March certainly roared in like a lion—here’s to hoping it will leave like a lamb. The past few months have been a rollercoaster, and I think we can all agree it’s time for things to slow down and stabilize.
Let’s take a look at what’s happened and what’s on the horizon.
📨 Top of mind is the bi-annual U.S. postage increase set for July. After a brief reprieve in January 2025, the USPS announced in February that postage rates could rise by as much as 11.5%, with industry experts anticipating an increase between 7.5% and 11.5%.
In addition, the USPS will move forward with its Regional Transportation Optimization (RTO) initiative, which will eliminate afternoon collections at three-fourths of post offices nationwide. This change, effective April 1, will add an extra day to delivery times for outgoing mail and packages.
If you’re an RKD partner, your mail will not be impacted due to the way our lettershops induct mail into the USPS system. However, any mail your organization drops at a local post office will be affected.
📈 RKD Group has released the 2025 Benchmarks for Animal Care, Food Banks and Missions. We share insights from 83 animal care organizations, 83 food banks and 36 missions, highlighting the fundraising trends that shaped the last year. New this year, we’ve added a monthly sustainer benchmark, analyzing data patterns to uncover just how valuable recurring donors are to an organization. Get ready for fresh insights into the power of monthly giving!
📊 Neon One will be releasing a report at the end of April using research done for The Generosity Report looking at actual large-scale donor behavior. Guess what they’ve already found and just released as drip insights before the reveal as shared by Tim Sarrantonio on LinkedIn? (Note: he’ll be dropping more insights between now and the end of April.)
Instead of focusing on how to get donors to spread their giving across multiple organizations, we should be asking a different question:
💡 How do we make giving better for the 97.3% of donors who give under $5,000 a year?
💫 Over on the Thinkers Newsletter on LinkedIn, Ronnie has been exploring how nonprofits can adapt, innovate, and continue making an impact. In “Adapting to adversity: How will nonprofits handle this moment?” he discusses how we respond—and plan for the future—makes all the difference. It’s moving from reaction to rational response.
Time to grab your favorite beverage and maybe a snack and dive into last month’s collection of articles and studies.
Generation Z and Millennial donors are approaching charitable giving differently than the generations that came before them, according to a new report from the Indiana University Lilly Family School of Philanthropy.
The report highlights that Generation Z (born 1997-2012) and Millennial (born 1981-1996) donors focus their giving on supporting issues rather than specific organizations and consider themselves to be active social change agents. Next generation donors bring a decidedly tech-forward approach to all aspects of their philanthropy, including learning about and advocating for causes on social media and making donations online. They participate in crowdfunding at higher rates than older generations, and growing numbers of younger donors are giving through social media-based charity streaming events hosted by influencers.
Key findings include:
Access the "The Next Generation of Philanthropy" report here.
In December, GoFundMe unveiled its 2024 Year in Help report, celebrating the generosity of individuals and nonprofits worldwide who helped each other throughout the year. With an average of two donations made every second, the report showcases the most generous places globally, significant moments that drove unprecedented help, and trends shaping the future of giving. A few facts:
AI features on the platform were used more than 10 million times to deliver additional help, and Meta made integration possible. Live streams transformed into fundraising events. Besides disaster and fundraising for the Olympics, donors supported hundreds of thousands of medical fundraisers, collectively raising more than $1B.
Ireland retained its position as the world's most generous country on GoFundMe for the sixth consecutive year, while Vermont led the United States as the most generous state for the third year, ranking highest in donors per capita, and Marietta, GA, was the most generous city.
The fundraising powerhouse uses every opportunity to let people know it accepts gifts from DAFs, and it tracks data carefully so it can make tailored appeals.
Getting the Word Out: Nonprofits can get the message out on website donation pages and newsletters, as well as through in-person conversations. St. Jude steps it up a notch in three areas: connecting with financial advisers, data tracking, and messaging. “We engage with lawyers and estate planners and accountants and financial planners,” Shadyac says. This includes going to conferences these professionals attend and carving out relationships with big financial organizations like Fidelity and Schwab. The organization’s goal is to educate the professionals about St. Jude’s efficacy as a charity, showing why it is a good investment for clients looking to do good.
DAF Donors Are Changing: St. Jude, like other charities, is getting donations through DAFs not just from the ultrawealthy, but also from small and midsize donors.
Be Ready for DAF Supporters: “People are getting DAFs because their financial advisers say, ‘Hey, you really should do this,’” she says. “And then people are like, ‘Oh, now what?” In her research, Shaker says fundraisers felt like they had to have a good base of knowledge about DAFs to talk to donors who had questions, as well as to talk to donors who were “very sophisticated” in their DAF use. “These donors seem more savvy,” she says. “They spend time thinking about their philanthropy.”
A new study found that the charitable tax deduction is not only a powerful influence on giving, but also on the amount people would give. Americans are strongly in favor of tax deductibility for their giving, with 78 percent of current donors as well as 59 percent of non-donors supporting this. Interestingly, this cuts across political parties as 80 percent of self-identified Republican and Democrat donors support the universal charitable deduction.
In addition, such a deduction would not only incentivize more giving, according to those surveyed, but also greater participation.
Bloomerang released their new report revealing key challenges and opportunities in donor retention. The study highlights a critical disconnect: while donors give because they feel connected to a mission, many nonprofits struggle to sustain that connection beyond the first gift.
