Year-end fundraising remains the most consequential moment in the digital calendar, not only because of its revenue impact, but because it offers a clear lens into how donor behavior, channel dynamics, and strategy are evolving heading into the new year.
Across the sector, 2025 delivered another strong year-end season. Many organizations saw year-over-year growth in revenue, gift volume, and average gift, even as competition for attention intensified and digital platforms continued to shift. While results varied by organization, audience, and channel mix, consistent patterns emerged that point to what is working now, and what will be required to sustain momentum in an increasingly complex and competitive environment.
Email remains a powerful revenue driver at year-end, even as inbox competition continues to rise. Across client programs, several consistent patterns stood out:
- Multiple clients experienced year-over-year increases in email revenue.
- Proven year-end tactics continue to outperform, particularly “pending” messaging, countdown clocks, bold graphic headers, and morning (~7am) and evening (~8pm) sends on 12/31.
- In some cases, overall email volume declined year over year, yet response rates improved, indicating stronger engagement and targeting and successful list hygiene efforts.
- Top-performing emails consistently clustered on 12/30–12/31, driving the highest urgency-based response and revenue.
Email continues to function as a core fundraising workhorse, but success increasingly depends on diversification across creative concepts, testing strategies, and deployment timing to cut through a highly competitive and crowded channel.
Donation Forms
Email fundraising performance is ultimately shaped by the quality of the donation experience. In 2025, several clients achieved strong conversion rates, reinforcing the impact of sustained investment in donation form optimization and user experience.
At year-end, when volume and urgency peak, even minor disruptions can materially affect results. Load issues, branding inconsistencies, or downtime, however brief, can have outsized revenue impacts. As a result, form QC, monitoring, and optimization must be treated as a year-round discipline rather than a seasonal task.
Leading fundraising programs increasingly treat donation forms as living assets, refining them continuously through structured testing well ahead of high-volume moments. Across client programs, this includes testing ask string configurations, sustainer-first framing, social proof and urgency cues, and exit-intent strategies. Organizations that paired continuous optimization with insights from prior year-end testing were better positioned and gained a meaningful competitive edge.
Texting
Texting continued to play an increasingly meaningful role in year-end fundraising performance in 2025. Clients with active broadcast and peer-to-peer texting programs saw strong response rates and healthy average gifts, reinforcing texting’s effectiveness as an additional conversion channel.
At peak moments, texting proved particularly effective for reinforcing AM/PM email sends, amplifying match deadlines, re-engaging lapsed audiences, and strengthening urgency across the broader fundraising program.
As competition for attention intensifies, maintaining and expanding texting strategies remains an important lever for organizations seeking to maximize year-end performance and strengthen cross-channel integration.
Paid Media
Paid media delivered strong year-end performance across Avalon’s client portfolio, consistently generating meaningful revenue at profitable levels. Results reinforced paid media’s role not only as a growth engine on its own, but as an important touchpoint that strengthens performance across other digital channels during these fundraising moments.
Across nearly all active fundraising programs, paid media drove high volumes of gifts and reliable returns on ad spend, remaining resilient even as competition intensified in December.
- For Avalon clients that had campaigns in market last year, this year’s performance for year-end was particularly strong, resulting in increased donation and revenue volume with strengthened return on investment.
- Paid Search and Meta remained core revenue-driving channels with many clients prioritizing investment here.
- For clients where 2025 was their first end-of-year with an ad campaign in market, PerformanceMax was a strong driver of revenue.
- Brand awareness campaigns were successful in combatting dips in organic search traffic due to the rise of AI overviews, contributing to increases in site visits year over year.
- Many clients launched earlier in November to allow for ramp-up before Giving Tuesday and to stem the competition on Giving Tuesday itself.
Many ad programs incorporated AI optimization tools and placements to drive more efficiencies, like PerformanceMax and Advantage+. High-performing creative shared clear patterns: strong match framing and deadline urgency, countdown mechanics, short and highly scannable copy, and benefit-driven messaging that clearly articulated donor impact. These trends underscore the importance of designing paid media creative specifically for in-platform consumption rather than simply repurposing longer-form or email-style messaging.
One of the clearest takeaways from 2025 is that paid media is no longer optional at year-end. Even at modest investment levels, it consistently lifted overall digital performance by driving new donor acquisition, reinforcing urgency across channels, and delivering strong ROI.
Looking Ahead
We hope these insights provide useful context as you reflect on year-end performance and plan for the year ahead. We’ll continue building on these learnings alongside our clients as strategies evolve and digital fundraising continues to grow more integrated, more data-informed, and more dynamic.
