If your board or a funder has ever asked "is our number good?", this page gives you the sector reference points to answer. The most-cited source for digital marketing and online-fundraising benchmarks is the annual M+R Benchmarks study, which pools data from roughly 180 nonprofits. Per M+R Benchmarks 2026 (reporting on 2025 activity), nonprofits raised about $54 for every 1,000 fundraising emails sent, fundraising email click-through ran about 0.59%, online revenue grew about 15% year over year (mobile revenue jumped about 48%), and monthly recurring gifts made up about 27% of all online revenue.
Treat every figure here as a reference point, not a target to game. Benchmarks are sector aggregates that shift every year and skew toward larger, better-resourced organizations — a tiny all-volunteer group and a national brand are averaged into the same line. Use these numbers to spot whether you're roughly in range, then watch your own trend over time. Always verify against the current-year report before quoting a figure, because each edition restates the prior year.
How to read these benchmarks (and what they can't tell you)
A benchmark is a sector average, not a goal line. The M+R Benchmarks 2026 study draws on data from about 180 participating nonprofits, weighted toward organizations large enough to run formal digital programs. That has three practical consequences for how you use the tables below.
- Averages hide your reality. A national organization with a million-name list pulls the mean up; a 2,000-person local list behaves differently. Where a report breaks figures out by organization size or cause, use the band closest to you.
- Definitions vary by tool. "Open rate" especially is unreliable since Apple Mail Privacy Protection auto-loads tracking pixels and inflates the number. Click-through and revenue-per-email are far more trustworthy signals.
- Benchmarks shift yearly. Every figure here is from M+R Benchmarks 2026 (covering 2025) unless noted. Next year's edition will restate these. Before you put a number in a board deck, verify the current-year report.
The honest use of a benchmark
The most useful comparison isn't you-versus-the-sector — it's you-versus-you. If your revenue per 1,000 emails was $40 last year and $48 this year, that 20% gain matters more than whether you cleared a national average built from organizations nothing like yours.
Email benchmarks: revenue, clicks, and the open-rate caveat
Email remains the workhorse of nonprofit digital fundraising. The headline metric is revenue per 1,000 fundraising emails sent, because it folds list quality, deliverability, message, and ask amount into one number you can track.
| Email metric | Sector reference | Source & year |
|---|---|---|
| Revenue per 1,000 fundraising emails | ~$54 (up ~4% YoY) | M+R Benchmarks 2026 |
| Fundraising email click-through rate | ~0.59% | M+R Benchmarks 2026 |
| Fundraising email response (gift) rate | ~0.05% | M+R Benchmarks 2026 |
| Average email open rate (range, varies widely) | ~25%–40% | Nonprofit Tech for Good / Neon One, 2026 |
A worked example from M+R Benchmarks 2026: a nonprofit emailing 100,000 recipients saw on average about 50 gifts and roughly $5,400 in revenue from a single fundraising send. Context also matters by sector — Public Media organizations averaged about $309 per 1,000 fundraising emails, nearly six times the overall figure, so a wildlife group should not measure itself against a public-radio list.
Why we hedge on open rates
The ~25%–40% open-rate range is real but soft: Apple's privacy features and varying platform definitions inflate and scatter the number. Use opens as a directional health check, not a KPI. For deeper tactics, see nonprofit email marketing.
Website & donation-page benchmarks
Once a supporter reaches your site, two conversion numbers matter: how many visitors give at all, and how many who actually land on a donation page complete the gift. The second is your form's true conversion rate and the lever most worth optimizing.
| Web metric | Sector reference | Source & year |
|---|---|---|
| Overall website visitor → donation rate | ~1.6% | M+R Benchmarks 2026 |
| Primary donation-page conversion — desktop | ~11% completed a gift | M+R Benchmarks 2026 |
| Primary donation-page conversion — mobile | ~8% completed a gift | M+R Benchmarks 2026 |
| Mobile donation-page conversion — small nonprofits | ~4% completed a gift | M+R Benchmarks 2026 |
The desktop-versus-mobile gap (about 11% vs. 8%, dropping to about 4% for small organizations on mobile) is the clearest signal in this table: a clunky mobile donation form quietly loses gifts. With mobile revenue growing fast (see below), a slow or multi-step mobile checkout is now a direct revenue leak. Fewer form fields, a visible total, and a phone-friendly amount selector typically move this number more than any traffic campaign.
