2025 Animal Care Benchmark

Animal care organizations, in particular, were hit on multiple fronts in 2024. They felt the continued impact of inflation and the economy as all nonprofits across the sector, however the animals in their care also brought new challenges. 

We’re now entering the fifth year of the ongoing capacity crisis and the cumulative impact of animals awaiting outcomes: 

• Length of stay for dogs of all sizes increased in 2024, adding strain to an already overburdened shelter system.  

• This extended stay contributed to the ongoing capacity crisis that has persisted since the pandemic, along with the declining rate of transfers between shelters and diminished return-to-home rates.  

• These increased cost centers put a strain on budgets across the organizations.  

At the same time, animal care organizations have experienced the continued fundraising challenges of:

• A multi-year trend of fewer donors but larger gifts.
• The widespread challenges of new donor acquisition and donor retention.

How have these trends impacted animal care fundraising? In this report, we’ll share data from 83 animal care organizations that reflect the fundraising results for the full year of 2024.  

Additionally, this year we added a new benchmark. We analyzed the data patterns of monthly sustainers. Get ready for new insights on how valuable the monthly donor is to an organization.

Here is a look at our top three takeaways: 

1. Animal care revenue continues to see strong growth 

Overall revenue is at a 10-year high, with a 6% year-over-year growth rate from 2023 to 2024. This growth is fueled by a 8% increase in donor value, driven by a 5% rise in average gift size and a 3% increase in gift frequency.  

All three of these key performance indicators are at their highest levels in a decade. Revenue was up 6% overall in the fourth quarter, driven by a 5% increase in average gift size.  

2. Donor counts continue to decline 

Active donors declined by 1.6%, with the cultivation universe dropping 2.7%. Retention for 0-24-month donors remains flat year over year but has declined 9% since 2020.  

The heart of the matter is a 0.5% drop in year-over-year retention within the core audience—those giving for two or more consecutive years—which has decreased by 2.4% since 2020. In the fourth quarter, donor volume was down 1.2% year over year but has increased by 13% since 2015. 

3. Monthly sustainer giving is impressive and growing

In 2024, a third of all animal care benchmark revenue came from monthly sustainer gifts. Eight percent of all benchmark donors are monthly sustainers, and their generosity accounts for 10% of 2024 revenue. As a result, recurring gifts have driven down the average gift by 25% while increasing gift frequency by 40%.  

Based on these findings, RKD’s experts developed three recommendations to help build and sustain healthy donor programs going forward: 

1. Make core donor retention a priority 

While retention for 0-24-month donors remains flat year over year, it has declined 9% since 2020. The heart of the matter is a 2.4% decrease in retention of the core audience since 2020. ​ 

Retention strategies are important for new and recaptured donors, but don't forget to show your core donors love as well. They are the heart of your donor file. Consider anniversary direct mail acknowledgements, quarterly omnichannel impact reporting, live stewardship calls and handwritten cards. 

2. Optimize acquisition efforts 

While gross revenue increased 6% in 2024, we can't overlook troubling trends in donor file health. The combination of a 1.6% decline in active donors and industrywide acquisition challenges has left many organizations with a need to invest in new donor volume. 

We recommend approaching acquisition through the lens of response. Consider several acquisition deployments to smaller lists, prioritized by response rate. Creative and ask array tests can help raise response as well.  

While volume is important, we also suggest including at least one to two acquisition campaigns per year that focus on high-value donors—potentially utilizing premium offers. 

3. Build a sustainer pipeline

In 2024, a third of all animal care benchmark giving came from monthly sustainer gifts. With monthly giving becoming more popular, a sustainer pipeline for under $25 donors and lapsed donors can turn low-value donors into high-return investments.  

Consider digital and direct mail sustainer conversion appeals to new donors that give under a certain threshold, such as $25. And don't forget your lapsed pool—a simple ask to sign up for monthly giving could turn dormant donors into $250+/annual givers.  

In the following sections, we’ll review the data from 2024 in detail.  

