Nonprofit Sector Trends for 2025

With each new year comes new trends and forecasts nonprofits look to for defining their strategy. Wether you’re trying to boost your donations this year or reach a wider audience through marketing initiatives, take advantage of these trends in 2025.

The nonprofit sector is constantly changing and we want to see you crush it this year! Read on for the top trends nonprofits will see in 2025.

Nonprofit Fundraising Trends

Stay ahead of the curve and keep your donations coming in by leveraging these fundraising trends. Overall, expect charitable giving to rise across all sources – make sure your nonprofit is receiving this boost in donations!

In addition to these trends, don’t forget to maintain your donor relationships to see success all year long. Building meaningful, personalized connections through your donor communications and “thank you’s” will go a long way in boosting retention rates.

Strong Growth in Giving by Foundations

Out of all charitable giving sources, foundations are expected to grow the most in 2025. CCS Fundraising’s Philanthropy Outlook predicts a 5.3% increase. With foundations giving over $103.5 billion in 2023, just imagine what 2025 and beyond will look like!

Foundations can provide your nonprofit with valuable grants that will help you pursue projects, activities and programs that you might not afford normally.

To take advantage of this, invest in grant writing, prospect research and networking initiatives with foundations that align with your mission.

Rebound of Individual Giving

As inflation slows, we can anticipate individuals to come back to the world of charitable giving. Inflation (while still a sore subject for many) has dropped from 6.5% in 2022, 3.4% in 2023 and approximately 2.7% for 2024. If this trend continues, we can project a 2.4% for 2025, opening the door for individuals to have extra funds to give to a cause.

In addition to the positive changes we anticipate for the economy, social responsibility will motivate individuals even further. With the younger generations taking over the majority of the population, it’s important to tap into their charitable motivations. 88% of young women and 69% of young men want to create their own philanthropic identity – not just give to charities their parents did.

To take advantage of this, focus on segmenting and storytelling in your fundraising campaigns. You want your donation ask to resonate with individual donors, improving the chances for major gifts and recurring donations.

Giving Tuesday Continues to Crush it

Giving Tuesday is the global generosity movement that continues to grow every year. Americans donated a record-breaking $3.6 billion on Giving Tuesday 2024 – a 16% increase from 2023!

With 36.1 million Americans alone participating, there’s a huge audience that are ready to give back and make a difference in their community.

To take advantage of this collective, generous action, plan your Giving Tuesday Campaigns in advance. Be sure to make your supporters aware of your nonprofit’s involvement and encourage them to share with others.

Hybrid is a Must Across All Channels

As time goes on, the popularity of technology for all fundraising efforts is growing – and showing major success. For example, in 2024, 76% of organizations who used hybrid event models reached their fundraising goals and 96% of nonprofits utilized an online fundraiser.

To see success in 2025, the fundraising method your nonprofit uses needs to be flexible. In order to have the largest pool of supporters, you need to appeal to each way they prefer to give. Diversify your fundraising channels to enhance the donor experience and give your nonprofit financial resilience.

Here’s a break down of the ways each generation is most likely to give

• Generation Z: virtual fundraisers, text messages and social media
• Millennials: social media, crowdfunding, peer-to-peer fundraising and text messages
• Generation X: social media, volunteering, fundraising events and text messages
• Baby Boomers: email, online donation forms and in person events
• Silent Generation: direct mail and phone calls

Nonprofit Marketing Trends

Knowing the fundraising trends for next year is great, but you need to succeed in marketing too. Effective nonprofit marketing brings awareness to your nonprofit and it’s mission as well as broadening your audience and bringing in more supporters.

Social Media Channels are Bigger than Ever

Social media is becoming the champion of fundraising and is a key part of a nonprofit’s marketing strategy. The use of social media platforms like TikTok, Instagram and Facebook has allowed nonprofits all over to find new donors, engage supporters and raise more for their cause.

This trend of social media isn’t going anywhere. 41% of Gen Z say that social media has motivated them to research or donate to a cause.

Social media increases your visibility to more than just those in your local community. If you go viral or have a social media challenge, like the #IceBucketChallenge, you could start a movement for your nonprofit and reach a global audience.

To take advantage of this, make sure social media has a place in your marketing budget. Short-form video content has consistently performed better and is incredibly popular on TikTok and Instagram. Be sure to post regularly – don’t be a ghost account! Your posts should revolve around your nonprofit’s cause, accomplishments, opportunities to donate and most importantly your current fundraising initiatives.