Page-level response rates are small by nature — a fraction of a percent of people who see a page take the target action — so judge donation pages by completion rate among people who reach the form, not by raw site traffic.
Digital advertising benchmarks
Paid digital ads are usually an investment in acquisition and awareness rather than a same-day profit center, so read these as efficiency reference points, not break-even rules.
| Advertising metric | Sector reference | Source & year |
|---|---|---|
| Ad spend per $1 of online revenue | ~$0.10 | M+R Benchmarks 2026 |
| Paid-search return on ad spend (ROAS) | ~$2.48 per $1 spent | M+R Benchmarks 2026 |
| Average cost per lead (list acquisition) | ~$2.81 | M+R Benchmarks 2026 |
| Digital ad spend growth, YoY | ~+18% | M+R Benchmarks 2026 |
Paid search consistently delivers the strongest ROAS of any digital ad type — about $2.48 back per dollar spent per M+R Benchmarks 2026 — largely because much of it captures people already searching for an organization by name (including the free Google Ad Grants program many nonprofits qualify for). A cost per lead of about $2.81 is the price of adding an email address you can cultivate for years, which is why acquisition is judged on lifetime value, not the first gift. Benchmarks like these are sector aggregates that move yearly with ad-market costs — verify the current-year report before you set a budget target.
Online revenue growth & recurring giving
The strongest story in M+R Benchmarks 2026 is momentum: online giving grew across nearly every sector, with the biggest gains on mobile and through monthly donors.
| Revenue metric (2025 activity) | Sector reference | Source & year |
|---|---|---|
| Total online revenue growth, YoY | ~+15% | M+R Benchmarks 2026 |
| Mobile revenue growth, YoY | ~+48% | M+R Benchmarks 2026 |
| Monthly recurring giving growth, YoY | ~+12% | M+R Benchmarks 2026 |
| Monthly giving as share of all online revenue | ~27% | M+R Benchmarks 2026 |
That 27% recurring share isn't uniform — it ranges from roughly 22% at small nonprofits to about 37% at the largest organizations per M+R Benchmarks 2026 — which tells smaller groups exactly where the upside is. Recurring revenue is more predictable, better-retained, and usually unrestricted, which is why a healthy monthly program shows up everywhere in financial planning. See monthly recurring giving for how to build one, and the funding mix for how online revenue fits the whole picture.
Why "unrestricted" keeps coming up
Online and recurring gifts tend to arrive without donor restrictions, so they can fund rent, salaries, and a reserve. That flexibility is what makes growth in these channels disproportionately valuable — explored further in operating reserves.
How to calculate YOUR numbers (set up tracking first)
A benchmark is only useful next to your own figure. You can compute every metric above from data you already have, plus free tools. Start by instrumenting your site and tagging your links so revenue traces back to the channel that drove it.
- Install Google Analytics 4 (GA4) and turn on its donation/conversion events so you can see visitor-to-donor rate and donation-page completion.
- Tag every campaign link with UTM parameters (source, medium, campaign). A consistent UTM scheme lets GA4 separate email, ads, and social revenue instead of lumping it into "direct."
- Pull your email stats from your sending platform — total fundraising emails sent, clicks, and attributed revenue.
Then apply these formulas:
| Your metric | How to calculate it |
|---|---|
| Revenue per 1,000 fundraising emails | (Total email revenue ÷ total emails delivered) × 1,000 |
| Email click-through rate | Unique clicks ÷ emails delivered × 100 |
| Donation-page conversion rate | Completed gifts ÷ donation-page visitors × 100 |
| Ad ROAS | Revenue attributed to ads ÷ ad spend |
| Recurring share of online revenue | Monthly-gift revenue ÷ total online revenue × 100 |
Track these monthly or quarterly and compare each to your own prior period first, then to the sector reference. Recording the trend matters more than any single snapshot. For broader measurement habits, see financial management basics and the marketing resource hub.
