Fundraising follows need. And with increasing 2025 needs, donors have responded. We observe that trend in our just released Q3 2025 Benchmarks, in which more donors are more generous in 2025 than they were in 2024.
As we close out the year, the need will not go away. And in these remaining weeks, fundraising strategic focus shifts to GivingTuesday and the Year-End appeals to provide donors with ways to address critical needs.
In 2025, recurring giving is stronger than ever. And within this obvious benchmark trend, we’re noticing that increasingly, more of these sustainers are only giving via recurring methods, which is a year-end strategic challenge.
Many reasons may exist for this observation. Perhaps sustainer giving is increasingly enough in our subscription society. Perhaps organizations are suppressing appeals to sustainers. Unfortunately, the benchmark does not give us any insights into these ponderings.
So, let’s look at what the benchmark can tell us regarding incremental gifts from sustainers. We’ll first look at some overall trends and then dive deep into the extra gifts that sustainers provide. We’ll close with an observation that sustainers tend to incrementally support year-end efforts.
Throughout the recent years, recurring giving has continued to rise. Into year-to-date (YTD) 2025 (Q3), recurring revenue has risen 10.5%, with Health and Hospitals growing at over twice that.
Recurring giving is growing at more than double the pace of non-sustainer giving:
In addition to the shift to recurring giving, we’re seeing a second shift of donors who are only giving via recurring methods:
This shift to only giving sustaining gifts is a big deal as non-sustainer giving (“Extra Gifts”) are extremely generous:
As a percentage of recurring giving, these extra gifts contribute nearly 20% of incremental revenue. Note that only a few of these incremental gifts are Major or Mid-Level gifts.
As we look to close out 2025, it is important to note that, in general, your sustainers do not heavily engage with you on GivingTuesday. Of course, we don’t know who else they may be supporting on GivingTuesday, so we cannot draw broad conclusions on their overall support on that day.
Perhaps this is because of donor behavior in that they believe that their continual support does not warrant an additional gift on a specific day. Perhaps this is because of strategic choices in which we are not engaging with sustainers with GivingTuesday appeals. Again, the benchmarks provide no insights regarding why; we simply observe.
But when they do participate in GivingTuesday, they are generous—especially for Food Banks:
The big opportunity for sustainer extra gifts is with your Year-End Giving strategies. Here, we see that nearly a third of extra-giving sustainers participate in December:
Additionally, these December extra gifts are very generous:
When we observe extra giving throughout the year, the commitment to your mission from these extra sustainer givers is tremendous. These are some of your best donors. In addition to giving monthly, they provide incremental gifts throughout the year. Their value to your organization is at least double and as high as 4 times the amount from a non-sustaining donor. In the case of Food Banks and Missions, cumulatively, these extra-giving sustainers nearly match a Mid-Level donor.
Giving follows need. And so far in 2025, need is tremendous, and donors, as seen in the RKD Q3 2025 benchmarks, are stepping up with their generosity and their commitment to your mission. Increasingly, this need is repeatedly met via monthly giving, and engaging with these recurring donors as we close 2025 is important.
So, as you plan year-end appeals, make sure to segment sustainers for special acknowledgment in your campaigns and offer them easy ways to give that extra gift.