How to Calculate Donor Retention Rate
Donor retention rate is the percentage of donors who gave in one period and gave again in the next period. The calculation is deliberately simple: divide the number of donors who gave in both periods by the number of donors who gave in the first period, then multiply by 100. Everything difficult about the metric happens before the division, in how you define a donor, how you define a period, and which donors you exclude. Get those definitions written down and your retention rate becomes a number you can compare to itself year after year. Skip that step and you will produce a figure that moves for reasons no one can explain.
The core formula, stated once so you can copy it:
Donor retention rate = (donors who gave in both Period 1 and Period 2) / (donors who gave in Period 1) x 100
A worked example
Assume a fiscal year running July 1 to June 30. In FY1 your database records 1,000 unique donors who made at least one gift. In FY2 you look at those same 1,000 records and find that 430 of them gave again at some point during FY2.
430 / 1,000 = 0.43, so your donor retention rate is 43 percent.
Note what the denominator is not. It is not the number of donors in FY2. It is not everyone in your database. It is not everyone you mailed. It is the count of distinct donors who gave in the earlier period, because retention measures what happened to that specific cohort. The numbers above are illustrative only, chosen to make the arithmetic legible.
Decide these five things before you calculate
- What counts as a donor. Most organizations count any constituent with at least one cash gift in the period. Decide in writing how you handle in-kind gifts, pledges recorded but unpaid, event ticket purchases, grants from institutions, and gifts routed through donor advised funds, where the sponsoring fund is often the legal donor of record.
- What the period is. Fiscal year, calendar year, or rolling twelve months. Rolling periods let you watch the trend monthly instead of once a year, but you must keep the window length constant.
- How you deduplicate. Household versus individual is the choice that most often makes a retention rate jump for no real reason. Spouses recorded separately in one year and merged in the next will look like churn. Pick one unit of analysis and hold it.
- What you exclude. Deceased records, invalid or bounced records, and one-time disaster or crisis surges are commonly excluded or reported separately. Whatever you exclude, exclude it from both the numerator and the denominator.
- Which gift types are in scope. If you include bequests and major transformational gifts in the count, a single estate gift can distort revenue retention badly. Many organizations report retention twice, once with all gifts and once excluding gifts above a stated threshold.
The variants, and when to use each
| Metric | What it counts | Formula | Use it to answer |
|---|---|---|---|
| Donor retention rate | People | Repeat donors / prior-period donors x 100 | Are we keeping supporters? |
| Revenue retention rate | Dollars | Period 2 revenue from Period 1 donors / total Period 1 revenue x 100 | Are we keeping value, including upgrades? |
| First-year donor retention | People, new cohort only | New Period 1 donors who gave again / all new Period 1 donors x 100 | Is our welcome and onboarding working? |
| Multi-year or repeat retention | People, established cohort only | Repeat Period 1 donors who gave again / all repeat Period 1 donors x 100 | Is our core file stable? |
| Recapture or reactivation rate | People, lapsed only | Lapsed donors who gave this period / all lapsed donors x 100 | Is winback worth the spend? |
| Sustainer or recurring retention | Active recurring gifts | Recurring donors still active at period end / recurring donors at period start x 100 | How much churn is in the monthly program? |
| Attrition or churn rate | People | 100 minus donor retention rate | The same fact, stated as loss |
Revenue retention is a different question than donor retention
Donor retention counts heads. Revenue retention counts money, and the two can move in opposite directions. If you lose a large share of small donors while a handful of mid-level donors upgrade, donor retention falls and revenue retention can still rise. That is not a contradiction, it is the metric doing its job.
Calculate revenue retention as the dollars given in the current period by donors who gave in the prior period, divided by the total dollars those same donors gave in the prior period. Because upgrades are included in the numerator, revenue retention can exceed 100 percent. Report it alongside donor retention, never instead of it, and state clearly whether transformational gifts and bequests are included. A single estate gift landing in either period will swamp the ratio.
First-year retention is the number that predicts everything else
Split your prior-period donors into two cohorts before you calculate: donors making their first ever gift, and donors who had given before. First-year retention is typically lower than repeat retention, because a first gift is a test and a second gift is a decision.
Reporting a single blended retention rate hides this. An organization that acquires aggressively will show a falling blended rate even if it is holding its established donors perfectly well, simply because the new-donor cohort is a larger share of the denominator. Split the cohorts and the diagnosis becomes obvious: acquisition volume problem, onboarding problem, or core file problem.
Benchmarks: use one source, and use it carefully
The Fundraising Effectiveness Project, a collaboration of the AFP Foundation for Philanthropy and GivingTuesday, publishes sector benchmarks for donor retention and related measures based on aggregated data contributed by participating organizations. It is the appropriate reference point if you want an external comparison, and it is the only one we cite here.
