Donor retention
How to Calculate Donor Retention Rate (Formula, Example, Benchmarks)
The formula takes two minutes. Reading it well is where the money is.
By Donor Insights · Published August 8, 2026 · Updated August 27, 2026 · 8 min read
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Key takeaways
- Donor retention rate = donors who gave in both years ÷ donors who gave last year, times 100.
- A single blended rate hides the story. First-time donors are retained at 18.9%, while donors with seven or more gifts are retained at 87.4% (Fundraising Effectiveness Project).
- Sector retention was 43.3% in 2025, flat on the topline (up 0.2 points), while the donor base shrank 3.6%, its fifth straight year.
- Repeat, retained donors contribute roughly 60% of total funding, so small retention gains compound.
- Calculate retention by donor type, not one average, to see where you are actually losing people.
Your donor retention rate is the share of last year's donors who gave again this year. To calculate it, divide the number of donors who gave in both years by the number who gave last year, then multiply by 100. Across the sector the number has stalled in the low 40s: overall retention was 43.3% in 2025, up 0.2 points on the topline while retention fell inside every donor-size segment except donors giving $50,000 or more, and the donor base shrank 3.6% for a fifth straight year, according to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project.
What is a donor retention rate?
A donor retention rate measures how many donors you keep from one period to the next. A retained donor is anyone who gave in the prior year and gave again in the current year. Everyone who gave last year but not this year has lapsed. The rate is one of the few fundraising numbers that describes the health of your whole file rather than a single campaign.
That spread is the whole point. According to M+R Benchmarks, a donor who has given before is retained at nearly triple the rate of a first-time donor. Retention is not one number about your file. It is a different number for every kind of donor in it.
What is the donor retention rate formula?
The formula is a ratio of two donor counts, not dollar amounts:
You can run it from two exports of your CRM, one per fiscal year, in a spreadsheet:
- 1.Export every donor who gave in the prior year, and every donor who gave in the current year.
- 2.De-duplicate each list to one row per donor, so a donor who gave five times counts once.
- 3.Count the donors who appear in both lists. That overlap is your retained donors.
- 4.Divide retained donors by the prior-year donor count, then multiply by 100.
Count donors, not gifts. A donor who gave three times last year and once this year is one retained donor, not four. Matching on a stable donor ID rather than on name avoids double-counting the same person under two spellings.
A worked example
Say a fictional organization, Rivermark Relief, had 5,000 donors last year. This year 2,100 of those same donors gave again. Its donor retention rate is 2,100 ÷ 5,000 × 100 = 42%. The numbers below are illustrative.
| Input | Value |
|---|---|
| Donors last year | 5,000 |
| Of those, gave again this year | 2,100 |
| Retention rate | 42% |
| Lapsed donors | 2,900 |
The same method gives you a new-donor retention rate (limit the prior-year list to first-time donors) and a repeat-donor retention rate (limit it to donors with prior history). Those two almost always matter more than the blended figure.
What is a good donor retention rate?
The honest answer is that "good" depends on which donors you mean. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project, which aggregates data from more than 15,000 organizations and 7.8 million donors, shows retention climbing steeply with how many times a donor has given:
| Gifts in the prior year | Retained to the next year |
|---|---|
| One | 31.9% |
| Two | 51.9% |
| Three to six | 70.0% |
| Seven or more | 87.4% |
| Donor type | Retained to the next year |
|---|---|
| First-time donors | 18.9% |
| Repeat donors | 59.3% |
So a 42% blended rate can be healthy or alarming depending on its mix. For how these benchmarks break down by donor type, and where your own file likely sits, see our guide to donor retention benchmarks by donor type.
Why one retention number hides the story
A blended rate averages your most loyal donors together with your most fragile ones, so it moves slowly and tells you little about what to do. Reading retention the way a fund reads a portfolio means looking at each cohort and segment on its own. Donor Insights rebuilds retention and survival curves across your whole file so the fragile segments are visible, not buried in an average. The methodology behind those curves, and the platform that shows them, both start from your own giving records.
“Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%.”
The parallel is imperfect, since donors are not customers, but the direction holds: retained, repeat donors already contribute roughly 60% of total funding, so a few points of retention are worth more than they look.
How do you improve donor retention?
Improvement starts where the losses concentrate, and for almost every file that is the first-time donor. Three moves do most of the work:
- Win the second gift. A first-time donor is retained at 18.9% and a repeat donor at 59.3%, so a measured second-gift push pays back quickly.
- Recover the ones worth recovering. Segment your lapsed donors by who they were before you contact them, rather than reaching the whole list at once.
- Watch the segments, not the average. Put retention by donor type on your fundraising dashboard so a slide in one group is visible while you can still act on it.
Frequently asked questions
- What counts as a retained donor?
- A donor who gave in the prior period and gave again in the current period. If they gave last year but not this year, they have lapsed rather than been retained.
- What is the difference between donor retention and donor retention rate?
- Donor retention is the outcome of keeping donors. The donor retention rate expresses it as a percentage: retained donors divided by the prior-year donor count, times 100.
- Is a 45% donor retention rate good?
- It depends on the mix. A file heavy with first-time donors will run lower, since first-time donors are retained at about 18.9%, while a file of long-time donors will run much higher. Compare each donor type against itself over time rather than to a single benchmark.
- How often should we calculate donor retention?
- Most organizations calculate it annually against the fiscal year, and review it by donor type each quarter so a decline in one segment surfaces early.
Sources
Related articles
Donor Retention Benchmarks by Donor Type (First-Time, Repeat, Recurring, Major)
One blended average is close to useless. Benchmark each donor type on its own.
Lapsed Donor Reactivation: A Data-Driven Win-Back Playbook
The whole lapsed list is not one audience. Win back the donors most likely to come back, first.
The 12 Fundraising KPIs Worth Putting on One Dashboard
Stop tracking forty metrics. These twelve tell you whether you are growing.
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