Benchmarks 2023

Starters

Welcome

Earlier this year, we published the latest edition of the annual M+R Benchmarks Study. It is a comprehensive look at the metrics underlying nonprofit digital programmes, including fundraising, advocacy, and marketing. From email to social media to digital ads to website traffic, there is a veritable feast of findings, and we encourage you to read the full study for this broad context and some jokes about breakfast cereal.

The analysis in the full M+R Benchmarks study depends on data from 215 participants, 47 of which are based in the UK.

The follow-up analysis contained here explores the similarities and differences between those cohorts to give UK-based charities a clear look at the most relevant data, positioned within that global context.

It’s like this: there is a difference between chips doused in vinegar and fries dipped in ketchup. We should understand, and celebrate, those differences. But we should also never pass up an opportunity to eat deep-fried potatoes, no matter what name they happen to be going by.

The UK-specific data, insights, and trends we explore in this supplement would not be possible without the generosity and diligence of the participants who shared the results of their social media, email, advertising, and website efforts. Special thanks also go to our partners at Rally who recruited participants, answered our questions, and were their kind and lovely selves each step of the way.

The Cooks in the Kitchen

Chef

Role

Favorite breakfast

Jonathan Benton

Data Analysis

Coffee

Theresa Bugeaud

Data Analysis

French Toast Casserole

Hannah Cullen

Data Analysis

Apple with Peanut Butter

Lia Mancuso

Data Analysis

Eggs Benedict

Mugo Muna

Data Analysis

Chocolate Croissant

Sammy Stewart

Data Analysis

Western Omelet

Sarah Vanderbilt

Data Analysis

Biscuit, Egg, Cheese, Pepper Jelly

Will Valverde

Writing

Chilaquiles

Laura Klavon

Design

Salmon Eggs Benedict

Bobby Burch

Web Development

Buttermilk Pancakes

Tom Giordano

Web Development

Biscuits and Gravy

Lucy Midelfort

Participant Management

Almond Croissant

Bobby Goldstein

Project Management

Breakfast Burrito

Anne Paschkopić

QA

Oatmeal

Matt Derby

Executive Sponsor

Bacon, Egg, and Cheese on an Everything Bagel

Paul de Gregorio

UK Partner

Espresso & Cake

Fiona Pattison

UK Project Manager

Eggs Florentine

We are M+R, and we are hungry for change.

We believe that the nonprofits we work for are essential to advancing the cause of justice, alleviating suffering, and solving the greatest challenges we face.

We bring experience, talent, and unshakeable dedication to our clients through fundraising and supporter engagement, movement building and issue advocacy, and message and brand development.

Campaign Strategy
Digital Organizing
Media Relations
Fundraising
Social Media
Digital Advertising

We’re always cooking up new resources, advice, and tools for nonprofits. Visit us at www.mrss.com.

Find out more about working at M+R and join our crew at www.mrss.com/careers.

Rally, founded by Paul de Gregorio in 2018, is a new type of partner for progressive organisations. They’re not a conventional agency — more of a hub or collective. They mobilise public support behind world changing organisations and causes fighting for a fairer, healthier, safer, greener, more equal world. Through collaborations they inspire people to take action. To sign up, turn up, donate, amplify or lead others. And they do most of it, though not all of it, online.

You can find out all about them at www.wearerally.co.uk

Methodology

There’s so much more to a meal than what you see on the plate. The labour of people who grow, harvest, pack, and prepare the food. The interconnected foodways and traditions that create ever-evolving cuisines. The experiences, training, and perspective of the chef.

Benchmarks is no different. We strive to present the most comprehensive, clear, informative collection of data we can — but there’s a lot going on beneath the surface. Here are a few things you should know to help you better understand our findings and put them to use.

Wherever possible, we have broken out the findings by sector. Each of our participants self-identified the appropriate sector (or, in some cases, fell outside of our defined sectors and selected “Other”). If you are not sure which sector represents your peer group, review the full list of participants⁠ to find where you belong.

We also sort our participants by size. For our study, “Small” refers to nonprofits with annual online revenue in 2022 below £500,000; “Medium” is those nonprofits with annual online revenue between £500,000 and £3,000,000; and “Large” covers all those with annual online revenue greater than £3,000,000.

The averages displayed in each chart and discussed throughout Benchmarks represent the median figure for a given metric for all participants who reported data. Not all participants were able to provide data for every metric. If a chart does not include data for a certain sector or size, it’s because we were not able to collect enough results to report a reliable average.

We use median rather than mean to minimize the risk of a single participant with unusual results having an outsize impact on the overall findings. You will also see some charts that include a range showing the 25th percentile to the 75th percentile. Half of all reported values fell within this range, which can be considered “normal” results for participants in our study.

