This year’s study measures the online fundraising and advocacy results of 154 nonprofit participants including. The nonprofits range in size and sector and include organizations like Sierra Club, Feeding America, Oxfam America, PETA, Innocence Project, and Planned Parenthood Federation of America. All told, we measured 4,699,299,330 email messages, 527,754,635 web visits, and 11,958,385 donations made in 2017 and 2016.

Below are 6 top takeaways from the 2018 M+R Benchmarks Study (www.mrbenchmarks.com). The study is full of dozens more charts and specific takeaways by nonprofit sector (Cultural, Education, Environmental, Health, Hunger/Poverty, International, Public Media, Rights, and Wildlife/Animal Welfare).

Generosity is a habit. On average, 38% of donors who made an online gift to a nonprofit in 2016 made an online gift again to that nonprofit in 2017.

Will Valverde, M+R Vice President and lead author of the Benchmarks Study: “You can expect that a substantial majority of your first-time donors this year, the ones you worked so hard to acquire, will not return to make a second gift next year. But those who do, those who renew their commitment to your cause, are more likely to come back again and again. These dedicated donors are the backbone of your fundraising program, the reliable revenue your nonprofit needs to develop long-term sustainable growth.”

Email and social media are both still growing for nonprofits. In 2017, nonprofits added more supporters to their email list (+11%), sent more email (+9%), and raised more money from email revenue (+24%). Nonprofits ended 2017 with 44% more Instagram followers,13% more Facebook followers, and 15% more Twitter followers than at the beginning of the year.

Madeline Stanionis, M+R Principal and Creative Director: “If all you care about is the view from 30,000 feet, then nonprofits are seeing blue skies and clear weather. There are still plenty of areas where nonprofits can improve what they do online to attract more donors, engage more supporters, and make more change.”

Facebook isn’t showing a nonprofit’s posts to most fans of their page. On average, each post a nonprofit made on Facebook only reached 7% of its fans in 2017. For any given nonprofit Facebook post in 2017, 38% percent of the audience reached was not already following the nonprofit.  That means that a substantial number of users who see a nonprofit’s Facebook content may not have any previous connection to the nonprofit or cause.

Amy Peyrot, M+R Senior Strategist & Social Media Specialist: “Trust me, I know the Facebook algorithm and reach numbers can feel discouraging. Simply having a large number of Facebook followers isn’t enough to make sure your content is seen by large audiences. But don’t despair. When quantity of followers isn’t a guarantee of widespread reach, it simply means that quality of content matters more than ever.”

Nonprofits are spending more money than ever on social media advertising. Nonprofits spent about half of their digital ad budgets on boosted posts and News Feed ads on Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram. The remainder of budgets were split almost evenly between between display ads (e.g. banner ads) and search ads (e.g. Google search results).

The proportion of online giving from mobile users increased by 50% between 2016 and 2017. With the proportion of mobile users set to eclipse desktop users, nonprofits can no longer assume that what works for desktop will translate to a screen 1/10 the size. And as supporters grow more comfortable making gifts on mobile devices, we can’t afford to focus solely on those users with a mouse and a keyboard.

Rights and Environmental organizations were burning up inboxes with advocacy emails and actions in 2017. Gee, we wonder why. Email subscribers to Environmental nonprofits took action at higher levels than any other sector: 29% of subscribers completed an advocacy action at least once in 2017 (compared to a 21% overall average). Nonprofits in the Rights sector sent the highest volume of advocacy email: 32 emails per year per subscriber, compared to an overall average of 17.