Active Donor Growth

Active donor growth is a critical metric that tracks how your donor base is expanding over time. By monitoring this metric, you gain insight into engagement trends and the overall health of your fundraising efforts. Growth in active donors signals strong acquisition, retention, and recapture strategies — all essential for sustainable success.

Active donor growth combines three key metrics:

  • Acquisition rate – donors who gave for the first time this year

  • Recapture rate – donors who gave this year and in the past (two to five years ago), but not last year

  • Retention rate –donors who gave both this year and last year

This metric, displayed on the Active donor growth tile on the Home page, is updated weekly to keep you informed of changes and empower timely action. Tracking Active Donor Growth helps you identify opportunities to strengthen relationships and optimize outreach strategies.

Note: Don’t see this yet? The Active donor growth Home page tile is currently in Limited Availability (LA).

Tip: The information shown during the first two months of the calendar year may not provide actionable insights due to limited data. More meaningful year-to-date insights will be available starting in March. You can still review data from previous calendar years at any time.

In short, Active donor growth answers a key question: Is your donor file growing compared to peers? Use this data to make informed decisions that drive engagement and maximize impact.

Act on Trends and Unlock Growth

If your Active donor growth is trending downward or falling behind peer benchmarks, it may signal missed opportunities in acquisition, retention, or recapture strategies. Use the benchmark gauge and tailored recommendations to identify strategies for improvement, such as:

  • Boost acquisition with targeted campaigns for new donors

  • Prioritize retention by enhancing stewardship for existing supporters

  • Re-engage lapsed donors through personalized outreach

Even if your trend is positive, benchmarking can reveal areas for further growth. For example, reviewing the Undergiving queue in Prospect Insights can help identify donors with capacity to give more. Smart, tailored strategies — like segmenting high-potential donors or improving retention — are the fastest path to improving fundraising outcomes.

Gauge Visualization at a Glance

  • Half-filled gauge = median performance

  • Trend arrows = direction of change over time against your benchmark

  • Weekly updates = real-time progress tracking

By combining trend analysis with actionable insights, you can strengthen donor relationships, optimize engagement strategies, and maximize growth potential.

Tip: Data on this tile updates weekly

Turn Benchmarks into Action with AI Guidance

The Active donor growth benchmarking tile now integrates with Chat for Blackbaud AI, giving you real-time, personalized guidance to improve your fundraising performance. With this feature, you can:

  • Understand how your Active Donor Growth is trending over time

  • Interpret benchmark scores with contextual insights

  • Receive tailored recommendations based on your organization’s data and peer benchmarks

  • Trigger actions directly from the tile, such as launching acquisition campaigns or retention initiatives

For example, if your growth falls below the 30th percentile, Chat for Blackbaud AI might suggest increasing acquisition through targeted appeals, improving retention with personalized stewardship, or running A/B tests on re-engagement messaging. These recommendations are curated for your benchmark cohort, making them highly relevant and actionable.

Select Suggest actions to see your next best move.

Active Donor Growth Benchmarking

Active donor growth is more than just a metric — it’s a key indicator of fundraising health, donor engagement, and strategy effectiveness. A higher growth rate often reflects strong acquisition and retention strategies, while a lower rate may point to missed opportunities.

How to Use the Benchmarking Tile

  • Track Your Position: The gauge on the Home page shows where you stand compared to peers. A half-filled gauge means you’re at the median.

  • Monitor Trends: Check whether your growth is rising, falling, or holding steady.

  • Act on Insights: Use tailored recommendations to boost acquisition, improve retention, and re-engage lapsed donors.

Tips for Improvement

  • If retention is lower than acquisition, prioritize retention strategies for better ROI.

  • Don’t expect your overall benchmark score to change immediately — watch weekly trends to confirm progress over time.

Benchmarking helps you move beyond arbitrary goals by providing real-world context and actionable strategies. Use these insights to strengthen donor relationships and maximize fundraising outcomes.

What is benchmarking?

Benchmarking helps you understand how your organization’s fundraising performance compares to similar organizations. Unlike arbitrary goals, peer-based benchmarks are grounded in real-world data, making them more relevant and motivating.

Why Benchmarking Matters

  • Accounts for sector-specific dynamics and donor behavior

  • Normalizes for organizational scale

  • Reveals actionable gaps and strengths

Raiser’s Edge NXT uses the Blackbaud Philanthropic dataset — the largest of its kind — to derive benchmarks from billions of dollars in giving across thousands of organizations.

How It Works

Your organization is grouped with peers based on:

  • Country (U.S. or Canada)

  • Industry/Sector (e.g., Higher Education, Healthcare)

  • Annual Revenue Size (Small: <$1M, Medium: $1M–<$10M, Large: ≥$10M)

Benchmark scores are calculated at various percentile ranges (i.e., 10th, 50th, 90th, etc). using all organizations in a peer group and weighted to reflect the nonprofit landscape. Your performance is compared separately to industry and revenue size benchmarks, then averaged into a combined integer score from 0 to 10.

By comparing your results to similar organizations, benchmarking highlights where you excel and where improvement is needed—helping you set realistic goals and adopt strategies that drive growth.

For consistent comparison across organizations, benchmarks include:

  • All donors, including those marked as inactive

  • Calendar years only (not fiscal year)

  • Cash-in-hand giving (not soft credits), including:

    • One-time gifts

    • Payments toward matching gifts, pledges, and recurring gifts

    • Gifts of stock and sold stock