Some of the most useful and interesting data in Benchmarks relies on year-over-year comparisons. Wherever we include this type of finding, we are including long-term data from this year’s participants — an apples-to-apples comparison. We do not compare this year’s findings to what was reported in previous editions of Benchmarks, because the participant pool changes from year to year. That would be more of an apples-to-oranges situation at best. At worst, it would be more like apples-to-pineapples or grapes-to-grapefruits, where a superficial similarity hides a massive underlying difference.

If you have any more questions about how we cooked up Benchmarks this year, please reach out to @mrcampaigns or email benchmarks@mrss.com.

Mains

Fundraising

Quick Bites

  • Online revenue for the average UK nonprofit increased by 5% in 2022, while Non-UK nonprofits reported a 6% decline in revenue.
  • The Disaster/International Aid sector reported the most significant growth, with a 59% increase in revenue likely driven by the humanitarian crisis in Ukraine.
  • Most of the increase in revenue came from regular giving — a 14% increase compared to 1% growth in cash giving.

Each year when we produce our Benchmarks Study, the first question that people ask — the first question we ask ourselves — is what was the change in overall revenue. And it makes sense — fundraising is an important part of most programmes, and revenue enables marketing, advocacy, education, and nonprofits’ core mission. It’s a single data point that can act as a proxy for the overall health of a programme, the receptivity of supporters, and the context in which we are doing our work,

So, the question: in 2022, did revenue go up, or did it go down? The answer: yes. Or more accurately: it depends.

For UK nonprofits, total online revenue increased by an average of 5% from 2021 to 2022. For Non-UK nonprofits, total online revenue declined by 6%.

Both Small (annual online revenue in 2022 below £500,000) and Large (annual online revenue greater than £3,000,000) organisations reported higher revenue, while the average Medium nonprofit (annual online revenue between £500,000 and $£3,000,000) reported 6% less revenue in 2022 than in 2021.

These are median numbers, meaning that half of our participants reported a number below this figure, and half reported a number higher than this figure. The “higher than” includes many of the nonprofits in the Disaster/International Aid sector, where the average year-over-year change was a revenue increase of 59%.

Fundraising for groups in this space tends to be quite sensitive to major events, and the invasion of and ongoing humanitarian crisis in Ukraine dominated headlines and public attention for much of 2022. The extraordinary need there — and in places like Pakistan, which suffered extreme flooding — drove higher giving.

The relatively modest change for most sectors, including a 4% decline in revenue for Health nonprofits, in many cases represents a return to normal following a dramatic spike in giving in 2020 driven primarily by the COVID pandemic.

Most nonprofits should not expect year-over-year growth of 40-80%, but the ability of nonprofits to absorb that level of change and then continue to see even small positive change in the following years speaks to the success of retention efforts. It is not unusual for a nonprofit that receives a sudden influx of emergency donors to experience a drop in giving over the medium term, as newly energised supporters fade away. One of the most effective ways to avoid that rebound effect is to emphasise regular giving, which tends to see much higher retention rates than cash giving.

That is precisely the trajectory we saw in 2022. While revenue from cash giving held nearly flat, with just 1% growth on average, revenue from regular giving grew by 14%.

Regular giving made up 41% of all online giving for UK nonprofits in 2022, up from 37% in the previous year. (And significantly outpacing the 27% of all online revenue for Non-UK nonprofits.) For Wildlife/Animal Welfare nonprofits, regular giving contributed 64% of all revenue.

For both regular and cash giving, average gift size was about twice as high for Non-UK nonprofits as for UK nonprofits. For regular giving, the average gift was £11 in the UK, and £25 outside the UK. Both of these averages were relatively unchanged from the previous year, another reflection of the consistency of regular giving.

For cash giving, average gift size was a bit more volatile, with notable increases from 2021. The average cash gift went up from £56 in 2021 to £64 in 2022. For Non-UK nonprofits, average one-time gift size increased from £111 to £122.

Of course, one of the most important advantages of regular giving compared to cash giving is a higher retention rate — it’s much easier for a donor to passively continue an established monthly donation than to make repeated active decisions to make a new cash gift. In addition to generating more reliable support, regular donors also contribute notably higher annualised revenue than for those who only made cash gifts.

While we don’t have sufficient data to break out these totals specifically for UK nonprofits, for our global data set we found that the average cash-only donor contributed $192 over the course of 2022 (or £159), compared to $287 (or £237) for regular donors.

When a major surge in giving occurs — most often, in response to an emergency — a concerted effort to convert cash donors to monthly giving can help transform a burst of generosity into long-term growth.

