What is a suggested donation amount?

It is a gift amount an organization shows donors as a reference, such as a preselected button on a giving page or a line in a letter asking a donor to consider a specific gift. Donors adjust from it, so it shapes both whether they give and how much.

Does a higher suggested donation raise more money?

Not reliably. In a 2025 online study, a high suggestion raised the average gift among students who gave but lowered the share who gave at all. In a University of Chicago alumni field experiment, only the lowest suggestion (half the prior gift) raised revenue significantly compared with no suggestion.

What suggested amount should I use for GivingTuesday?

If the goal is new donors, favor participation with a modest suggestion near your typical first gift, then measure how many of those givers make a second gift. Only 25.84% of first-time donors made a second gift in Virtuous's 2026 benchmark report, which does not say over what period, so every added giver is a chance to raise that number.

What should I suggest to a donor who has given before?

Test their own last gift against a lower amount. In the field experiment, 93% of alumni who gave chose their prior amount when it was the suggested option, against 54% when nothing was suggested, but that suggestion did not raise revenue. Only suggesting half the prior gift raised revenue significantly compared with no suggestion.

How is this different from gift array anchoring?

Anchoring research is about where the suggestion pulls the size of a gift. This guide adds the other side of the choice: a higher suggestion can lower the number of people who give, so the right amount depends on whether the page's goal is more givers or larger gifts.

Donor economics

Suggested Donation Amounts: More Givers or Bigger Gifts?

Research from 2025 and a university field experiment show a suggested amount trades the number of givers against the size of each gift. Here is how to choose.

By Donor Insights · Published November 3, 2026 · Updated September 25, 2026 · 8 min read

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Key takeaways

In Hagit Sabato's 2025 PLOS One study of 376 students deciding how much of a possible prize to donate, among those shown a donation figure, a high amount (70 shekels) cut the share willing to give from about four in five to about three in five, compared with a low one (20 shekels), while the average gift among those who gave, across all conditions, was 54.41 shekels under the high number against 41.73 under the low one.
In a University of Chicago alumni mail experiment published in 2016 (Goswami and Urminsky, Journal of Marketing Research, 2014 campaign data, directional), making half the donor's prior gift the suggested option raised the response rate to 1.62%, against 0.67% with no suggestion, and raised revenue per person mailed from $1.89 to $2.62.
A suggested amount is a choice between more givers and larger gifts, so it should follow the page's goal, and the only field evidence, from a renewal mailing, favored the lower suggestion on revenue as well as on the number of givers.
The number of givers matters because each one is a chance at a second gift: only 25.84% of first-time donors made a second gift in Virtuous's 2026 benchmark report, which covers 771 mid-sized and large nonprofits and does not state the window in which the second gift was counted.
For renewals, suggesting the donor's own last gift made 93% of those who gave choose it (against 54% with no suggestion), but it did not raise revenue above no suggestion. In the same renewal mailing, only suggesting half the prior gift did.

A suggested donation amount decides two things at once: how many people give, and how much each of them gives. A high suggestion tends to raise the second and lower the first. In a 2025 study in PLOS One, Hagit Sabato showed 248 of 376 university students a donation figure of either 70 or 20 shekels from a possible 100-shekel prize, framed as what most students in the study had given or as what was recommended, while the other 128 saw the same numbers as a fact about pens. Under the high suggestion, about three in five chose to donate anything. Under the low one, about four in five did. Among the students who did give, the high suggestion produced larger gifts. So the right suggested amount depends on which of the two numbers your page is trying to move.

What does a suggested donation amount change about who gives?

A suggested amount works as an anchor: a number the donor sees first and then adjusts from when choosing a gift. Our guide to ask amount anchoring covers how that pull sets the size of a gift. What it does not cover is the cost on the other side, which is that some people who see a high number decide not to give at all. Economists call the choice of whether to give the extensive margin, and the choice of how much to give the intensive margin. A suggested amount moves both, in opposite directions.

