Enter how many donors gave last year and how many gave again. See your retention rate, the revenue walking out the door, and the lifetime value of every donor you hold on to.
The number of unique donors in your prior period (your starting cohort).
Only count donors from last year's cohort who renewed, not brand-new donors.
Used to estimate the revenue lost to churn and the lifetime value of each donor you keep.
Donor retention rate
Attrition (churn) rate
Est. revenue lost to churn
per year, at your average gift
Benchmark bands reflect figures published by the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP). Overall donor retention has hovered around 45% in recent years, first-time/new-donor retention sits near 19–25%, and previously-retained ("repeat") donors renew at roughly 60% or more. Your own benchmark depends heavily on cause, donor mix, and gift channel, so treat these as directional, not as a target.
Lifetime value is your average annual gift times how long a donor keeps giving. The donors you carry past the first gift are worth a multiple of the average.
Your average donor
A committed recurring donor
about 7.77 years of giving (Neon One, 2026)
A donor you keep past the first gift is worth roughly your average, which is usually a better return than spending to replace the ones who lapse.
You're already retaining at or above the level of a committed recurring donor — protect it. This is where lifetime value compounds.
| Retention rate | Implied lifespan | Lifetime value per donor |
|---|---|---|
Implied lifespan uses the standard 1 ÷ (1 − retention rate) relationship: a 50% retention rate implies an average donor relationship of two years, 75% implies four years, and 80% implies five. The gains compound at the top, which is why moving from 70% to 80% retention is worth far more than moving from 40% to 50%.
A few retained donors usually beats chasing new ones.
Retention is a rate you can measure directly. Lifetime value is what that rate is worth, donor by donor.
rate = (donors retained ÷ prior-year donors) × 100
The denominator is the key: only count donors who gave in the prior period, then check how many of those exact donors gave again. New donors acquired this year are an acquisition metric, not a retention one. Churn is simply 100% − your retention rate.
LTV = average gift × (1 ÷ (1 − retention rate))
Your retention rate implies how long the average donor keeps giving: a 60% rate implies 2.5 years, 80% implies five. Multiply that lifespan by the average annual gift and you have the lifetime value of a donor — which is why every point of retention you lose shortens every donor relationship at once.
Why a few points of retention often move more money than an entire acquisition campaign.
New donors are fragile. Only about 19.4% of first-time donors give a second gift, according to the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (AFP, Q4 2024). The other four in five never come back, so most of the real work in fundraising is surviving to that second gift rather than winning the first. Every donor who lapses also has to be replaced before you grow a single dollar, which is why churn compounds against you while retention compounds in your favor.
Once a donor does become a committed, repeat giver, the math changes. Recurring donors stay an average of 7.77 years (Neon One, 2026), and they cost almost nothing to renew. Because implied lifespan is 1 ÷ (1 − retention rate), the curve gets steep at the top: moving from 40% to 50% retention adds about half a year of lifespan, but moving from 80% to 90% adds five. The organizations with the highest lifetime value tend to be the ones that simply lose the fewest donors, well before the ones with the biggest gifts.
Retention lives or dies on follow-through: prompt thank-yous, segmented appeals, easy recurring giving, and lapsed-donor reactivation before supporters drift away for good. All of that depends on knowing who gave, when, and how — which is the job of a real donor management system, and the reason Kindly keeps donations, donor records, volunteers, events, and members in one all-in-one platform instead of five disconnected tools where donors quietly fall through the cracks.
Shopping for a CRM to fix your retention? Compare the heavyweight options against an all-in-one approach: see how Kindly stacks up against Bloomerang, Neon CRM, and DonorPerfect, or book a demo and walk through your retention workflow with us.
Kindly brings donations, donor records, volunteers, events, and members into one platform for one predictable subscription, so it's far easier to thank, steward, and keep the donors you worked hard to win.