Impact of Social Media Influences

We’ve mentioned how important social media is for your marking efforts, especially to reach a wider, younger audience. But we see this taken to the next level through social media influencers. Influencer marketing has grown drastically, with the market size forecasted to be around $24 billion in 2024, likely growing even more as we enter into 2025.

Influencer marketing market size worldwide from 2016 to 2024

Connecting with influencers who reach your nonprofit’s target audience will likely lead to a boost in supporters and donations. With 41% of Gen Z, 24% of Millennials, 20% of Gen X and even 8.5% of Baby Boomers being motivated to support causes based on what pops up on their social media, chances are an influencer is part of who motivates them.

Nonprofits have already started on this trend. In 2023 over half of nonprofits reported working with a social media influencer.

To take advantage of the rise in influencer marketing, connect with influencers who have similar views to your nonprofit’s cause. Perhaps they have shown support for similar causes in the past or they participate in a lot of volunteering in your industry and share it with their followers.

They’ll be able to make engaging content on their platforms shared with their huge audience. As influencers share your nonprofit’s story, viewers will be called to share the post and support your nonprofit via their “link in bio” bringing in more donations and awareness. Plus, influencers have already mastered the ever-changing algorithm, increasing the likelihood for “going viral” in their posts about your nonprofit.

Direct Mail’s Power with Gen Z

Direct mail has always and will always be an effective tool for fundraising when it come to nonprofit marketing. The thought has previously been that it resonates most with older generations like Baby Boomers. However, a recent study from Giving USA shows that younger generations are more influenced to give by direct mail compared to Baby Boomers and Generation X.

Keep in mind that these younger generations still want to donate online, but are highly motivated to give from physical mail sent to their mailbox. Plus, direct mail to your entire audience will still engage your older supporters who prefer to respond with gifts through mail.

To take advantage of direct mail for Gen Z, be sure to provide easy ways to give in your direct mailers. QR codes will be the easiest thing for this tech-savvy generation to reach your donation page. It’s the best of both worlds – old school marketing with new school donations.

Read more: Nonprofit Direct Mail Fundraising Tips and Best Practices

SMS Campaigns are on the Rise

Almost everyone has a mobile phone on their person at all times. There’s a chance you’re even reading this article on your phone right now! Text message notifications are popping up all the time on your phone, with many of them being marketing texts. This is an easy way for nonprofits to get more eyes on their campaigns, as 99% of text messages are opened and 90% are opened within 3 minutes.

SMS campaigns will see major growth this year as people spend more and more time on their phones. In 2023, 4 out of 5 nonprofits already had a text program put in place. Text fundraising has already shown to be effective with Tatango and Mission Wired’s Nonprofit Text Messaging Insights Report showing 15 nonprofits received 162,000 donations and raised $5.4 million just from their SMS outreach. Clearly, texting shows high donor engagement and conversion rates!

To take advantage of this trend, implement text messaging as a part of your marketing strategy. SMS campaigns are one of the easiest ways to connect with donors and you can use software to do this easily. Whether you’re sending regular texts monthly or just focusing in on a campaign, SMS marketing is essential for nonprofits.

Nonprofit Technology Trends

It’s impossible to live in this day and age without technology. Consider the last restaurant you went to. Did they have a physical menu? Or was it just a QR code that your viewed on your phone?

To stay ahead of the game, your nonprofit needs to invest in technology. Utilizing the right tech will effectively streamline your nonprofit’s operations, enhance donor engagement and overall boost your fundraising efforts; allowing you to see more success!

Using Artificial Intelligence is the New Norm

You can hardly go on any website now without artificial intelligence being a part of the experience. X (previously Twitter) even has their own AI assistant, Grok, to help answer questions, brainstorm and problem solve. This is true for the nonprofit sector too.

In fact, 90% of nonprofits are already implementing AI to improve their marketing and engagement efforts. AI tools can make a huge difference for a nonprofit’s operations. Whether you’re just using a free tool like ChatGPT to help write your nonprofit’s monthly newsletter or an AI-powered chatbot to guide prospective donors on your nonprofit’s website, AI is everywhere for nonprofit management.

To take advantage of this, implement artificial intelligence in an area of your nonprofit that takes up a lot of time or needs a boost. For example, if you spend a lot of time manually segmenting your donor base to send out marketing emails, utilize AI to streamline this process for you. There are loads of AI-powered tools out there just waiting to improve your nonprofit. Check out tech like this to impact fundraising, marketing, events, donor communication and more!

