Monthly sustaining giving is one of the fastest-growing segments of fundraising. In this article, we’ll focus on recurring giving with a different lens: We’ll look at the detail of donors’ monthly subscriptions to investigate churn to inform ways it can be proactively reduced.
Churn may be due to technical glitches, tied to an event or activity that has ended or simply a purposeful pause. Having a strategy to monitor and interpret churn is important. Assuming churn shows donor intent leads to overestimating donor dissatisfaction and underinvesting in recovery.
In this article, we’ll use the RKD 2025 Q3 Benchmarks to see how average gift amounts and lapsed monthly sustainers can inform your recurring-giving efforts.
Monthly giving overview
First, let’s recap the growth we see in monthly giving from the RKD Q3 Benchmarks. Overall, the number of recurring donors has increased 10% since 2024, and recurring revenue has increased 13%.
Source: RKD Sustainer analysis 2025.
Managing monthly giving
Monthly giving gives us a perfect window to understand donor journeys. A donor’s subscription has a starting point, and when they stop that subscription, an ending point. If a donor upgrades from $50 to $100 per month, one monthly subscription segment ends ($50), and another begins ($100).
This is where monitoring subscription segments alongside donor relationships is important.
Consider a donor who gave $50 per month, stops and then starts again later within one year. Given the donor’s choice to pause, this counts as two subscription segments for the donor. By counting donor subscription segments, a richer, more nuanced story emerges.
Sustainer algorithm
Our sustainer algorithm defines a recurring donor as someone who has given the same amount for at least three consecutive months.
We expand this monthly giving-data pattern into a data series comprised of subscription segments. The segments have a start month, and if they have churned, an ending month.
Evaluating churn intent
In the Q3 2025 RKD Benchmarks, we observe just over 500,000 monthly subscription segments across the verticals we track. 24% of them are new—with 5% being an upgrade amount and 2% being a downgrade amount.
Through Q325, 71,000 of the 500,000 subscription segments (14%) have stopped. This churn rate of 14% varies across the verticals. Due to the nature of our data, we don’t know how much churn is intentional and how much is systematic. The challenge is to better understand the motivation behind donor decisions regarding long-term commitments to their sustaining giving.
Notice that Health and Hospitals’ churn rate is nearly double that of the other verticals. Maybe this is due to donor motivations centered on care events rather than longer-term giving. The rate of Rescue Missions’ is the lowest. This could reflect inherent giving cycles that are longer term.
Source: RKD Sustainer analysis 2025.
Average subscription duration
One metric to monitor is subscription duration. On average, a subscription segment lasts 16 months. We observe that the durations vary by vertical, which indicates that this is dynamic.
Timely messaging can encourage donors to continue their on-going support or upgrade their gift. This cadence is something to test and monitor.
Source: RKD Sustainer analysis 2025.
Ask amounts and churn
It’s no surprise that the most popular sustaining gift amounts also produce the most churn. Volume alone guarantees that.
A primary driver of your churn rhythm is the ask amounts you choose on your sustainer form. Those options shape how donors enter the rhythm, how comfortable it feels and how long they stay in time.
Also pay attention to whether donors opt to cover credit-card processing fees. That is a conscious, affirmative signal of intent. Donors who make that choice are entering a different rhythm altogether—one marked by commitment, not convenience.
In 2026, you can test protecting your monthly donors’ subscription rhythm by:
- Analyzing your sustainer churn by your ask amounts. Test accelerating or delaying upgrade asks across your ask gift amounts.
- Testing higher entry recurring gift amounts in sign-up forms to support longer-lived subscriptions.
- Testing upgrade messaging to your sustaining donors who do not pay for credit card processing fees—seek to understand the credit card processing upgrade path.
- Trying different “your debit/credit card expiration date is coming up” messaging.
- Comparing average duration by recurring gift amounts to help drive your communication and upgrade strategy.
Testing subscription rhythm requires patience as learnings will take months to surface. Don’t let the longer timeline dampen your curiosity. Running multiple long-term tests in parallel can be a powerful way to learn.
Source: RKD Sustainer analysis 2025.
Sustaining churn is complicated. Looking at sustaining giving trends via their subscription segments is a powerful way to see the stops and starts of this high-value giving method. With these insights on lapsed sustainers and average gift amounts, nonprofits can improve their monthly donors’ experience and grow more sustainable fundraising programs.
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