A lot has happened in Q1 2025, and in the midst of all the news, the 80 Animal Care organizations that make up the RKD Q1 2025 Animal Care Benchmark have, on average, held their own, with a modest 3.9% year-over-year Q1 revenue growth and a 1.0% growth in gifts.
We do have some interesting tales to tell as our Large and Giant organizations grew over 7% in this quarter, while the Small and Emerging clients’ new-donor growth had strong declines. Recurring revenue continues to grow at an average of 16%.
Although the organizations in our benchmark are anonymous, we do need to mention that we removed organizations in the west that had a tremendous reception of giving due to a natural disaster. Giving was incredibly generous and incredibly unique, so much so that this generosity dramatically altered the benchmark results.
Revenue growth
Overall, according to our Q1 2025 Animal Care Benchmark, year-over-year Q1 revenue growth is 3.9%. It is a continuation of the general downward trend since 2020’s COVID-influenced spike (2023 being the obvious negative year to break the pattern).
However, this growth is not evenly spread across the various-sized organizations. A quick refresher: The RKD benchmarks differentiate organizations by their last calendar year active-donor counts. For the Q1 2025 Benchmark, this breaks out as follows:
And with these size categories, we see dramatically different stories:
Let’s do a quick check on the basics: Average Gift growth looks encouraging, and especially the recurring average gift. Check out our article on why we are splitting these apart.
Gift frequency has its own interesting tale, but it is not linked to our revenue growth:
New donor growth
The story for Q1 2025 is growth in new donors―especially for our national organizations. Our national friends’ new donors grew at a phenomenal 175% due to diligent focus and investment. As they are Large in size as organizations, they tell the revenue growth story.
Of course, it is not the entire story as the Small & Emerging organizations remain in the negative in revenue growth and new-donor growth. It is never a single thing.
But the power of acquisition focus is clear.
Recurring revenue growth
We are continuing to observe the tremendous growth of monthly sustainer giving. We previously saw positive growth rates in the recurring average gift, and that is represented with the Q1 growth in recurring revenue.
This is one of the reasons that RKD is sponsoring Monthly Giving Awareness Week May 12 to 16. Please join us and find resources here.
Storm clouds on the horizon
Beyond these benchmarks, we proactively monitor what’s going on with our various reports, dashboards and conversations with our partners. Given the unusual Q1 news, we are starting to see overall changes in late March that are not that favorable as giving is starting to trend downwards. We do not want to be alarmist, but do want to share that we are seeing possible storm clouds in these weeks, combined with April’s results. For those organizations with large rescue cases in April or which are running April Match and Day-of-Giving campaigns, results look on-target with last year.
If you are seeing a decline in revenue for your organization, please rest assured, it is not you. Things are changing in the market due to tariff decisions and the stock market. Reach out to us to discuss and work through additional revenue-generating strategies.
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