Each year, the Blackbaud Institute publishes its Trends in Giving report to offer an early, data-informed view of the previous year’s charitable giving to help social impact leaders and fundraisers understand what’s unfolding across the sector and why.

The past few years have demanded more from nonprofits than ever before. Economic volatility, rising expectations from donors, staffing shortages, and constant pressure to do more with less have become the reality for many fundraising teams. Against that backdrop, our latest data on 2025 trends offers both reassurance and a call to action.

The data confirms something many felt firsthand: generosity showed up again in 2025. The typical nonprofit organization experienced approximately 4.3% year-over-year growth, with more than 36% of all giving concentrated in the final quarter of the year. At the same time, the report makes clear that this growth was not evenly distributed—and that difference matters as organizations plan for what comes next.

What Blackbaud’s 2025 Charitable Giving Data Shows

When we step back and look at the full picture, a few key things stand out.

1. Year-end giving continues to be the engine of growth: December alone accounted for nearly 18% of total annual giving, reinforcing that donor generosity is increasingly concentrated into fewer, high impact moments. Teams that entered Q4 with clear strategies, strong stewardship paths, and frictionless giving experiences were better positioned to capture that momentum.
2. Growth varied widely by organization size and gift level: Many large organizations saw stronger gains, while others faced headwinds. Gifts of $1,000 and above grew, while lower-dollar giving declined overall. This reflects the longer-term trend of “fewer donors, more dollars” that the sector has seen over the past several years, but it also highlights where opportunities lie for organizations of all sizes: strengthening mid-level pathways.
3. Mid-level and major giving are shaping the future: While major gifts drove the largest gains, mid-level donors remain one of the most important—and often underleveraged—segments for long-term sustainability. These donors are the bridge between today’s revenue and tomorrow’s major-gift pipeline.

Nonprofit leaders don’t need a brand-new playbook every year. What the data reinforces is the importance of fundamentals: clarity around donor behavior and strategy, early preparation for year-end, intentional investment in mid-level relationships, and thoughtful use of technology to expand capacity responsibly.

What We’re Seeing from Organizations That Are Building Momentum

In conversations with our social impact customers at Blackbaud, we consistently see a few common threads among organizations that have navigated the past few years successfully, even amid constraints.

They didn’t chase every new tactic. Instead, they focused on readiness.

The work being done by Fort Collins Habitat for Humanity provides a practical example of this kind of readiness. With a small fundraising team, the organization used data-driven insights in their fundraising CRM to identify donors giving consistently but below major-gift levels, and used this insight to focus their stewardship accordingly. By prioritizing the mid-level segment and using technology to guide—not replace—human outreach, the team strengthened its donor pipeline and entered year-end better positioned for sustainable growth.

Others have leaned into the integration between digital and relationship-based fundraising. Online giving grew by approximately 11% year over year in 2025, and organizations seeing the most benefit treated digital channels not as standalone tactics, but as on-ramps into deeper donor relationships.

Save the Children is a great example of this. The global humanitarian organization recently modernized how donors engage by transforming its legacy child sponsorship program into a more flexible, impactful and cost-effective recurring giving approach. By investing early in modern infrastructure and more customized digital experiences, Save the Children proactively positioned itself to sustain donor trust while ensuring it can continue to support children when and where they need it most—amid a changing funding landscape, evolving donor expectations, and rising global needs. In 2025, the transition was successfully completed, bringing thousands of global donors along the journey. Retention data shows that over 90% of transitioned supporters continue to actively donate six months later—ultimately, strengthening long-term support for the organization’s work in over 100 countries, so children in the U.S and around the world can have a healthy start in life, the opportunity to learn and protection from harm. 

Where Many Organizations Are Still Struggling

At the same time, our conversations with frontline fundraisers and leaders on the ground give color to the data. Many organizations remain overly reliant on lower-level giving, even as donor behavior shifts. Without a clear mid-level strategy, donor pipelines can stall, leaving teams working harder for less predictable results.

Capacity constraints are also real. High turnover, staff burnout, and limited resources make it difficult to consistently identify donor potential, maintain stewardship, and plan far enough ahead of year-end pressure. When everything hinges on Q4, the margin for error narrows quickly.

And for some leaders, AI use still feels abstract or risky, especially when framed as another tool to manage rather than as a way to strengthen fundamentals. The result is that many teams are using AI for basic tasks, but not yet tapping into its ability to support strategic fundraising work at scale.

The good news is that none of these challenges are insurmountable.

Four Ways to Become Future Ready

Based on what the data shows and where we’re seeing organizations succeed, here are three practical focus areas for leaders planning ahead.

1. Adopt Responsible AI as a Partner: Responsible AI is most powerful when it works with fundraisers, not instead of them. AI-powered solutions and agentic capabilities can help surface next-best actions, identify donor potential already in your database, and scale stewardship—while keeping humans firmly in control of strategy and relationships. Start by asking: Where could better prioritization free up my team’s time?

2. Invest Intentionally in Mid-Level Giving: Mid-level donors are too important to leave to chance. Define what mid-level means for your organization, clarify stewardship paths, and ensure ownership doesn’t shift during busy seasons. This segment is where trust is built and where tomorrow’s major donors are cultivated.

3. Prioritize Frictionless Digital Giving Experiences: Online giving continues to outperform, indicating strong ROI for the organizations who prioritize this platform. Fundraising teams should consider optimizing their digital fundraising with AI to capitalize on this opportunity.

4. Expand How You Think About Corporate Giving: Corporate and employee giving remains a powerful, and sometimes under-prioritized, pathway to growth. Workplace giving, matching gifts, and employee engagement programs allow organizations to pool support while building relationships with individual donors who may go on to give in other ways. It’s not just incremental revenue; it’s long-term opportunity.

Turning Today’s Generosity into Lasting Momentum

If there’s one core takeaway from the 2025 Trends in Giving report, it’s this: generosity is resilient, but preparedness determines who benefits most from it.

We hope this data helps you reflect, prioritize, and move forward with confidence, because the opportunity to build lasting momentum is very much within reach. Explore the full report here.