising Trends

And just like that, 2025 is in our rear-view mirror. We’ve analyzed Giving Tuesday, Flash Matches, Year-End, final-day bonus matches, and so much more, and we’re exceptionally proud to report that our digital clients achieved tremendous results.

Here are the top trends we identified as we reflected on our incredible clients’ well-deserved success.

Grassroots donors step up

Overall online revenue from gifts of $1,000+ decreased this year. For some clients, this decrease was due to a more concerted mid-level effort, with donors making their gift through personal outreach rather than online channels. For others, it’s possible that mid-level and major donors made their most generous gift earlier in response to one (of too many) crises that arose in the year.

Without the reliance on large gifts, we saw the power of lower-dollar donors shine! Revenue from “Grassroots” donors ($1-$999) increased 35% year-over-year, with donations growing by nearly 25%. This group of supporters is the core of every direct response program and an important gauge of success.

Monthly giving is on the rise

30% more donors chose to start a recurring gift (monthly or annual) than last year-end. While these donors account for less than 1% of year-end revenue, their recurring gifts add up over months and years to make a significant impact. And remember, donors who make recurring gifts are more likely to become legacy donors, extending their generosity well into the future. In total, more than 3,100 supporters became sustaining donors to our clients during year-end.

Matches matter, and bigger isn’t necessarily better

As a fundraiser, you may be tired of matching gift challenges, but your donor audience isn’t. 2025 further confirmed that it is critical to promote a match during Giving Tuesday and year-end. MWD clients who, for one reason or another, could not offer a match during year-end earned about 20% less revenue year over year. Whereas clients who promoted a match this year after not having one in 2024 saw their revenue grow by up to 30%!

2X, 3X, 10X—is there a magic multiplier? MWD’s clients featured a variety of match multipliers during year-end, with most increasing in the final days of the year. Larger match multipliers did not directly correlate with stronger results. Instead, organizations that did exceptionally well made the most of their match by clearly communicating how it changed the impact a supporter could have.

Our clients saw tremendous results, and we’re sharing our recipe for success:

Email

Email isn’t just for solicitations – it’s a powerful tool for relationship-building. We recommend multiple cultivation emails throughout the year-end season: thank you messages, quizzes, surveys, and seasonal greetings all serve to foster a better relationship with your donors. 

The more prospects you email, the more money you can raise.

Don’t overthink design. We recommend a strong mix of eye-catching emails, tactical messages, and long-form storytelling. No matter what format you choose, be sure every email communicates the impact your donor can have.

Your donors are up later than you think. Don’t be shy about sending that extra email at 7:00 pm (or even 9:00 pm) on a big giving day — Giving Tuesday and New Year’s Eve are known for generating a significant share of revenue later in the day.

Texting

Start the conversation early. At MWD, we recommend peer-to-peer texting because it helps fundraisers reach more supporters and sparks real, two-way conversations. We worked with data partners to append mobile numbers to our clients’ current and recent donor files, welcomed those donors to text programs, and saw direct gifts come in during the year-end giving season.

Many of our clients launched their first peer-to-peer texting campaigns this year. They not only saw strong returns but were excited for the opportunity to message directly with supporters.

Reach your donors right away. Texting is especially effective during high-volume fundraising moments like year-end. Messages are opened quickly, and peer-to-peer texting creates space for meaningful, human conversations between supporters and your team. These connections are something other channels like email and ads can’t replicate.

Find new donors via text. We introduced a new texting tactic in 2025: launching text messages to modeled audiences. We worked with vendor partners to create co-op audiences of potential supporters who are known to donate via text. These texts were launched through the vendor, allowing us to scale up without overtaking staff time. Results varied by client, but organizations tied to timely issues (e.g. public media and food banks) saw returns of 100% to 300%. We also saw strong results on Giving Tuesday and December 31.

The results speak for themselves. In 2024, the text channel suffered from the fatigue of a major election year. But the channel rebounded strongly in 2025. Direct revenue from texting increased significantly. Text campaigns also achieved higher response rates, especially in December.

In addition to direct giving, matchback reporting also continued to show that texting boosts giving across other channels.

Advertising

It still pays to invest in search. Heading into year-end, we had concerns about how AI overviews might impact paid search performance. AI-generated summaries are increasingly dominating the top of Google and Microsoft result pages—space traditionally reserved for paid ads—raising questions about visibility and returns.

During Year-end, those concerns didn’t materialize. Google Search and Performance Max continued to deliver exceptional results, with strong returns across campaigns. Are we still watching AI’s role in search closely? Absolutely. It’s changing how people discover information and how ads compete for attention. But even as AI becomes more integrated into the search experience, our clients are seeing increased return on ad spend (ROAS) on these channels.

Social performance was a mixed bag. Some organizations increased Meta spend year over year, others held steady, and a few pulled back—yet performance trends were not always directly correlated with budget changes. Average gift fluctuated, with some organizations seeing gains while others experienced modest to moderate declines that did not appear proportional to investment levels. On the bright side, Meta delivered growth at scale, with most organizations seeing an increase in total revenue, return on ad spend (ROAS), and the number of gifts driven through Meta.

Costs go up, but so do results. This time of year is always more expensive: nonprofits aren’t just competing with one another for donor attention, but with major e-commerce brands ramping up spend ahead of the winter holidays. Costs rose across channels—including Google, Meta, Display, and Connected TV (CTV)—but despite the increased competition, our ads continued to deliver strong returns.

Other Ways to Give

Don’t forget DAFs – and other ways to give. MWD also promoted other giving methods in our digital messaging throughout year-end. Many clients sent emails in early to mid-December promoting gifts of stock, Qualified Charitable Distributions (QCDs), and Donor Advised Funds (DAFs). In addition to email and web promotions, we created ads promoting other ways to give, like QCDs and DAF gifts, with huge cross-channel impact.

Final Thoughts

From responding to emergencies to losing critical federal funding, this year came with unprecedented challenges for our clients—and donors rose to the occasion.

Throughout the year and into calendar-year-end, many of MWD’s clients received record-breaking support. Donors of all sizes and across all channels showed up for the causes they care about. Their passion extended into year-end with some clients doubling last year’s revenue.

This year, our results are more than numbers on a sheet; they’re a reminder that we, along with our communities and the organizations that are fighting for social, racial, and economic justice—and for the rights of immigrants, women, people of color, the LGBTQIA+ community, and animals, can withstand the unthinkable. It’s proof that our voices will endure and the causes we care about will be here for years to come.

What’s next? Direct mail returns are still coming in, so the full picture of year-end 2025 is yet to come. We’ll continue crunching the numbers and examining how channels interacted to drive success. We’ll also dive deeper into additional ways to give during year-end, including DAFs, stock, QCDs, and more.