# Recurring Giving Benchmarks: Is Your Monthly Program Actually Healthy?

A monthly program can grow its revenue while quietly losing sustainers. Three health metrics tell you which is happening.

## Key takeaways
- A monthly program can look fine on total revenue while its sustainer count shrinks. Total dollars lag the churn by months.
- Recurring giving made up 27% of all online revenue in 2025, 22% at the smallest organizations and 37% at the largest (M+R Benchmarks).
- Three numbers show real health: recurring share of revenue, the retention advantage of monthly donors, and monthly attrition.
- A typical one-time online donor was worth $183 across 2025 (M+R Benchmarks), so a $20 sustainer overtakes them in about ten months. A sustainer's value comes from how long they stay, not the size of one gift.
- Failed-card losses are recovered by your payment processor's card updater and dunning, not by an analytics tool. The analytics job is to make the loss visible.

A monthly giving program is healthy when its share of revenue is holding or rising, its sustainers stay far longer than one-time donors, and its attrition is low and mostly visible to you before the money moves. The catch is that a recurring program can look fine on total revenue while quietly losing sustainers, because monthly dollars keep arriving from the donors who remain even as the roster shrinks. Recurring giving accounted for 27% of all online revenue in 2025, according to [M+R Benchmarks](https://mrbenchmarks.com/fundraising/), which makes the health of that program too large to read from a single revenue line.

## Why can a monthly program look healthy when it isn't?

Total recurring revenue is a lagging number. A sustainer who cancels or whose card fails stops giving, but the donors still on the file keep the monthly total close to where it was, so the loss shows up slowly across the following months. By the time the revenue line bends, you have already lost the roster that would have paid it forward.

Gift size makes the lag worse. Because a monthly gift is small next to a one-time gift, the revenue value of any single sustainer is built almost entirely from how many months they keep giving. Lose the donor and you lose every future month at once, but the ledger only records it one missing gift at a time.

**12%** — growth in monthly-giving revenue in 2025, against 17% for one-time giving in a year of emergency response ([M+R Benchmarks 2026 (2025 data)](https://mrbenchmarks.com/fundraising/))

Monthly revenue grew 12% in 2025, and one-time revenue grew 17% in a year of emergency giving, the first M+R Benchmarks edition in which one-time outgrew monthly. Monthly growth is real, and it is exactly what masks attrition: a program can add enough new sustainers to grow the total while losing existing ones faster than it should. Counts, not dollars, tell you whether that is happening.

## What share of revenue should recurring giving be?

There is no single correct share, and it scales with size. Across the M+R panel, monthly giving was 27% of online revenue in 2025, 22% at organizations raising under $1 million online and 37% at those raising over $10 million. The larger the program, the more of the budget rides on sustainers staying.

**27%** — of all online revenue came from monthly giving in 2025; 22% at the smallest organizations and 37% at the largest ([M+R Benchmarks 2026 (2025 data)](https://mrbenchmarks.com/fundraising/))

Read your own recurring share against itself over time first, and against the sector benchmark second. A share well under organizations your size while your one-time revenue is flat is a sign the program is under-built. A high share is not automatically safe either, since a large recurring base with rising attrition is a bigger exposure than a small one.

Recurring giving benchmarks (M+R Benchmarks 2026, 2025 data)

| Metric | Benchmark |
| --- | --- |
| Monthly giving as a share of online revenue | 27% |
| Monthly-giving revenue growth, year over year | +12% |
| One-time revenue growth, year over year | +17% |
| Sustainers still active after seven months | 81% |
| Sustainers still active after twelve months | 71% |
| Sustainers still active after two years | A little more than half |
| First-time one-time donors who give again | 24% |
| Online donor retention overall | 48% |

## How do you measure recurring program health?

Three metrics separate a healthy monthly program from one that only looks healthy: the share of revenue it produces, the retention advantage its donors hold over one-time givers, and its attrition rate. The first tells you how much the program matters, the second tells you why it is worth protecting, and the third tells you whether it is leaking.

### 1. Recurring share of revenue

Divide recurring revenue by total revenue for the same period, then multiply by 100. Track it quarterly. A share that drifts down while your total revenue holds is the earliest sign that acquisition is filling a bucket that is draining underneath.

### 2. The retention advantage

**$183** — annual revenue from a typical one-time online donor in 2025, so a $20 sustainer overtakes them in about ten months ([M+R Benchmarks 2026 (2025 data)](https://mrbenchmarks.com/fundraising/))

A typical one-time online donor gave 1.3 times for $183 across 2025, per M+R Benchmarks, so a $20 sustainer only overtakes a one-time donor after about ten months and keeps compounding after that. That is the whole economic case for a monthly program, and it only holds if sustainers actually stay. The sector curve says most do: 81% of sustainers are still active after seven months, 71% after a full year, and a little more than half after two years. Measure how long yours stay, not just how many you signed up. For how retention differs by donor type, see our [donor retention benchmarks](https://donorinsights.com/articles/donor-retention-benchmarks) guide.

### 3. Monthly attrition

Attrition is the share of active sustainers who stop giving over a period. Count the sustainers active at the start of the year, count how many are still active at the end, and the gap divided by the starting count is your annual attrition. Split it into voluntary cancellations and involuntary drop-offs (a card that expired or failed), because the two have completely different fixes.

