The Fundraising Effectiveness Project

Helping nonprofits increase giving at a faster pace by providing critical tools for tracking and evaluating their annual growth in giving.

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FEP Q4 2025 Fundraising Effectiveness Project Reports Strongest Revenue Growth in Five Years, Even as Fewer Donors Give

(Posted by AFP Global | April 21, 2026)

New data from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP) shows that total charitable dollars raised grew by an estimated 5.0% (±0.5%) in 2025 compared to 2024, marking the strongest growth the sector has seen in five years. At the same time, the number of donors declined by 3.6% (±0.5%), continuing a downward trend that began in 2021. Read More.

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Who We Are

The Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP) delivers trusted data insights that help fundraisers improve their outcomes, driving growth and increasing generosity across the nonprofit sector. We envision a sector where actionable data guides every fundraiser’s decisions, helping nonprofits become more effective and adaptive. Since its founding in 2006, FEP has become a leading resource for data-driven insights. FEP is a collaborative project of the Association of Fundraising Professionals (AFP) Foundation for Philanthropy and GivingTuesday.

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What We Do

The goal of the Fundraising Effectiveness Project (FEP) is to help nonprofit organizations increase giving at a faster pace. FEP pursues this goal by providing nonprofits with tools for tracking and evaluating their annual growth in giving.

Growth in giving is the net of gains in giving minus losses in giving. Nonprofits raise more money by investing more money in growth-oriented fundraising strategies that both increase gains and reduce losses. The FEP is focused on “effectiveness” (maximizing growth in giving) rather than “efficiency” (minimizing costs).

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How We Do It

FEP conducts an annual survey, provides useful growth in giving performance measurement tools and publishes gain(loss) statistics in quarterly and yearly reports through a partnership between AFP, #GivingTuesday, and participating donor software firms.

The FEP resources support growth-oriented fundraising programs. The goal of the Growth in Giving Initiative (GiG) is to help grow philanthropy’s share of the GDP. The GiG Initiative has emerged as a larger umbrella organization in conjunction with the creation of the new Growth in Giving Database and its enormous potential for research. We currently have more than 25,000 nonprofit organizations participating in this important effort, representing more than 125 million donation transactions.

Our partnership with GivingTuesday gives us additional data resources and broadens our audience to help grow giving. Together, we co-produce the Quarterly Fundraising Report™, a deep dive into a wide variety of YTD fundraising metrics.

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