Sabato's Study 1 measured both margins directly. The 376 students were told that if they won a 100-shekel raffle prize (about $33 by the paper's conversion), they could donate part of it to a charity serving ill and disabled people, and the money was paid out. Each student saw either a high number (70) or a low number (20), framed as what most students in the study had donated, as a recommended donation, or, for a control group, as a number of pens. With the high number, 62.1% and 56.1% of students in the injunctive and descriptive framings chose to donate. With the low number, 81.8% and 82.8% did. In the control condition, where the number was about pens rather than donations, 75% donated under both numbers, which rules out a simple effect of seeing a bigger number. Among those who gave, averaged across all conditions, the average gift was 54.41 shekels under the high number against 41.73 under the low one. The paper states the trade-off plainly: a high anchor produced less willingness to donate, but larger donations among those who chose to give.

81.8% vs 62.1%

of students willing to donate when told it was recommended to donate about 20 shekels versus about 70 shekels, in the recommended-amount arm of a 2025 online experiment with 376 students — Sabato, PLOS One (2025), Study 1, Table 2

Two limits apply. The participants were undergraduates deciding over a prize they had not yet won, and the study ran online, so the effect sizes will not transfer one for one to a donor on your giving page. The study also does not say which setting raised more money in total, and the averages it reports cannot be multiplied together to find out. For that, a field test with real donors is needed.

Does the trade-off hold with real donors?

The clearest field evidence comes from Indranil Goswami and Oleg Urminsky's paper in the Journal of Marketing Research (2016), which combined eight studies covering 11,508 participants. In its field experiment, the University of Chicago Booth School of Business mailed pledge cards to 7,844 alumni who had given before but had not yet given that year. Each card listed three amounts: half the alum's prior gift, the prior gift, and twice the prior gift. The researchers randomly marked one of the three as "suggested", or marked none. The authors named the two effects they found: a "lower-bar" effect, in which a low suggestion raises the share who give, and a "scale-back" effect, in which a low suggestion lowers the average gift.

Results of the University of Chicago alumni mail experiment, by suggested amount (Goswami and Urminsky, 2016, Table 2, 2014 campaign, 76 donations in total)
Suggested option	Alumni mailed	Response rate	Average gift	Revenue per person mailed
None (control)	3,584	0.67%	$283	$1.89
Half the prior gift	1,478	1.62%	$162	$2.62
The prior gift	1,441	0.97%	$181	$1.76
Twice the prior gift	1,341	1.04%	$204	$2.13

The low suggestion more than doubled the response rate relative to no suggestion, from 0.67% to 1.62%, while the average gift fell from $283 to $162. Because the gain in givers outweighed the drop in gift size, revenue per person mailed rose from $1.89 to $2.62, and the authors report that only the low suggestion raised revenue significantly compared with the control. The high suggestion did not cause a backlash that lowered revenue, but it did not raise revenue significantly either. The same paper warns that the two effects can cancel each other out, leaving no net change in revenue.

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Why does the number of givers matter more than one campaign's revenue?

A campaign's revenue is only the first year of what a new donor is worth, because a donor who gives once may give again. Two recent data sets show gifts growing faster than the number of people giving them. On GivingTuesday 2025, U.S. donations rose 13% to $4.0 billion, while the number of people who made a financial gift rose 3% to 19.1 million, according to GivingTuesday's 2025 results. In the Virtuous 2026 benchmark report, which covers 771 mid-sized and large U.S. nonprofits, the median gift rose about 20%, while only 25.84% of first-time donors made a second gift (the release does not state over what period). When gifts are growing and the donor count is not, a page that trades away givers for a larger average gift is trading away the pool that future second gifts come from.

25.84%

of first-time donors made a second gift, across 771 mid-sized and large U.S. nonprofits in Virtuous's 2026 benchmark report (measurement window not stated) — Virtuous, 2026 Nonprofit Fundraising Benchmark Report

Here is the arithmetic for a fictional organization, Riverbend Literacy Project, mailing 10,000 donors who gave in the past but not yet this year. The figures apply the field experiment's published rates, which came from the same kind of mailing to prior donors. The table is illustrative, not a forecast.

Illustrative: Riverbend Literacy Project (fictional) mails 10,000 lapsed-this-year donors, at the field experiment's rates
Suggested option	Givers	Revenue
None	about 67	about $18,900
Half the prior gift	about 162	about $26,200
Twice the prior gift	about 104	about $21,300

In this example, the low suggestion wins on both counts: it raises about $7,300 more than no suggestion in the mailing itself and brings in about 95 more givers. That result will not hold on every file. The point is to count both outcomes before choosing, because a test judged only on average gift would have picked the control, which had the largest average gift ($283) and the fewest givers.