While many organisations have long pursued this sort of regular giving recruitment through telephone and other channels, it’s clear that digital channels including email and advertising should be a part of this donor journey. As the increase in regular giving continues to outpace growth in cash giving, nonprofits are building a more reliable, stable base of support in their online programmes.

Email and Mobile Messaging

Quick Bites

  • Average email list size increased by 17% in 2022, building on substantial increases in the previous two years.
  • Overall email message volume grew by 49% for UK nonprofits, to an average of 27 messages per subscriber. For non-UK nonprofits, the average volume was more than double this figure, at 60 email messages per subscriber per year.
  • For every 1,000 fundraising emails sent, UK nonprofits received £66 — a 19% drop from 2021.
  • Mobile list size increased by 16%, similar to the growth in email lists.
  • Revenue from mobile messaging increased by 2%, driven by a 15% increase in cash giving. Mobile regular giving dropped by 2% from the previous year.
  • Email messaging accounted for 2% of all online revenue, while mobile messaging drove 1% of all online giving.

If we’ve learned anything from watching The Great British Bake Off, it’s that making slight tweaks to any single ingredient can have drastic impacts on your bake. The difference between overproofed or a lovely rise is a matter of seconds. Mix in too many wet elements, and you’ll get a soggy bottom. But perfect the balance, and you’re headed for a Hollywood handshake.

In the world of outbound messaging channels, there are three ingredients that dictate results:

  1. The size of the audience you can reach

  2. The number of times you reach them

  3. The effectiveness of the messaging you reach them with

We’ll take each one of those in turn for email, then turn our attention to mobile messaging.

Email list sizes grew significantly faster for UK nonprofits than for Non-UK nonprofits over the past few years. In the UK, 17% growth in 2022 followed 26% and 25% increases in list size over the previous two years. For Non-UK nonprofits, the same period saw 2%, 7%, and 4% growth.

We report list size as a net number — this is the balance of all the subscribers added to the list, and all of those who left the list through bounces or unsubscribes (or nonprofits removing inactive subscribers in order to protect deliverability).

On average, UK nonprofits lost 6% of subscribers to bounces, and another 7% to unsubscribes. The Non-UK churn was just a touch higher, indicating that the primary advantage UK nonprofits had was higher rates of new subscriber acquisition.

We know that nonprofits were able to reach more people in 2022. Next, let’s look at how many times they sent messages to that growing list of subscribers.

Overall, UK nonprofits sent 27 messages per subscriber over the course of 2022. The volume of messages was more than twice as high for Non-UK nonprofits, which sent 61 messages per subscriber.

The difference is especially striking when we look specifically at fundraising messaging. On average, UK nonprofits sent 6 fundraising appeals in 2022. It is not unusual for a nonprofit outside the UK to send that many fundraising messages in just the last week of the year. In fact, the average Non-UK nonprofit sent 29 fundraising emails in 2022 — more than the total messaging of all types for nonprofits in the UK.

That’s a substantial gap, but it narrowed a bit in 2022. Total email volume for UK nonprofits increased by 49% in 2022, with a 30% increase in the average number of fundraising messages. In the US, messaging volume grew by just 8%, and with a 14% increase in fundraising message volume.

Now, let’s turn our attention to the effectiveness of all that email.

Most metrics for most types of messages were lower in 2022 than in 2021 — which is not unusual when both audience sizes and message frequency increase.

The average click-through rate for advocacy messages — the percentage of message recipients who clicked on a link or button to take action — was 1.9% for UK nonprofits in 2022, 37% below the 2021 rate. Response rate — the percentage of recipients who signed a petition or otherwise completed an advocacy action — was 1.35%.

For fundraising messages, the 0.8% click-through rate represented a 17% decline from the previous year. The page completion rate — the percentage of users who landed on the donation page and actually completed the gift — was 32%. And the response rate was 0.20% — which is to say, one in every 500 subscribers who received a fundraising email responded by making a donation.

It is fair to feel a bit let down by those numbers. One in five hundred recipients made a gift! And that’s 20% lower than the previous year! And we worked hard on those emails! But compare that to the 0.08% fundraising email response rate for Non-UK nonprofits, and it doesn’t seem quite so dire.

OPEN RATES
SHUT DOWN

For years, we have dutifully reported on open rates as one of the building blocks of email metrics. And for years, we have just as dutifully encouraged readers to take those numbers with a grain of salt, as tracking opens was relatively unreliable.

As Apple’s 2021 privacy changes created zillions of false opens, that grain of salt became a boulder, a mountain, a continent. This time around, our average reported open rate was a whopping 34%.