Putting benchmarks to work without gaming them
Benchmarks are a diagnostic, not a scoreboard. Use this checklist to keep the comparison honest and actionable.
Benchmark-use checklist
- Cite the source and year for every figure (e.g., "per M+R Benchmarks 2026") and verify the current-year report before quoting.
- Compare to the size and cause band closest to you, not the headline average.
- Track your own metrics monthly or quarterly with GA4 + UTMs, and judge yourself against your own trend first.
- Trust revenue-per-email and click-through over open rate, which privacy tools distort.
- Fix the mobile donation form before chasing more traffic — the conversion gap is real money.
- Treat recurring-giving share as your biggest growth lever, especially if you're a smaller organization.
- Never optimize a vanity metric at the expense of donor experience or net revenue.
Used this way, benchmarks answer the board's "is our number good?" without turning your program into a number-chasing exercise. The goal is durable, unrestricted, donor-funded growth — not winning an average.
A recurring, unrestricted revenue line that doesn't depend on ad spend
Every benchmark here improves when supporters give again and again without you paying to re-acquire them. With Good Circles, a supporter picks your cause once, then a share of their everyday local spending funds you automatically — recurring, unrestricted, and free to your nonprofit. We estimate about $72 per active supporter per year, so roughly $36,000 a year from 500 active supporters. It's an estimate, not a guarantee, but it's revenue with no list to rent and no form to optimize.
Claim a Founding Nonprofit spot →Sources & tools
Free first
- M+R Benchmarks 2026 — The most-cited annual study of nonprofit digital fundraising and marketing — email, web, ads, mobile, and revenue figures, broken out by sector and organization size.
- Nonprofit Tech for Good — annual stats — A regularly updated roundup of nonprofit email, social, and digital fundraising statistics, useful for cross-checking open and click benchmarks.
- Google Analytics 4 — Free web analytics to measure your own visitor-to-donor and donation-page conversion rates, with UTM-based channel attribution.
- Nonprofit Communications Trends Report — An annual survey of how nonprofits plan, staff, and prioritize communications — context for setting realistic channel goals.
Paid — optional labor-savers
- Email platform with benchmark reporting (e.g., Mailchimp or Bloomerang) — An email or donor-management platform that automatically compares your open, click, and revenue stats against nonprofit or industry averages inside the dashboard. Worth it when Worth it when you want your stats benchmarked against nonprofit averages automatically, without exporting data and computing the comparison by hand each month.
Last verified 2026-06-16. Figures and rules change — verify at the source before you act.
FAQ
What is a good revenue-per-1,000-emails number for a nonprofit?
Per M+R Benchmarks 2026, nonprofits averaged about $54 in revenue per 1,000 fundraising emails sent, up roughly 4% year over year. But this varies enormously by sector — Public Media organizations averaged closer to $309. Benchmarks are sector aggregates that shift yearly, so verify the current-year report and compare to your own prior trend before judging your figure.
What's a typical nonprofit email open rate?
Reported nonprofit open rates generally fall in the roughly 25%–40% range (Nonprofit Tech for Good / Neon One, 2026), but the metric is unreliable because Apple Mail Privacy Protection auto-loads tracking pixels and inflates opens. Use click-through rate (about 0.59% per M+R Benchmarks 2026) and revenue per email as more trustworthy signals.
What is a good donation-page conversion rate?
Per M+R Benchmarks 2026, about 11% of desktop users and 8% of mobile users who reached a primary donation page completed a gift — though small nonprofits saw mobile conversion as low as about 4%. Measure your own completion rate among people who reach the form, not raw site traffic, and prioritize fixing the mobile experience.
How do I find my own marketing numbers to compare?
Install Google Analytics 4 with conversion events, tag every campaign link with UTM parameters, and pull send/click/revenue data from your email platform. Then compute revenue per 1,000 emails, click-through rate, donation-page conversion, ad ROAS, and recurring share using the formulas in the 'how to calculate YOUR numbers' section, and track them monthly against your own prior period.