New Blackbaud Institute Data Shows Resilience in 2025 Charitable Giving; Highlights Areas of Opportunities for Nonprofits in 2026

Charitable Giving Remained Strong in 2025, but Growth Varied by Organization Size and Gift Size 

CHARLESTON, S.C., March 18, 2026 /PRNewswire/ -- The Blackbaud Institute, a research lab at Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB), the world's leading provider of AI-powered solutions for social impact, today released new insights and giving data in its 2025 Trends in Giving data spotlight.

This data reveals that charitable giving proved resilient in 2025 despite a cooling economy. The typical nonprofit organization saw revenue growth of approximately 4.3% year over year, powered by a strong finish in end-of-year giving. However, growth was concentrated among organizations and donors with greater capacity. Large organizations and mid-to- major gifts experienced gains, while small organizations and sub $1,000 giving lagged or declined in 2025. Large organizations derived most of their year-end gains from major gifts, while small organizations remained more reliant on lower-level giving, which tapered off at year end.

"Our 2025 data shows a stark difference in the performance of large organizations versus small organizations—a bifurcation that has become more evident in the last two years," said Carrie Cobb, chief data and AI officer, Blackbaud. "For a while now, the sector has seen the trend of 'fewer donors, more dollars' play out, with the average gift size nearly doubling in the last ten years. But it's only in the last two years that small organizations in particular have faced growing challenges with major giving, contributing to the performance gap we're seeing. There's an opportunity now for smaller organizations to reorient around a strategy that prioritizes major giving and for organizations of all sizes to build their midlevel giving structures to cultivate future major donors."

Summary of Key Findings

• Year-end giving remained an engine of growth: 
  • More than 36% of all charitable revenue was raised in Q4, with December alone accounting for roughly 18% of annual giving, despite a cooling macro environment.
• Growth varied sharply by organization size:
  • Large organizations finished the year with approximately 11.7% revenue growth year over year.
  • Midsize organizations saw modest growth of approximately 2%.
  • Small organizations ended 2025 down approximately 6.4%.
• Major and mid‑level donors drove gains: 
  • Gifts of $1,000 or more grew by roughly 4.7% year over year, while gifts under $1,000 declined by about 1.1%.
  • Large organizations received 84.5% of annual revenue from major gifts, compared with 51.7% for small organizations.
• Online giving continued to outperform: 
  • Digital fundraising increased by approximately 11% year over year, peaking at nearly 15% growth in November.
• Gifts have grown over the past decade:
  • Average gift size has nearly doubled in the last 10 years, from $727 in 2016 to $1,346 in 2025.

Insights and Opportunities for 2026

Based on these findings, opportunities for growth that have emerged from this report as well as other recent Blackbaud Institute research include:

1. While major gifts drove the greatest gains in 2025, midlevel donors remain an often overlooked and under-engaged donor segment. Fundraisers should consider how AI tools including Agentic AI can help fill this gap.
2. Online giving continues to outperform, indicating strong ROI for the organizations who prioritize this platform. Fundraising teams should consider leveraging AI-optimized online donation forms to capitalize on this opportunity.
3. End-of-year campaigns should be prioritized, since Q4 accounts for an outsized proportion of all charitable revenue. Fundraising teams should look at ways to develop relationships, test messaging, and strengthen overall brand awareness throughout the first half of the year to prepare to capitalize on end-of-year donor generosity.
4. Corporate giving should be considered as a pathway to major giving. The ability to pool funds from employee giving and matching gift programs provides a significant revenue opportunity, as well as an opportunity to steward new supporters in the form of individual employees, many of whom are Gen Z and Millennial givers that have high rates of participation in workplace giving and volunteering programs.

"What's inspiring optimism in this moment is that we're beginning to see the very capacity constraints smaller organizations have typically faced in the past—building a strong midlevel pipeline, sustaining consistent stewardship, and identifying major-gift potential—become more achievable as teams adopt AI to strengthen segmentation, surface next-best actions, and personalize outreach at scale," said Lori Poer, head of the Blackbaud Institute. "With the right data foundation, AI can take repetitive work off teams' plates and help more organizations scale relationship-based fundraising and drive sustainable growth."

The full 2025 Trends in Giving Spotlight is available here. All Blackbaud Institute resources are offered for free, as part of Blackbaud's commitment to accelerating social impact.

The Blackbaud Philanthropic Dataset
Blackbaud's proprietary philanthropic data set estimates the experience of an average nonprofit organization using giving data from a subset of Blackbaud customers representing over 7,500 nonprofit organizations, totaling over $66 billion in fundraising revenue. Nonprofit data available from the IRS and Giving USA are used to weight the data of the sample to align with the makeup of the sector proportionally by organization size and focus to give a representative snapshot of the sector. Organizations' size is defined by annual revenue: Small (up to 1 million dollars), Medium (between 1 million dollars and up to 10 million dollars), and Large (10 million dollars and above).

About Blackbaud Institute
The Blackbaud Institute develops leading-edge research and convenes expert voices to equip the social impact community with knowledge, insight, and confidence. The Blackbaud Institute draws from Blackbaud's proprietary data set, the most comprehensive in the social impact community. In addition, the Institute facilitates public research studies to drive original qualitative and quantitative insight. Our research agenda is grounded in a commitment to topics that social impact organizations can apply immediately to better understand, benchmark, and improve their essential business operations. We are guided by our commitment to the social impact sector to provide timely, transparent, and well-rounded research that is free to access. From how organizations run to how donors give, we're 100% focused on research and resources for this sector.

About Blackbaud
Blackbaud (NASDAQ: BLKB) is the world's leading provider of AI-powered solutions for social impact. Serving nonprofits, educational institutions, companies committed to corporate social responsibility, and individual change makers, Blackbaud propels impact at scale with the sector's most intelligent solutions for fundraising and engagement, education solutions, financial management and CSR and grantmaking. With the deepest expertise powered by the world's largest philanthropic data set, the most connected workflows, and the most powerful impact network, Blackbaud's solutions are building a future where resources are unleashed at the speed of need. Blackbaud has been recognized by Fast Company, Newsweek, Quartz, Forbes and more for AI innovation, responsible leadership and workplace excellence. Blackbaud has operations in the United States, Australia, Canada, Costa Rica, India and the United Kingdom, supporting users in 100+ countries. Learn more at www.blackbaud.com or follow us on X/Twitter, LinkedIn, Instagram and Facebook.

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