That number is a lie, and lies do not belong in Benchmarks.

You may still find benefit in tracking opens for your own email programme, and if you can separate real human opens from illusory machine opens, this can be a useful metric. But as far as Benchmarks is concerned, open rates are cancelled.

The response rate for fundraising emails tells us how likely a subscriber is to give, but it doesn’t quite capture the value of a fundraising email — it does not account for the amount being donated. For every 1,000 fundraising emails sent, nonprofits raised £66.

This metric varied widely between sectors. At the low end, Rights nonprofits reported an average revenue per 1,000 fundraising emails of £29. Disaster/International Aid nonprofits raised £162 for every 1,000 fundraising emails sent.

The £66 overall average in this metric was 19% lower than in 2021, closely aligned with the decline in response rate for fundraising messages.

Of our three primary variables for fundraising emails, two (audience size and message volume) were higher in 2022, and one (supporter response) was lower. In other words, UK organisations sent more fundraising emails to more people, but each message sent generated less revenue on average.

The decline in this last metric outweighed the increases in list size and message volume — email revenue declined by 9% for UK nonprofits. (For Non-UK nonprofits, there was a 4% drop in revenue.)

This is not to say that every organisation suffered lower revenue. Once again, Disaster/International Aid nonprofits reported an increase in donor support, with 13% higher email revenue. For Large nonprofits, average email revenue was 160% higher in 2022 than in 2021!

With email revenue lower, and overall online revenue higher, the share of revenue from email fell. In 2021, UK nonprofits generated 4% of all online revenue through email; in 2022, that share dropped to 2%.

Our data for mobile messaging is not quite as comprehensive — for one thing, we are not able to report on mobile metrics like response rate — so the story is not as straightforward.

Mobile audience sizes continued to grow at a healthy rate last year. Mobile lists grew by 16%, following 26% and 18% increases in the previous two years.

Overall revenue from mobile messaging increased by 2%, after a 7% decline in the previous year. This increase in revenue was due to higher cash giving, which grew by 15%. Regular giving revenue via mobile messaging was relatively flat, with a 2% decline.

As with overall online revenue, the change in mobile revenue was still heavily influenced by the COVID pandemic. If we use 2018 as a baseline, we see a massive increase in mobile giving in 2020, coinciding with the first year of the pandemic. Mobile cash giving was twice as high as it had been in 2018, but that increase proved to be short-lived. When the initial pandemic response faded, so did mobile cash giving — in 2022, revenue from mobile cash giving was 14% higher than it had been in 2018.

Regular giving via mobile saw a less dramatic spike during the first year of the pandemic — though at 53% higher than our 2018 baseline, the increase was quite impressive. It was also, unsurprisingly, more durable than the surge in cash giving. In 2022, mobile regular giving revenue was 22% higher than in 2018.

While mobile revenue increased, it continued to make up a small share of overall online revenue. Revenue from mobile messaging declined from 2% of all online revenue to just 1% (to reiterate: mobile revenue increased, but fell as a share of the total as other giving channels grew at a faster rate).

Digital Ads

Quick Bites

  • UK nonprofits increased digital advertising spending by 35% in 2022, reinvesting 19% of online revenue in digital ads.
  • Direct fundraising accounted for 71% of all ad spending. Branding, awareness, and education ads made up 8% of spending, and nonprofits spent 15% of ad budgets on lead generation.
  • Ad-driven lead generation was an important source of email subscribers. For every 100,000 email subscribers at the start of 2022, nonprofits acquired 24,000 new subscribers via ads.
  • The average cost per digital advertising lead for UK nonprofits was £3.17. The average cost per donation for display ads was £247.
  • Large nonprofits were the least dependent on Meta advertising, spending 40% of budgets on that platform. Medium nonprofits spent 72% of ad budgets on Meta, and Small nonprofits 97%.

In many ways, email and mobile programmes are like your local pub — patrons are loyal and care deeply about your establishment. Success is dependent on quality offerings, community, and a sense of belonging. That loyalty matters a great deal, but the reality is that on any given day you’re only going to be able to reach so many people.

Digital ads, on the other hand, are more like a Greggs or Nandos. You can’t help but spot one on your way to work or school or the shops. They are everywhere, and their ability to convert passersby depends more on budgetary, strategic, and creative choices.

We’ll start with budget. The first decision a nonprofit needs to make is the size of the digital ads budget (“zero” is an option, but not a good one — we’ll see in a moment how important advertising is to a thriving digital programme). Last year, UK nonprofits reinvested 19% of online revenue in digital ads. To be clear, this is not a measure of return on investment — it’s about the relative scale of spending. A nonprofit that raised £1,000,000 through online channels in 2022 would have spent £190,000 on digital ad placements.

