For decades, fundraisers could count on one truth: December delivers.
Nearly 40% of giving often happened in the final weeks of the year. But if your December totals have felt smaller than they used to, you’re not imagining things.
Year-end giving has been down in three of the last five years.
As Nathan Hill—VP of Training at Avid—shared in our recent webinar Prepping for Year-End Fundraising:
“If you raised a million dollars during year-end in 2019, by the end of 2024 you’d actually need to raise 26% more just to have the same impact. Flat isn’t good enough anymore.”
So where does that leave fundraisers preparing for the most important season of the year? The answer: nonprofits are still winning—just in different ways than before.
Flat is the New Down: What Avid Data Really Tells Us About Year-End
Looking at five years of Avid benchmark data, one thing is clear: year-end giving behavior is changing.
2020 was down, 2021 bounced back, 2022 and 2024 slipped again.
On the surface, that may look like noise, but in real terms, it’s a slow slide backward.
Here’s why: when inflation rises faster than revenue, even a “flat” year means you’ve lost ground. If your results aren’t climbing, your impact is shrinking.
And yet, some nonprofits are still finding growth. What sets them apart? They’re not counting on one big “December moment” anymore. Instead, they’re building momentum throughout the year—staying in front of donors across channels, long before the end-of-year rush.
As Alyssa Boger—EVP of Client Experience at Allegiance Group + Pursuant—put it during the same webinar:
“Donors are consolidating their giving. They’re choosing fewer organizations, but they’re giving more deeply to the ones that stay connected with them.”
The lesson is simple but powerful: donors are still generous, but you have to earn your spot as their trusted choice for giving.
Where Donors Still Say Yes—And What Nonprofits Can Do About It
Year-end giving may be under pressure, but that doesn’t mean hope is lost.
In fact, there are bright spots in the data and they point toward practical strategies nonprofits can lean into this season.
1. Online Giving Is Still Growing
While our data shows offline channels like direct mail are softening, online giving continues to climb year over year. That doesn’t mean mail has no value—it means donor behavior is shifting.
Many supporters still open a letter, but when it’s time to give, they head to your website or phone instead of mailing back a check.
💡Treat mail and digital as partners, not competitors. Digital channels make your direct mail better. Direct mail makes digital channels better. Measure your results holistically to see how your direct mail strategy influences other giving channels.
2. Giving Tuesday Remains a Powerhouse
Some fundraisers are skeptical of Giving Tuesday, worried it’s overhyped or cannibalizes December gifts. But the numbers are hard to ignore: acquisition on Giving Tuesday continues to grow every year.
Nathan explained in the webinar that new donor acquisition has trended down overall since 2021—except on Giving Tuesday, where it keeps rising.
💡Lean into Giving Tuesday as both an acquisition and reactivation moment. Use matching challenges or multi-channel storytelling to capture attention, and then have a plan to quickly follow up so first-time givers become repeat donors before the year ends.
3. Omni-Channel Donors Are More Valuable
Donors don’t live in one channel anymore.
They might receive a mail piece, see an ad on Facebook, and open an email, but only give through one of those touchpoints. Without proper tracking, it’s easy to think one channel “failed” when in reality it was the spark that led to the gift.
For example, Avid matchback analysis has shown that donors who receive mail often choose to give online instead. If you only look at the mail response rate, it looks like the channel underperformed. But when you connect the dots across channels, you see mail actually boosted online giving.
💡Don’t silo your channels. The nonprofits seeing growth are the ones creating connected donor journeys across mail, email, ads, SMS, and web.
The Bigger Truth
Nonprofits can still win at year-end, but the path forward isn’t about doing more in December but about building systems that connect all your channels and data, so you can see what’s really driving gifts and invest in what works.
If you want a more detailed plan for how to build that kind of connected strategy, explore Avid’s AI-Powered Year-End Fundraising Playbook.
It breaks down proven campaigns, timing models, and donor-journey frameworks built from thousands of real nonprofit experiments so your next season of giving starts ahead, not behind.
The End-of-Year Deadline Isn’t Enough—Here’s How Smart Nonprofits Build Momentum
For years, the year-end playbook was simple: send some cultivation around Thanksgiving, drop your year-end mail appeal in December, launch a flurry of emails during the last week of the year, and trust that December 31 would deliver.
This strategy will still raise significant funds. But the data tells us there is a better way.
Avid’s live benchmarks back this up. Today’s winning organizations aren’t betting everything on one big moment. Instead, the organizations seeing growth are the ones building momentum across the entire fall:
- Acquisition happens earlier. More nonprofits are frontloading acquisition in September–November, so new donors are in the door and primed to give again during December.
- Giving Tuesday is a springboard. It’s no longer just a one-day spike, but the kickoff to a season of deepening engagement. Smart fundraisers immediately re-solicit those new donors while the excitement is fresh.
- Engagement is omni-channel. Donors might see a mail piece, scroll past a Facebook ad, and finally give through email. The nonprofits building connected journeys across channels are the ones seeing higher upgrades and stronger retention.
- Budgets are shifting with attention. Instead of spending more, nonprofits are reallocating—for example, sending a lower-cost postcard to digital-first donors and investing the savings in paid social or programmatic ads where attention is rising.
Revenue stability doesn’t come from a single deadline anymore, it comes from sustained momentum.
And the best part is that sustaining momentum doesn’t have to mean piling more on your team’s plate. With the right systems, you can automate touchpoints, connect data across channels, and make every campaign work harder without burning out your staff.
How Avid Helps You Win at Year-End
We’ve seen the challenges: flat results that are really losses, late-December acquisition that’s slowing, channels that look like they’re underperforming when they’re actually driving gifts elsewhere. Knowing this is one thing. Acting on it is another.
That’s why we built Avid as the fundraising operating system—to give you clarity and control in the very moments that feel most uncertain.
With Avid, you can:
- Track performance in real time. Instead of waiting for reports weeks later, Avid’s live benchmarks show you exactly how your year-end results stack up each day across your sector and peer organizations.
- See the full impact of every channel. Avid’s matchback analysis connects the dots across channels, so you can see when a donor who received a mail piece actually gave online or at an event. Without this visibility, it looks like mail underperformed, but in reality, it sparked the gift. Avid helps you measure the full influence of every channel.
- Automate stewardship at scale. Donors are consolidating their giving, which means staying top of mind is critical. Avid helps you personalize follow-ups and thank-yous automatically, so no donor feels overlooked, even when your team is stretched thin.
- Surface your top priorities daily. AI-powered donor intelligence pinpoints which lapsed donors to re-engage, which mid-level givers are ready to upgrade, and which new donors need a second gift ask before the window closes.
The difference is simple: Avid turns data into action. Instead of hoping December delivers, you’ll know exactly where to focus and how to build momentum that carries into the new year.
Take a quick tour of Avid to see how it can help your team turn year-end challenges into year-round wins.
What This Means for You
Year-end isn’t dead. It’s evolving.
The nonprofits that win in this environment are the ones who:
- Recognize that “flat” results are actually losses.
- Understand that donors are consolidating their giving, not abandoning it.
- Lean into omni-channel engagement and personalized stewardship to stand out.
If you want to see how your year-end performance stacks up in real time, explore Avid’s free, live fundraising benchmarks.
And if you want the full conversation that inspired this post, don’t miss our webinar replay:
Watch Prepping for Year-End Fundraising here.
Because year-end giving may be down, but your results don’t have to be.