How should you set a suggested donation amount on each page?

Set the suggested amount by the page's job. A page whose job is to bring in new donors should favor participation. For a page that renews known donors, the only field evidence favored a lower suggestion, so test the donor's last gift against a lower amount. The two configurations below follow that rule. Page mechanics such as form length and mobile layout are covered in our guide to donation page conversion.

Two giving-page configurations, by goal (practitioner guidance drawn from the studies above, not a tested benchmark. The renewal column is untested: the field experiment favored the lower suggestion)
	Acquisition page (new donors)	Renewal page (known donors)
Goal	More givers, including GivingTuesday first-timers	Revenue and a steady or rising gift
Suggested amount	A modest amount near your typical first gift	Test the donor's last gift against half of it
Other options shown	One lower and one or two higher amounts, plus an open field	Half and twice the last gift, plus an open field
What to measure	Share of visitors who give, then second-gift rate	Revenue per donor contacted and gift upgrades

The renewal evidence is mixed. When the suggestion was the donor's own prior gift, 93% of the alumni who gave chose exactly that amount, against 54% who chose it with no suggestion, but only 14 alumni gave in that group and revenue per person mailed ($1.76) was no better than with no suggestion ($1.89). The only suggestion that raised revenue significantly in this renewal mailing was half the prior gift. Test the donor's last gift against a lower suggestion before settling on either.

“[A] high anchor induces a lesser willingness to donate than a low anchor... However, when the analysis is limited to those who chose to donate, social information that cited higher donated amounts increased participants' donations.”

Hagit Sabato, PLOS One (2025)

How do you test a suggested amount on your own file?

The published studies set the direction. Your own donors set the size. A test that fits a small shop has five steps:

1.Pick one page or one mailing with a single goal, and write the goal down before the test starts: more givers or more revenue per contact.
2.Split the audience at random into two groups, one with the lower suggestion and one with the higher.
3.Record three numbers per group: the share who gave, the average gift, and revenue per person contacted, counting people who did not give as zero.
4.Hold the test open long enough to collect a few hundred gifts per group if you can. With the few dozen gifts the field experiment had, differences are easy to over-read.
5.Six to twelve months later, check how many of each group's first-time givers made a second gift, and judge the test on that as well as on the campaign's revenue.

The last step is the one most tests skip, and it is where the choice between more givers and bigger gifts is finally settled. Donor Insights reads your own contacts and gifts, so the second-gift rate for each test group is something you can look up instead of reconstructing from exports. The methodology starts from your own giving records, and the platform keeps each group's giving in view for as long as the relationship lasts.

Frequently asked questions

What is a suggested donation amount?: It is a gift amount an organization shows donors as a reference, such as a preselected button on a giving page or a line in a letter asking a donor to consider a specific gift. Donors adjust from it, so it shapes both whether they give and how much.
Does a higher suggested donation raise more money?: Not reliably. In a 2025 online study, a high suggestion raised the average gift among students who gave but lowered the share who gave at all. In a University of Chicago alumni field experiment, only the lowest suggestion (half the prior gift) raised revenue significantly compared with no suggestion.
What suggested amount should I use for GivingTuesday?: If the goal is new donors, favor participation with a modest suggestion near your typical first gift, then measure how many of those givers make a second gift. Only 25.84% of first-time donors made a second gift in Virtuous's 2026 benchmark report, which does not say over what period, so every added giver is a chance to raise that number.
What should I suggest to a donor who has given before?: Test their own last gift against a lower amount. In the field experiment, 93% of alumni who gave chose their prior amount when it was the suggested option, against 54% when nothing was suggested, but that suggestion did not raise revenue. Only suggesting half the prior gift raised revenue significantly compared with no suggestion.
How is this different from gift array anchoring?: Anchoring research is about where the suggestion pulls the size of a gift. This guide adds the other side of the choice: a higher suggestion can lower the number of people who give, so the right amount depends on whether the page's goal is more givers or larger gifts.

Sources

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