Nonprofits increased their spending by 35% in 2022, though there was a wide range between sectors. Spending was about twice as high as the previous year for the Disaster/International Aid and Wildlife/Animal Welfare sectors, which could be a response to the ongoing crisis in Ukraine. Hunger/Poverty nonprofits, on the other hand, reported spending 19% less than in 2021.

Now that we have a sense of the scale of ads spending by nonprofits, let’s dig into how they distributed that investment.

The biggest piece of the ad budget pie for nonprofits of every size went to direct fundraising efforts — overall, 71% of ad spending was dedicated to direct fundraising. Lead generation accounted for 15% of all spending, with another 8% dedicated to branding, awareness, or education advertising.

We can further break down the fundraising budget by channel — and when we do, we see major differences between nonprofits of different sizes.

Search consumed 46% of fundraising ad budgets for Large nonprofits, the largest single category. Medium nonprofits spent 23% of fundraising ad budgets on search — significantly less, but still a sizeable portion of the budget. Small nonprofits, on the other hand, spend just 2% of fundraising ad budgets on search.

Instead, fully 97% of fundraising ad budgets for Small nonprofits went to Meta platforms (Facebook and Instagram). While Meta has long been an inviting platform for Small nonprofits due to relatively low cost and barriers to entry, privacy changes by Apple and the deprecation of cookies may make it more difficult for nonprofits to reach their goals. It should not be surprising if we see Small nonprofits reallocate resources to search, display, or other channels in the future.

In 2022, Meta did produce donations at a lower cost than Twitter and display advertising. Nonprofits spent £100 on average to generate a single donation on Meta, while Twitter and display came in at £155 per donation and £247, respectively. Search advertising had by far the lowest cost per donation, at £23.

Along with average gift size, cost per donation is an important factor in determining the return on ad spend (ROAS). And so it is no surprise that nonprofits of every size generated far and away the highest ROAS of any channel with search advertising.

For every pound spent on fundraising search advertising, nonprofits raised £2.63. For Small nonprofits, the ROAS for search was £3.19 — a strong indication that they would do well to shift resources toward this channel.

Of course, the search audience is finite. Once a nonprofit has hit a spend level high enough to reach most or all users with relevant queries, they’ll need to look elsewhere to continue to expand their audience.

Return on ad spend for Meta was £0.44, and considerably lower for display, Twitter, and video advertising. As nonprofits look to expand their reach and find new audiences through these channels, earning a positive return will depend on securing additional revenue through repeated giving.

As we’ve noted, lead generation accounted for 15% of advertising budgets in 2022. The average cost per lead was £3.17. There was little variation by sector, though Hunger/Poverty nonprofits reported a particularly high cost per lead at £5.37.

However, the cost to recruit a new subscriber via Meta (£2.70) was less than half than on TikTok (£5.75), which itself was less than half the cost per new subscriber for YouTube (£13.06). Nonprofits will need to continue to experiment to find the best balance as they look to diversify their spending and grow audiences through paid advertising.

That growth of audiences through advertising had a significant impact in 2022. We’re taking a fresh approach to measuring the impact of lead generation advertising this year by measuring the ratio of ads-acquired leads email list size at the start of the year. The average figure for UK nonprofits in 2022 was 0.24.

Here’s what that means: if the median nonprofit had 100,000 email subscribers at the beginning of the year, they acquired 24,000 new subscribers via ads over the course of 2022. When we understand how important a growing list is to a healthy email programme, and how difficult list growth is, that is a seriously consequential result.

It will never be possible to reach all the people we would like to, each person who cares enough about our cause to do their part. But when we look to the tools we have available to grow our audiences, digital advertising carries enormous potential. We hope to see continued experimentation and optimisation in this space — both to produce direct results, and to expand the reach of email, mobile, and other channels.

Website Performance and Social Media

Quick Bites

  • Organic traffic (website traffic generated by unpaid search results) comprised 36% of website visits for UK nonprofits in 2022.
  • The average conversion rate for a website’s main donation page was 21%.
  • Nearly all participants reported being active on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram; TikTok was an active platform for 30% of nonprofits.
  • Revenue from Facebook declined by 41% overall but surged by 268% for nonprofits in the Disaster/International Aid sector. Facebook giving accounted for 1.6% of all online revenue.
  • The average Facebook Fundraiser generated 5 gifts, with an average gift of £16.

Someone, somewhere, right now, is looking for you. Maybe not you personally, but very probably your organisation, and almost certainly your cause. They have the appetite to learn more, or they want to find help, or they want to do something kind or generous or useful in service of something they care about.

