May 2022: M+R Benchmark Key Takeaways
Welcome to my favorite month, and shout-out to all my fellow May Babies! I absolutely love spring. Hiking in thick mud. Planting seeds and observing new blooms. May is the perfect month to assess your organization’s 2022 progress thus far, and now you have shiny new benchmarks to use as a guide!
M+R’s 2022 Benchmarks have landed. This mega-report is based on 2021 data from 187 nonprofits ranging in size and cause area. The overall theme this year is a return to normal after 2020, which was a whacky year, to say the least.
M+R’s annual benchmarks are such a gift to the sector. I admire their team immensely for prioritizing this massive project every year. This is the most robust nonprofit benchmarking effort that covers digital marketing and fundraising. If you want to dig into the data yourself...
The Benchmarks are here >
M+R's webinar running through the findings is here >
The accompanying road trip playlist is here >
*The best road trip song of all time is missing from the playlist! Otherwise, it gets two thumbs up from me.
Without further ado, let’s dig into my key takeaways.
While you’re reading this, remember: These findings are based on 2021 data—not 2022! A lot of big shifts are a “return to normal” after 2020.
Monthly giving increased by 24%.
Monthly giving accounted for 22% of all online revenue in 2021, up 24% over 2020! I’m curious to see where this lands in next year’s benchmarks, considering 2020 was such a strange year.
The increase in monthly giving is not evenly distributed. Large NPs are now bringing in a quarter of their online revenue from monthly gifts, while small NPs are at 14%. There is quite a range by cause area, with Cultural organizations at just 3% and Public Media organizations at 45%. Just like for-profit businesses, there are a lot of factors that influence whether your organization is the right fit to prioritize the “subscription model” or “membership model.” That said, the data is telling us that everybody’s doing it. If you don’t have a plan to encourage and retain recurring donors, please apply for this mastermind right now and tell Dana I sent you. This should be a top priority!
Email open rates are officially unreliable.
Here’s why:
“In late 2021, Apple rolled out new privacy protections for people using iOS devices like iPhones. Default settings changed so that email messages automatically downloaded images, including the images used to track opens. For users who downloaded this update, an email would be counted as “opened” whether or not anyone ever looked past the subject line.”
Hence why the open rates in this year’s Benchmarks increased by 26%, while all other email metrics stayed the same or declined. You should not rely on open rates to determine an email’s success anymore. Focus on clicks and conversions!
NOTE: The average response rate for a fundraising email in 2021 was 0.08%. This means “a nonprofit would need to send emails to 1,250 recipients in order to generate one donation.” While we should strive to outperform this sad stat, it’s humbling to remember that this data includes some of the most successful and well-funded nonprofits in the nation; organizations that work with the brightest marketers and fundraisers. So don’t get discouraged if your email list only has 500 people on it and no one donates from your first appeal. Every fundraising campaign needs to include a series of multiple emails!
Nonprofits are investing 19% more in digital ads.
This year’s benchmarks assessed $119 million in digital ad spend and saw a 19% increase in digital ad spend over 2020. Again, 2020 was a weird year and many organizations reduced their marketing budgets to weather the storm. Still, digital ad spending keeps steadily growing year over year!
On average, NPs are now spending 6% of their total online revenue on digital advertising. You can use this benchmark to set your digital ads budget. Small nonprofits are currently spending just 2% of their online revenue on digital ads, while large nonprofits are spending 8%—4x more! Small organizations need to bump up their ad budgets if they want to grow.
Here’s how benchmark participants spread their ad budgets across the donor journey in 2021:
*They spent 28% more on retargeting ads than on prospecting ads
Small organizations are spending too much of their budgets asking for money and not nearly enough on building awareness + building their lists.
NOTE: Reported search advertising excludes the Google Ad Grant. This year’s benchmarks report search ads earning an average Return on Ad Spend (ROAS) of $3.72, which is fantastic compared with the negative ROAS on all other channels. This search advertising data excludes the Google Ad Grant; they’re only including ads on Google and other search engines that are paid for by the organizations, either instead of or in addition to the Grant. So comparing your Google Ad Grant results to these benchmarks is not an to comparison.
Only 4% of Your Facebook fans are seeing each post.
You’ve probably heard that the Facebook algorithm has gotten worse and worse for organic content over the years, in favor of paid. This is still a shocking stat: When you post to your NP’s Facebook Page, only 4% of your fans will see that post. And 30% of the people who will see that post do NOT like/follow your page! So your Facebook content should cater to new people more than existing fans. This is a good rule of thumb for all organic social content: A brand new person should be able to land on any of your posts and understand what you do.
NOTE: While virtually every nonprofit is on Facebook, organizations are focusing more on Instagram—and TikTok! This year’s Benchmarks reported that 23% of NPs have an active presence on TikTok, which is insanely rapid YOY growth.
NOTE: If you’re only going to run one Facebook Fundraiser every year, make it Giving Tuesday. November is by far the most lucrative month to raise $ on Facebook because the platform prioritizes nonprofit content on Giving Tuesday.
Mobile drives more traffic, but desktop drives more money.
54% of nonprofit web traffic in 2021 came from mobile devices, but desktop traffic accounted for 76% of online revenue! The average gift made on desktop was $75, compared with $46 on mobile. Make sure your donor journey is optimized (not just functional), for both device types. I have bailed halfway through countless mobile donation forms because they were so clunky.
NOTE: The average donation page converts at 17%. In the for-profit world, a sales page with a 5% conversation rate is considered super solid, so in that sense, go us! This difference is proof that, although we can and should borrow marketing intel from the for-profit world, sales and fundraising are totally different beasts.
Here's a great homework assignment, if you choose to accept it: Find out what your donation page conversion rate has been since January 1st of this year, then set a goal to increase it by at least 2% by the end of the year. Depending on your setup, this could mean coding custom changes, trying a new out-of-the-box tool like Fundraise Up, or tinkering with your existing platform's settings.
This year’s M+R Benchmarks are an encouraging reminder that nonprofits are getting savvier with digital marketing and fundraising every year, which is wonderful to be a part of.
Thanks a million to the M+R team for delivering this incredible, FREE resource every year. I refer to these benchmarks all year round, year after year, and you should too. You can even benchmark yourself!
Hope it’s helpful,
-Caroline
P.S. You can now experience We Are For Good Pro for 14 days, free! Give it a try >