## A worked example

Say a fictional organization, Rivermark Relief, raised $600,000 online last year, of which $180,000 came from monthly gifts. Its recurring share of revenue is 180,000 ÷ 600,000 × 100 = 30%. It began the year with 1,000 active sustainers and ended with 820 still giving, so it lost 180, an 18% annual attrition rate. The numbers below are illustrative.

Worked example: Rivermark Relief recurring health (hypothetical)

| Input | Value |
| --- | --- |
| Monthly (recurring) revenue | $180,000 |
| Total online revenue | $600,000 |
| Recurring share of revenue | 30% |
| Active sustainers, start of year | 1,000 |
| Still active, end of year | 820 |
| Annual sustainer attrition | 18% |

The 30% share sits a little above the sector's 27%, which reads as healthy on its own. The 18% attrition is the number to watch: with monthly revenue still growing, that loss is invisible on the revenue line and only shows up when you count the roster. This is why a program can post a good revenue year and a bad retention year at the same time.

> Increasing customer retention rates by 5% increases profits by 25% to 95%. — Harvard Business Review, citing Bain & Company (a for-profit finding, applied to recurring giving by analogy)

Donors are not customers and the parallel is imperfect, but the direction holds for a monthly program more than anywhere else on the file, because a retained sustainer is a stream of future gifts rather than one. A few points off your attrition rate are worth far more than the same points on a one-time appeal.

## What causes sustainers to quietly lapse?

Two things, and they are not the same problem. Voluntary attrition is a donor deciding to cancel, usually because the relationship went quiet. Involuntary attrition is a card that expired, was reissued, or failed a charge, and the donor never chose to leave at all. Involuntary loss is often the larger of the two and the easier to recover, because nothing about the donor's intent changed.

**48%** — one-year online retention overall in 2025, against 24% for first-time donors ([M+R Benchmarks 2026 (2025 data)](https://mrbenchmarks.com/fundraising/))

> **Failed cards are a processor fix, not an analytics fix**
>
> Recovering a lapsed card is the job of your payment processor's account updater and dunning, the automatic retries and reminder emails that run when a charge fails. An analytics platform does not process payments or send those emails. What it can do is make the size and trend of involuntary attrition visible, so you know how much revenue the processor's recovery is worth and whether it is working.

That split is where analytics earns its place. Reading your recurring program the way a fund reads a portfolio means watching the retention and survival of sustainers over time, separating voluntary from involuntary loss, and seeing which cohorts fade. Donor Insights rebuilds those curves from your own giving records so the attrition is visible while you can still act on it. The [methodology](https://donorinsights.com/methodology) behind those curves, and the [platform](https://donorinsights.com/platform) that surfaces them, both start from your file, not a shared benchmark database.

## How do you keep a monthly program healthy?

Protect the sustainers you already have before you spend on new ones, and watch the counts, not just the total. Three moves do most of the work:

- Track attrition monthly, split into voluntary and involuntary. A rise in involuntary loss points to card-recovery settings with your processor. A rise in voluntary loss points to a quiet donor relationship.
- Measure sustainer tenure, not just sign-ups. A program that adds 200 sustainers and loses 250 is shrinking even as acquisition looks busy.
- Reactivate the recoverable ones deliberately. Segment your [lapsed sustainers](https://donorinsights.com/articles/lapsed-donor-reactivation) by why and when they dropped before you decide who to contact, in your own CRM and email tool.

## FAQ

**What is a good recurring share of revenue?**

There is no single correct figure, and it scales with size. Monthly giving was 27% of all online revenue in 2025 across the M+R panel, 22% at the smallest organizations and 37% at the largest. Compare your own share against itself over time first, then against organizations your size.

**How do you calculate monthly donor attrition?**

Count the sustainers active at the start of a period and how many are still active at the end. Divide the number lost by the starting count, then multiply by 100. Split the result into voluntary cancellations and involuntary failed-card drop-offs, because they have different fixes.

**Why is my recurring revenue growing while I lose sustainers?**

Total recurring revenue lags the roster. Dollars keep arriving from the donors who remain, and new sign-ups can outpace the total even as existing sustainers leave faster than they should. Only counting the roster over time reveals it.

**Can analytics recover a failed monthly card?**

No. Recovering a failed or expired card is handled by your payment processor's account updater and dunning retries. An analytics platform surfaces how large involuntary attrition is and whether recovery is working, but it does not process payments or send those emails.

**How much is a monthly donor worth compared to a one-time donor?**

A typical one-time online donor gave 1.3 times for $183 across 2025 (M+R Benchmarks), so a sustainer's value comes from how many months they stay rather than the size of one gift. A $20 sustainer overtakes that one-time donor after about ten months and compounds from there.

## Sources
- [M+R Benchmarks 2026 (2025 data), Fundraising: monthly share, growth, sustainer retention curve, one-time donor value, online retention](https://mrbenchmarks.com/fundraising/)
- [Harvard Business Review, The Value of Keeping the Right Customers (Bain & Company)](https://hbr.org/2014/10/the-value-of-keeping-the-right-customers)

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Source: DonorInsights.com — https://donorinsights.com/articles/recurring-giving-benchmarks