When they find you — if they find you amidst the enormous menu of the Internet’s offerings — it’s a good bet they will end up either on your organisation’s home page or one of your several social media accounts. Let’s take those in turn.

The average UK nonprofit website saw 36% of its visitors arrive via organic search results. Not like cage-free, grass-fed organic. In this context, “organic” means the user entered a search term and clicked on a result that was not a paid ad.

At the low end, Wildlife/Animal Welfare nonprofits could expect about one in five of their website visitors to arrive via organic search. At the other extreme, 70% of Hunger/Poverty website visitors began their journey by searching for a relevant keyword.

This data point tells us a visitor’s origins, but not their purpose. We can’t know, for example, how many of those Hunger/Poverty site visitors were struggling to make ends meet and looking for local resources. And we can’t know how many of them were inspired to seek out an organisation to entrust with a donation.

For those visitors who did manage to make it to a website’s main donation page, 21% completed a gift. (Benchmarks participants self-select which of their donation pages count as the “main donation page” for purposes of this study. Typically it’s the one you land on when you click the giant red DONATE button on the homepage.)

The other most likely destination for a user looking to connect with an organisation is social media. More accurately, that’s destinations, plural — the world is not so simple anymore that we can get away with just one.

Nearly every organisation in our study had a presence on the Big Three social media platforms — Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. There was also widespread presence on LinkedIn (82%) and YouTube (74%). The only other social media platform used by a substantial number of Benchmarks participants was TikTok — 30% of nonprofits reported being active on that platform in 2022.

(As a reminder, this edition of Benchmarks covers 2022, which means that Twitter’s acquisition by Elon Musk, and the slow-motion train wreck on the platform [as opposed to the full-speed wrecks of Musk’s other endeavours] are mostly not captured in our data. It also means that any migration to Threads, or the plethora of other new platforms vying to be the new Twitter will not be reflected here.)

UK nonprofits posted most frequently on Twitter, with 1.6 posts per day. Instagram posts came an average of 1.1 times per day, and Facebook posts just 0.6 times per day. Post frequently on TikTok trailed far behind, with 0.1 posts per day among nonprofits active on that platform.

That low post volume on TikTok doesn’t quite capture the full potential of nonprofits to reach new audiences on the platform — many organisations have begun contracting with paid influencers to help spread their message.

Here, as in so many aspects of life, the US tends to be a bit more aggressive than the UK. For US nonprofits with paid influencer campaigns, the average number of paid influencer partnerships was 6 over the course of 2022, with an average of 10 posts from those influencers. For UK nonprofits, there were 2.5 paid influencers, generating 6.5 posts on average.

While each social media platform has its own idiosyncrasies, limitations, opportunities, audiences, and maddeningly opaque algorithms, Facebook stands alone as a meaningful direct fundraising channel.

Overall, 1.6% of online revenue for UK nonprofits was derived from Facebook, down from 2.5% the previous year (this isn’t exclusively from Facebook Fundraisers, but the overwhelming majority of this giving is through user-generated Facebook Fundraisers, so it’s okay to think of it that way). The most obvious outlier here was the Health sector, which received 7.4% of all online revenue via Facebook in 2022.

Not only did the share of online revenue from Facebook decline from 2021 levels — the absolute amount raised was lower for most nonprofit types. The exception was the Disaster/International Aid sector, where Facebook revenue increased by 268% the previous year. Once again, the outpouring of public attention and support sparked by the invasion of Ukraine is likely the driving factor here.

It wasn’t only the amount of Facebook revenue that fell in 2022 — it was also the number of Facebook Fundraiser efforts begun by users. The number of Fundraisers was 22% lower than in the previous year.

Those individual decisions to start Fundraiser efforts are the most important factor determining Facebook revenue. Since Facebook first rolled out this feature, we have seen relatively little variance in the amount raised by the average Fundraiser.

In 2022, the average Facebook Fundraiser generated 5 gifts, with little variation between sectors. A user starting their own Fundraiser, whether to honour a loved one, raise visibility of a cause dear to their heart, participate in a virtual challenge, or leverage the extra social media attention on their birthday, was likely to generate just a handful of gifts.

And those gifts tended to be relatively small. The average Facebook Fundraisers gift was £16, and even the Disaster/International Aid sector saw an average Facebook Fundraisers gift of just £21. As reported in our fundraising section, the overall average cash gift across digital channels was substantially larger at £64.

These results are consistent with what we’ve reported in every Benchmarks that has included Facebook Fundraisers — the results of each individual Fundraiser campaign tend to be fairly modest. A handful of gifts, mostly small ones. The biggest difference — the biggest opportunity — lies in the number of people who are inspired to take a moment or two to dedicate themselves to a cause, and ask the people who care about them to join in.