Two cautions. First, benchmarks are aggregates across organizations of very different sizes, causes, and acquisition strategies, so a gap against the benchmark is a prompt to investigate, not a verdict. Second, your own prior-year rate, calculated the same way with the same definitions, is a more useful comparison than any external figure. Consistency beats benchmarking.
Common ways the calculation goes wrong
- Changing the denominator midstream. Adding or removing gift types between years makes the trend meaningless.
- Counting gifts instead of donors. A donor who gave four times is one donor. Gift counts belong in frequency metrics.
- Merging households between periods without restating history. Recalculate the prior period on the current merge logic.
- Leaving a disaster spike in the base year. A crisis-driven acquisition surge inflates the denominator and produces a poor-looking rate the following year. Report it separately and say so.
- Comparing your rate to someone else's differently defined rate. Two organizations quoting retention rates are frequently not measuring the same thing.
- Treating recurring donors as retained by default. A recurring gift that failed on a card decline in month three is churn, not retention.
Turning the number into action
Retention is an outcome of the donor experience, so the operational work sits in the weeks right after a gift arrives: prompt acknowledgment, a specific statement of what the gift funded, and a reason to hear from you again before the next ask. Segment by cohort, then decide where the effort goes. A weak first-year rate points at welcome and onboarding. A weak multi-year rate points at stewardship and relevance. A weak sustainer rate is usually a payment failure problem before it is a loyalty problem.
Channel matters mainly for speed and read rate. If you are building the follow-up cadence, our nonprofit donor retention SMS strategy guide covers the sequencing decisions, and donor retention by SMS walks through keeping supporters engaged between appeals. Whatever channel you use, measure retention the same way every year so the change you see is a real change.
This article is general information, not legal, tax, or accounting advice. Confirm how your organization should define and report fundraising metrics with your auditor or qualified counsel.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the formula for donor retention rate?
Donor retention rate equals the number of donors who gave in both the prior period and the current period, divided by the number of donors who gave in the prior period, multiplied by 100. The denominator is always the earlier cohort, not your current donor count and not your full database. Keep the definition of a donor and the length of the period identical across years.
How do you calculate donor retention rate in Excel?
Build two columns of unique donor IDs, one for each period. Use COUNTA on the prior-period list for the denominator. For the numerator, use SUMPRODUCT with COUNTIF, or add a helper column with COUNTIF against the current-period list and count the rows greater than zero. Then divide and format as a percentage. Deduplicate both lists on the same unit, household or individual, before you start.
What is the difference between donor retention and revenue retention?
Donor retention counts people, revenue retention counts dollars. Revenue retention divides what prior-period donors gave this period by what they gave last period, so upgrades count and it can exceed 100 percent. The two can diverge sharply. Losing many small donors while mid-level donors upgrade lowers donor retention and can raise revenue retention at the same time.
What is a good donor retention rate?
There is no single correct answer, because the figure depends on cause, donor mix, acquisition volume, and how you define a donor. The Fundraising Effectiveness Project, run by the AFP Foundation for Philanthropy with GivingTuesday, publishes sector benchmarks if you want an external comparison. The more useful test is your own prior-year rate, calculated with identical definitions, split into first-year and repeat cohorts.
What is first-year donor retention?
It is the retention rate calculated only for donors who made their first ever gift in the prior period. It is reported separately because first-time donors behave very differently from established ones, and blending them hides the signal. A low first-year rate points at your welcome, acknowledgment, and second-gift path rather than at your overall stewardship program.
How do you calculate donor churn or attrition rate?
Attrition is the mirror of retention: subtract your donor retention rate from 100. If retention is 43 percent, attrition is 57 percent. Some teams prefer stating it as loss because it makes the size of the replacement problem concrete. It is the same underlying calculation, so keep the same definitions and periods.
Should donor advised fund gifts count in donor retention?
Decide once and document it. The sponsoring organization is typically the legal donor of record, while the advisor is the person you steward. Counting the sponsor as the donor can make an individual look lapsed when they are still giving. Many organizations track the advisor for retention purposes and the sponsor for gift accounting, and note the treatment in their reporting.
How often should we calculate donor retention?
Annually at minimum, using a consistent fiscal or calendar year. Many organizations also run a rolling twelve-month version monthly so problems surface during the year rather than after it. If you use a rolling window, keep the window length fixed and do not compare a rolling figure to an annual one.
Keep more of the donors you already have
FRANSiS is an AI powered SMS platform with an AI Powered Helper that drafts the thank-you, update, and reminder messaging behind a healthy retention rate for your team to review and send. See our nonprofit solutions or contact us to talk through your cadence.
