What is donor retention rate?

Donor retention rate is calculated as the number of donors from a prior period (often a year) who also gave in the following period, divided by the total donors in the prior period. If 100 people gave last year and 45 give again this year, retention is 45%. Sector benchmarks vary, but new-donor retention is typically lower (often around 20–25%) and repeat-donor retention is higher.

Retention matters because acquiring a new donor is more expensive than keeping an existing one. A program that focuses only on new-donor acquisition without stewardship leaks supporters at the same rate it adds them. Retention is a slower lever than acquisition, but a more durable one.

CrowdCreate exports your funder list with timestamps and amounts; you can compute your own retention by comparing two periods of that export. The widget doesn't surface retention metrics directly — that's a job for whatever you read the CSV into.