In that sense, it’s not too different from other channels. We know that people are searching — for a cause to believe in, for a way to make a difference. It’s up to us to make sure they can find us, and find a way to get involved.

Desserts

Participants

Disaster/International Aid

British Red Cross
Christian Aid
Hope and Homes for Children
Islamic Relief UK
MAG (Mines Advisory Group)
Oxfam GB
Save the Children UK
Sightsavers
The Leprosy Mission
UK for UNHCR
Women for Women International UK
World Vision UK

Health

Blood Cancer UK
Children's Hospice South West
Dementia UK
Evelina London Children's Charity
Great Ormond Street Hospital Children's Charity
Guy's & St Thomas' Charity
Guy's Cancer Charity
Kidney Research UK
Maggie's
Marie Curie
National Deaf Children's Society
Samaritans
Sands
Sense
Smile Train UK
Teenage Cancer Trust
The Eve Appeal

Hunger/Poverty

Centrepoint
Child Poverty Action Group
Shelter
The Salvation Army

Rights

Amnesty International UK
Children's Society
ClientEarth
Freedom from Torture
Liberty
Refuge
Reprieve

Wildlife/Animal Welfare

Animals Asia UK
Dogs Trust
IFAW UK
The Brooke

Other

Art Fund
Help for Heroes
Walking With The Wounded

Glossary

  • Advocacy Message

    An email or SMS message that asks recipients to sign an online petition, send an email to a decision-maker, or take a similar online action. For the purposes of this Study, advocacy email does not include higher-bar actions like making a phone call or attending an event, largely because tracking offline response is inconsistent across organisations. Advocacy email rates were calculated from advocacy emails with a simple action sent to either the full file or a random sample of the full file.

  • Biscuits

    Hi, UK friends! See: COOKIES.

  • Click-through Rate

    Calculated as the number of people who clicked on any trackable link in an email or text message divided by the number of delivered emails or text messages. People who clicked multiple times in one email were only counted once. In other words, if a subscriber clicked on every link in a message 10 times, this was counted the same as if the subscriber had clicked once on a single link.

  • Cookies

    A chunk of data placed on a user’s computer by a web browser, which can be used to authenticate, track, or customize the user’s experience. Chrome, Safari, and other browsers have recently made changes to limit tracking cookies, which can make it more difficult for nonprofits to target users based on their browsing history. This change is described as cookies being “deprecated,” and is similar to the experience of when you reach into the jar for a short and all that’s left is a scattering of stale crumbs. You might say that tracking cookies... have crumbled. 😎

  • Deliverable Emails

    Only the emails that were delivered, not including the emails that are considered inactive or emails that were sent and bounced. “Delivered” email messages may land in a user’s inbox, spam folder, promotions tab, or custom folder.

  • Device Type, Desktop

    We use the definitions provided by Google Analytics to separate traffic data by device type. The “desktop” category includes any desktop or laptop computer with a screen larger than 7” in diagonal.

  • Device Type, Desktop

    We use the definitions provided by Google Analytics to separate traffic data by device type. The “desktop” category includes any desktop or laptop computer with a screen larger than 7” in diagonal.

  • Device Type, Mobile

    We use the definitions provided by Google Analytics to separate traffic data by device type. Mobile devices are hand-held devices that include a phone or a tablet.

  • Digital Organising

    Recruiting, engaging and organising members, activists, and/or volunteers toward advocacy outcomes.

  • Fans, Facebook

    People who “like” a nonprofit’s Facebook Fan page.

  • Followers, Instagram

    People who subscribe to see posts from a charity’s Instagram account.

  • Followers, Tiktok

    People who follow a nonprofit’s TikTok account.

  • Followers, Twitter

    People who subscribe to receive the tweets from a nonprofit’s Twitter account.

  • Full File

    All of an organisation’s deliverable email addresses, not including unsubscribed email addresses or email addresses to which an organisation no longer sends email messages.

  • Fundraising Message

    An email or SMS message that only asks for a donation, as opposed to an email newsletter, which might ask for a donation and include other links. For the purposes of this Study, fundraising email only includes one-time donation asks; it does not include monthly gift asks. Fundraising email rates were calculated from all fundraising emails, regardless of whether the email went to the full file, a random sample of the file, or a targeted portion of the file.

  • Influencers

    Social media influencers are people who have an established presence on one or more social media platforms, with a reputation for being knowledgeable about a certain topic. Influencers regularly post content around that topic for their established, engaged follower base. These audiences, ranging from thousands to millions, follow influencers for their authentic views on their area of expertise.

