Giving Up 6.6 Percent, Donors Down 1.6 Percent: What the Q2 2026 Fundraising Effectiveness Project Data Means for Grant Seekers

Only about one in nine first-time donors from 2025 had given again by mid-2026. That figure, 11.3 percent, is the most striking number in the Fundraising Effectiveness Project's Q2 2026 report, released October 29. Total dollars are growing and the giving base is shrinking, and the two trends are moving faster in opposite directions than they were three months ago.

The headline numbers, measured year-to-date through the second quarter against the same period in 2025:

• Dollars: up an estimated 6.6 percent
• Donors: down 1.6 percent
• Donor retention: 26.4 percent, down 0.4 percentage points
• Concentration: Major and Supersize donors gave 76.4 percent of all dollars while making up 2.9 percent of donors

"The continuing decline in the number of donors indicates that nonprofits are increasingly reliant on larger donors," said Woodrow Rosenbaum, chief data officer at GivingTuesday, which runs FEP with the AFP Foundation for Philanthropy.

For organizations that rely on grants, this report says as much about competition for institutional money as it does about individual giving.

The Gap Is Getting Wider

The Q2 numbers matter most when set against Q1. The Q1 2026 report, published in August, showed dollars up 4.3 percent, barely ahead of inflation, and donor counts down 0.8 percent. Three months later, year-to-date dollar growth has accelerated to 6.6 percent and donor losses have doubled to 1.6 percent.

That is the sector's long-running "fewer donors, more dollars" pattern, now happening faster. The lifecycle detail shows where the pressure is:

• Micro donors ($1–$100) are 51.6 percent of all donors. They were the only segment to shrink in both donor count (down 4.2 percent) and dollars (down 4.4 percent).
• New Retained donors, first-time givers who come back the following year, fell 9.5 percent, the steepest drop of any lifecycle stage.
• Repeat Retained donors grew 3.1 percent.
• Donors giving 3–6 gifts grew 3.2 percent. Donors with seven or more gifts were retained at 90 percent, against 14.4 percent for one-time givers.
• Major donors posted the strongest giving gain of any segment.

In short, loyal donors are becoming more valuable while new donors are slipping away. Acquisition, the base of every individual-giving program, is failing at the first renewal.

Frequency Predicts Who Stays

The frequency data may be the most useful part of the report. One-gift and two-gift donors declined. Donors with three to six gifts grew. Donors with seven or more gifts, mostly monthly sustainers, came back at 90 percent, more than six times the rate of one-time givers.

There's a catch. Dollars from the most frequent donors grew only 2.5 percent, the smallest gain of any frequency segment. Sustainers are loyal, but their gifts are small and fixed, and they don't grow on their own unless someone asks for an upgrade. A recurring program protects the base. It does not, by itself, make up for revenue lost when acquisition fails.

For grant writers, the 90 percent figure is evidence. If you're asking a funder to underwrite a monthly-giving launch, or describing why your sustainer program makes your revenue predictable, FEP's own numbers support the claim.

Don't Compare 26.4 Percent to Older Retention Figures

One caveat before anyone puts the retention figure in a board deck. FEP made its first major methodology update in five years starting with the Q1 2026 report. It changed how the panel of reporting organizations is built, how late-arriving gifts are counted, and how organizations are weighted by size and focus, and it added breakdowns by organization size. Q2 is only the second release under the new method, and FEP has posted a methodology explainer.

The practical rule: compare Q2 2026 to Q1 2026, and treat comparisons to the low-40s retention rates in older FEP reports as unreliable. The direction of the trend is clear. Its exact size relative to a decade ago is not.

Tim Sarrantonio, FEP's chair, put the limit plainly: "FEP works like a ledger, and a good one." It shows what happened, not why a particular donor stopped giving.

Why Grant Seekers Should Care

Individual giving remains the largest source of U.S. charitable revenue, and the FEP data shows it becoming more concentrated. Three effects reach grant-dependent organizations.

Foundation applications will get more competitive. When a broad donor base stops renewing, development directors turn to sources with larger and more predictable gifts: foundations, corporate giving programs, and government. That shift comes on top of federal instability. A Nonprofit Quarterly mid-year survey found that one in three nonprofits had at least one government funding disruption in 2026, whether a loss, a freeze or a payment interruption. Foundations have absorbed much of that pressure already, and their application queues reflect it. Expect lower acceptance rates on open calls in 2027, especially for general operating support.

Funders will look harder at revenue concentration. Program officers routinely ask how a grantee will sustain work after the grant ends. An organization that gets three-quarters of its individual dollars from a few major donors carries the same concentration risk that funders discount when the dependency is a single government contract. Proposals should show the mix: number of donors by tier, retention by tier, and the share of revenue from the top ten sources. If your retention is above the FEP benchmark, say so. Most applicants won't, and it signals operational strength.

Matching and challenge grants are harder to meet. Many foundation awards, capital campaigns and local-news challenges like Press Forward's matching program require recipients to raise new money from individuals. If first-year donors renew at 11.3 percent, a match built on acquisition is a weak plan. Before accepting a 1:1 or 3:1 match, model it against your own repeat-donor base, not against the response to your last appeal.

Turning the Data into a Stronger 2027 Proposal Calendar

The report points to a few specific moves for organizations planning next year's grant pipeline.

1. Pull your own FEP-style numbers before year-end. Most donor databases among FEP's data providers, including Bloomerang, DonorPerfect, Neon One and Bonterra, can report retention, new-donor retention and segment counts. Run them for 2025 and 2026 year-to-date. Funders increasingly ask for these figures, and having them ready makes sustainability sections concrete.
2. Write grants that fund retention infrastructure. Capacity-building funders will pay for donor-stewardship staff, CRM migration and data cleanup. The 9.5 percent drop in New Retained donors is a strong problem statement. A second-gift program that lifts first-year retention even a few points has measurable revenue value.
3. Use the major-donor trend. Because Major donors grew fastest, an organization with a few committed major donors can ask them to underwrite a match for a foundation grant. That turns a concentration risk into leverage for an institutional proposal.
4. Time foundation asks around year-end giving. Q4 brings both Giving Tuesday, December 1 this year, and the busiest stretch of individual gifts. Organizations that close strong December numbers can include them in Q1 2027 proposals as current proof of community support.

The donor base is shrinking while the money concentrates at the top. That makes every institutional proposal more important, and when the calendar fills up, Granted can help you draft the sustainability narrative and data-rich budget justification that 2027 funders will expect.