Donations rose 6.6% in the first half of 2026 while donor numbers fell 1.6%, fundraising data project finds

Charities tracked by a national fundraising data project raised more money in the first half of 2026, but from fewer donors. Dollars raised rose an estimated 6.6% from January to June compared with the same months of 2025, while the number of donors fell 1.6%, according to the second-quarter report of the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP). The project is run by the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) Foundation for Philanthropy and GivingTuesday, using data from donor-management and online-fundraising software providers. AFP published the findings on October 29, 2026.

Retention, the share of last year's donors who gave again this year, slipped 0.4 percentage points to 26.4%. For the typical organization in the data, donors fell 1.8% and dollars rose 4.4%.

Growth at the top

The gains came mainly from the biggest givers. Major and Supersize donors made up 2.9% of all donors but gave 76.4% of the dollars, and their giving grew fastest: up 8.7% for Supersize donors and 6.7% for Major donors. Micro donors, who give $1 to $100, are still the largest group, at 51.6% of donors, but they were the only group to shrink, with their numbers down 4.2% and their giving down 4.4%. Every other group grew in number.

The continuing fall in donor numbers shows that "nonprofits are increasingly reliant on larger donors," said Woodrow Rosenbaum, GivingTuesday's chief data officer.

The second gift

The losses are concentrated among newer donors. New donors fell 4.7%, and New Retained donors, people who gave for the first time last year and gave again this year, fell 9.5%, the steepest drop of any stage. Just 11.3% of the people who first gave in 2025 had made another gift by the end of June. Repeat Retained donors, who make up 42.7% of the total, grew 3.1%. Tim Sarrantonio, the project's chair, said the data show that "only about one in nine people who gave for the first time last year has given again."

Frequency goes with loyalty in the data. Of last year's donors who made seven or more gifts, 90% gave again this year, against 14.4% of those who gave only once. Donors making three to six gifts grew 3.2%, while one- and two-gift donors declined, and the dollars from the most frequent donors grew least, by 2.5%.

How 2026 compares

On this series, the rise in dollars sits in the middle of the range since 2022, from 2.7% in 2023 to 9.6% in 2022, and the fall in donors is smaller than the drops of 5.2% and 3.0% in 2022 and 2023. Retention is at its lowest second-quarter level since 2022, two years after a peak of 27.0% in 2024.

What the figures cover

The report covers 5.7 million donors, $8.1 billion in gifts and about 17,000 organizations. With its first-quarter report this year, the project made its first major change of method since 2021. Its panel now includes only organizations that recorded transactions in every one of the previous 24 months, uploaded most gifts promptly and raised under $25 million a year, and it is weighted by cause area against 2023 Form 990 filings. The cap leaves out the largest fundraisers.

With year-end appeals approaching, the report's authors advise nonprofits to widen donor acquisition and to plan the second gift as soon as a first one arrives. They also suggest telling smaller donors about the new federal deduction for people who take the standard deduction, worth up to $1,000 of cash gifts, or $2,000 for married couples filing jointly, from 2026, as our explainer sets out. The project's third-quarter report is due on December 16, 2026.