  • List Churn

    Calculated as the number of subscribers who became unreachable in a 12-month period divided by the sum of the number of deliverable email addresses at the end of that period plus the number of subscribers who became unreachable during that period. Study participants were required to track the number of subscribers who became unreachable each month to account for subscribers both joining and leaving an email list during the 12-month period who would otherwise go uncounted.

  • Newsletters, Email

    An email with multiple links or asks, which can include fundraising or advocacy asks. Email newsletter rates were calculated from all email newsletters, regardless of whether the newsletter went to the full file, a random sample of the file, or a targeted portion of the file.

  • Online Retention, New Donor

    Of the donors that made their first-ever online gift in the previous calendar year, the percent that made an online gift in the current calendar year. Note that we count someone as “new” in 2022 if they have no online donations reported between the start of 2018 and the end of 2021.

  • Online Retention, Prior Donor

    Of the donors that made an online gift in the previous calendar year that wasn’t their first online gift, the percent that made an online gift in the current calendar year.

  • Open Rate

    Calculated as the number of HTML email messages opened divided by the number of delivered emails. Email messages that bounce are not included. In 2021, Apple made changes to how opens can be tracked on its devices, effectively breaking open tracking in many systems. As a result we’re no longer reporting out a Benchmark open rate (sorry!).

  • Organic

    “Organic Traffic” includes website visits generated by unpaid search results. “Organic Produce” is food that has been certified as abiding by certain government restrictions, typically meaning it is free of additives, GMO crops, or synthetic pesticides. “Organ? Ick!” is how some people respond when presented with haggis, menudo, or chitterlings. They simply can’t stomach it! These same people also tend to misspell “offal,” instead writing “awful.” They refuse to just hold their tongue and go a lung with it. Imagine the utter gall. The sheer cheek! They have a heart time adopting a liver let live attitude. All kidneying aside, they reject the very concept of brain food. Help please I can’t stop.

  • Page Completion Rate

    Calculated as the number of people who completed a form divided by the number of people who clicked on the link to get to that form. For the purposes of this Study, it was not always possible to use the number of people who clicked on a link to a specific form, so we used the number of unique clicks in the message.

  • Peer-To-Peer Text Messaging

    Unlike a single mass message to a full list, these SMS messages connect volunteers and staff to individuals, enabling one-on-one conversations.

  • Percentile

    The percentage of observed values below the named data point. 25% of the observations are below the 25th percentile; 75% of the observations are below the 75th percentile. The values between the 25th percentile and the 75th percentile are the middle 50% of the observed values and represent the normal range of values.

  • Ratio Of Ad-Acquired Leads To Start Of Year Email List Size

    Ratio of new email leads acquired through digital advertising divided email size at the start of the year.

  • Regular Gift

    A donation where the donor signs up once to donate on a regular schedule, typically by pledging a recurring gift amount on a credit card each month. Also known as a sustaining or monthly gift.

  • Relational Organising

    Mobilising personal contacts within a volunteer’s network. It could be calls, texts, or in-person conversations with people in their own community.

  • Response Rate

    Calculated as the number of people who took the main action requested by an email or text message divided by the number of delivered messages.

  • Twitter Engagement Rate

    The total number of users who engage with a post (by liking, clicking, sharing, etc.), divided by post reach.

  • Unique Clicks

    The number of people who clicked on any trackable link in an email message, as opposed to the number of times the links in an email were clicked. If a subscriber clicked on every link in a message 10 times, this is counted as 1 unique click. It is also counted as 1 strange person.

  • Unsubscribe Rate

    Calculated as the number of individuals who unsubscribed in response to an email message divided by the number of delivered emails.

  • View-Through Revenue

    Revenue from donors who made a donation (typically within 30 days) of seeing, but not clicking on, an ad. For example, a supporter who sees a banner ad and later goes directly to the nonprofit’s website to make a gift.

  • Website Donation Page Conversion Rate

    Calculated from the number of donations to a participant’s main donation page, divided by the number of unique pageviews of that page. We included only unique pageviews for the one-time donation page, if a separate donation page existed for monthly gifts.

  • Website Page Load Time

    The number of seconds before a page appears to be visually complete, as measured by the WebPageTest tool at http://webpagetest.org.

  • Website Revenue Per Visitor

    Calculated as the total revenue from one-time online gifts, plus the value of initial monthly gifts, divided by the total number of website visitors for the year. Depending on retention, the long-term value of monthly gifts may be substantially higher.

  • Website Visitors Per Month

    The number of monthly unique visitors to a participant’s main website.

M+R
Benchmarks 2024

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