What we measured 

The 2025 Animal Care Benchmark Report contains full-file data from 83 RKD animal care clients across the United States from Jan. 1, 2015, to Dec. 31, 2024. The data includes overall program metrics like: 

• Total revenue 
• Active donors 
• New donors  
• Retention rate 
• Average gift size 
• Donor value 
• Gift frequency 

Trends are based on all donors and all gift types. Donors with a gift of $10,000 or more were excluded to ensure that the behavioral patterns measured weren’t inflated by major giving efforts. 

For monthly giving, we require that donors make the same gift (dollar amount) in three consecutive months. From that, we work to identify as many months as possible with this pattern for this donor (and gift amount). This pattern recognition process does not work if a donor signs up for monthly giving and then cancels after one gift. From the data pattern’s point of view, that is a single gift. 

Average Annual Revenue

The average annual revenue for animal care organizations reached a 10-year high at $2.1 million in 2024. This marks a 6% lift over 2023, a 23% increase since 2019 and a 68% increase since 2015. Amazing! 

Revenue by Lifecycle

• Cultivation has largely driven this growth. In 2024, the average cultivation revenue reached a five-year high of $1.96 million—a 7% increase over 2023.
• Acquisition remains an industrywide challenge, but animal care organizations saw a nice 8% bump up in new donor revenue in 2024.  
• Recapture has proven to be a strong investment to offset the challenges in acquisition. Recapture revenue continued to grow in 2024, reaching a five-year high. This marked a 20% increase over 2023 and a 57% lift over 2020.  

Average Gift

For the second year in a row, the average gift reached a new ceiling—this time at $99.89. This is a 5% increase over the previous high mark in 2023. 

Gift Frequency

Likewise, gift frequency also reached a 10-year high in 2024. The mark of 2.49 gifts per donor is a 3% increase over the previous high mark in 2023. 

Donor Value

When you set new highs in both average gift and gift frequency, you also set a new high in donor value. In 2024, the average annual donor value at animal care organizations reached $249—an 8% increase over 2023 and a 23% increase since 2019. 

Average Active Donors

While revenue has continued to grow, donor universes have been declining. In 2024, animal care organizations averaged 8,516 active donors—a 2% drop from 2023 and a 7% decrease from 2020. 

Active Donors by Lifecycle

When we break active donors down into lifecycles, we see that the core donor audience has remained steady in the last five years. However, the transition audience reached a five-year low in 2024, which speaks to challenges in retaining new donors.  

Retention

We see that 0-24-month retention remained low at 35%, matching the 2023 mark. 

Retention by Lifecycle

When we look at 12-month retention across lifecycles, we see that all three audiences are at or near their five-year-low marks.  

Small but Mighty 

While the majority of animal care donors (57%) still give only one gift per year, the number that give more than 10 gifts each year reached 9% in 2024. As you’ll see in the following charts, monthly giving has seen strong, steady growth in the animal care sector. 

Monthly Giving as % of Total Revenue

The percentage of total revenue that came from monthly giving cracked double digits for the first time in 2024 at 10.1%. The growth has been steadily increasing each year, and it’s now more than double the percentage from 10 years ago. 

Monthly Giving as % of Total Gifts

Likewise, the number of total gifts that come from monthly giving has also steadily risen, peaking at 32.9% in 2024. This is an impressive feat seeing that just 10 years ago, monthly giving made up only 13.6% of gifts. 

Average Gift Comparison 

Despite the growth in the number of sustainer donors, the average monthly gift has remained steady, hovering around $30 for the last 10 years. Meanwhile, the average gift for non-sustainers has continued to grow year over year, reaching a new high of $134 in 2024. 

Gift Frequency Comparison 

The opposite is true in gift frequency. Here we see that the average number of gifts has grown over time for sustainers. As the monthly donor files have grown, more donors on file are reaching the full 12 months each year. Non-sustainers have hovered around 1.75 gifts per year for the last 10 years.  

RKD Group is North America's leading fundraising and marketing solutions provider, serving hundreds of growth-focused nonprofit organizations. Leveraging technology, advanced data science, and award-winning strategic and creative leadership, RKD Group accelerates net revenue growth, builds long-term donor relationships, and drives the best return on investment.