• Raise from Gravyty
• Kindsight
• Breeze by Hubspot
• ChatGPT
• Buffer

Data and Analytics Drives All Decision-Making

Nonprofits are expected to prioritize donor-centric management in 2025, and with it, the use of data and analytics. Utilizing data analytics allows you to gain insights about donor behavior. You’ll be able to answer questions like how often they give, what platform did they give through, how many times did they receive a donation ask before giving, etc. With this info, you’re able to evaluate the efficacy of your fundraising and marketing campaigns, as well as determine where you should allocate resources.

This is a major trend of 2025 since 90% of nonprofits collect data, but only 5% use it in their decision-making. We anticipate the decision-making to increase – as it should! You can find out so much from donor data that will allow your nonprofit to see long-term success.

To take advantage of this, invest time into looking at your current and past data. Utilize technology that will make these processes easier, like a Customer Relationship Management (CRM) or Membership Management System (MMS). Plus, by understanding your donors’ behavior, you’ll be able to boost engagement, retention and acquisition through more targeted campaigns. We’ll touch on segmentation and personalization next.

Read more: 12 Fundraising Metrics Your Nonprofit Needs to Track

Segmentation and Personalized Campaigns

The second part to our trend on data and analytics is utilizing this for segmentation and personalized campaigns! How often do you get an email that’s irrelevant to your preferences? Goes straight into the trash. This is why segmentation is so important.

One of the top reasons people decide to give is because the cause resonates with them personally. Don’t waste your time sending a generic donation ask to your entire donor base. Use data about what your donors care about to send personalized campaigns. Not only does this foster a more meaningful connection with your supporters, but it’ll increase donor retention rates.

Essentially, generic campaigns are out and personalized campaigns are in this year. Focus on your nonprofit’s “why” and sending that message to the right potential supporters. You’ll see an improvement in the quality of your marketing campaigns and higher donor engagement, making your fundraising efforts a breeze!

Mobile-Friendly Interfaces are a Must

We know how effective text messaging campaigns are from our earlier trend, but this goes beyond just texts. We anticipate a shift to mobile-first donations. Donors want to give using their mobile devices and to ensure those donations go to your nonprofit, focusing on being mobile friendly is crucial.

NPSource has some great stats on mobile giving. In the past year, mobile giving donations have increased 205% and the average mobile donation pledge for fundraising events is $167. With 25% of donors making their donations on a mobile device, you can’t afford to not have this as a part of your nonprofit’s toolkit.

To embrace this for your nonprofit, add mobile payment options like Apply Pay for supporters to donate, whether you’re on site or online. Easy links to your online donation form should be on all your social media platforms. Not online does this streamline the donation process but your supporters will appreciate being able to do this on their smartphone and not transfer to a desktop computer.

Nonprofit Hiring Trends

As nonprofit managers, it’s important to consider how 2025 is going to shape your organization. You want the best people representing you and promoting your mission. While 2025 staffing looks challenging, we have some tips to improve this, even if funds are limited.

Staffing and Hiring Continues to be a Challenge

In a study from Forvis Mazars, the 2024 State of the Nonprofit Sector Report states that 74% of nonprofits had a job vacancy with difficulty recruiting and retaining staff being one of the top 5 challenges. We see this being a continued challenge, as many nonprofits work with tight budgets and are competing with companies who can offer higher salaries.

Nonprofit burnout is a real thing. 95% of nonprofit leaders say burnout is a top concern. With 20% of the nonprofit workforce living “paycheck-to-paycheck” it’s more important than ever to provide benefits where you can to make up for a tight budget when it comes to salary.

Here’s some things to consider to combat this challenge in 2025:

Offer Remote or Hybrid Options

With cost of living always rising, many individuals opt for more affordable locations that might not be close to your nonprofit’s HQ. Plus, the more flexibility, the better employee satisfaction.

Provide Benefits Other Employers Can’t Beat

The top benefits employees value are health insurance, time off and retirement benefits. Make these a priority when putting together the compensation plan. Things like great medical coverage, unlimited PTO and 401(k) matching programs can be the deciding factor for a prospective employee.

Offer Clear Career Pathing

You don’t want employees leaving after a year or two if they see no way to grow within your nonprofit. Opportunities for leadership positions or skill building in your industry will have employees more invested, leading to higher retention rates.

Bonus: Recruitment Statistics

Check out these stats from North One. They cover best practices to see success for your recruitment and employee retention this year like:

• 69% of new hires will stay for 3 years after a positive onboarding experience
• Almost 90% of applicants find job openings through social media
• 83% of candidates prefer having a clear timeline of the hiring process

We hope you find these trends helpful and embrace them this year in 2025! Cheers to a new year and your nonprofit’s success!