Key findings:
Access the "Mission Retainable: Research-Backed Strategies to Inspire Donor Loyalty" report here.
Last year, SeaChange Strategies released their study of nearly 6,000 midlevel donors and provided insights into midlevel donor behaviors, motivations and giving trends.
In this follow-up, they are calling it a Mini Missing Middle, they interviewed fundraisers to see how their real-world experiences align with or diverge from the landmark study’s findings and how they are applying those insights in real-world settings to:
They hosted a live discussion with some outstanding fundraisers. Watch the video here.
Engage USA, a caging and lockbox service recently did a study of 126,822 new donors. Their findings show that:
Simply put, when organizations fail to process and acknowledge gifts quickly, they lose donors and revenue. (Yes, we’ve all heard this over and over and can recite it in our sleep.)
Too many nonprofits lose donors—not because they don’t care, but because their systems aren’t built for speed. The old way of doing things—slow check processing, disconnected donor data, and late acknowledgments—simply doesn’t work anymore.
Forvis Mazars, LLP, a large public accounting and consulting firm in the United States, published its annual 2025 State of the Nonprofit Sector Report, revealing that 47% of nonprofits do not have the adequate funds to execute their programs and services in 2025. As a result, this lack of funding has driven anxiety within the overall industry, with 50% of respondents expressing concern about their current financial situation, up from 38% last year.
The annual report benchmarks the responses of 230 nonprofit professionals from various organization sizes and types across the country, from small startups and midsize groups to large educational and health institutions.
Other key findings include:
Download the "2025 State of the Nonprofit Sector Report" here.
U.S. inflation heated up in January. Core prices, which strip out volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.4% from December on a seasonally adjusted basis, the largest increase in nearly two years. Core inflation was 3.3% over the year. The core personal consumption expenditures price index, which measures costs consumers pay across a wide range of items, excluding food and energy, rose 2.6% year over year and 0.3% month over month. The central bank targets 2% annual inflation.
America’s economic activity lost pace at the start of the year, according to the Chicago Fed National Activity monthly index. Falling activity in production, personal consumption and housing were to blame for the weaker activity at the start of 2025.
Consumer sentiment fell about 5% in the University of Michigan’s preliminary February survey of consumers to its lowest reading since July 2024. As a symbol of renewed concerns among U.S. consumers, year-ahead inflation expectations jumped to 4.3% this month from 3.3% in January, the highest reading since 2023 and now well above the range seen in the two years prior to the pandemic.
The unemployment rate edged higher to 4.1% in February, rather than holding steady, as expected. The economy added a seasonally adjusted 151,000 jobs in February, the Labor Department reported. Still, that was better than the 125,000 jobs added in January. Meantime, initial filings for jobless claims fell, reversing a spike from the previous week. But claims for former federal employees rose. The private sector added fewer jobs showing from ADP's private payrolls 77,000 jobs added —lower than January's 186,000. ADP analysts cited hesitancy to hire amid uncertainty and the consumer slowdown as key factors.
New data show the number of workers who left their jobs last year hit the lowest level since 2020. The Wall Street Journal reported, Fewer Americans are Quitting Jobs. While the number of new Americans filing for weekly claims remains near its lowest level of the past year, reflecting a low layoff environment, economists have argued the elevated level of continuing claims shows its becoming increasingly challenging for workers to find a new job.
Wall Street Journal, Yahoo Finance and others have noted that stagflation has entered the chat. Increased tariffs on imports has raised an economic threat as they both raise inflation and hurt employment. The Fed deems it difficult to reduce interest rates if growth weakens. Bank stocks and the Russell 2000 have slumped on growth concerns, while Treasurys and gold have rallied. Add to it that the President declines to rule out a recession saying that his sweeping economic agenda could cause short-term turbulence that he believed would drive future prosperity.
Yahoo Finance reported that Americans have always sought debt relief after the holidays. Now their struggle is year-round. Overall household debt climbed to a new high of $18.04 trillion in the fourth quarter, the New York Fed reported. Many are stuck in what have become unaffordable car loans, while others turned to their credit cards over the past years to buffer themselves from higher prices on groceries and gas.
First, shoppers squeezed by inflation began ditching name-brand snacks and drinks in favor of lower-price store brands. But now, with costs for coffee, eggs and other basic grocery items surging, consumers are cutting out many cheaper items as well. That has TreeHouse Foods, one of the country’s largest manufacturers of private brands (including Walmart, Whole Foods, Trader Joe’s and Target), feeling the pinch.
Wall Street Journal reported the top 10% of earners—households making about $250,000 a year or more—are splurging on everything from vacations to designer handbags, buoyed by big gains in stocks, real estate and other assets. Those consumers now account for 49.7% of all spending, a record in data going back to 1989, according to an analysis by Moody’s Analytics. Three decades ago, they accounted for about 36%.
The New York Times reported, The U.S. Economy Is Racing Ahead. Almost Everything Else Is Falling Behind. The article reported the gap between Americans’ prosperity and quality of life has grown since the 1990s. A politically diverse group of scholars — who together have advised every president since Bill Clinton and who work at many of the country’s top think tanks — released a report card in February on American well-being. The group’s central finding is: The U.S. economy has outperformed most of its rivals in terms of productive might and innovation. But this success has not led to rapidly rising living standards for most Americans.
RKD GroupThinkers Monthly LinkedIn Update:
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