A report from the Fundraising Effectiveness Project of the Association of Fundraising Professionals found that while fundraising through the first three quarters of 2021 kept up with 2020 levels, the number of donors continued to decline, the NonProfit Times reports.

Based on an analysis of data from 9,618 U.S.-based nonprofits that raise between $5,000 and $25 million annually, the 2021 Third Quarter Fundraising Report estimates that total donations through September increased 1.4 percent compared with the same period in 2020. The number of donors, however, fell 1.7 percent.

For the third quarter, the number of gifts saw year-over-year declines across all donor sizes, though with smaller declines among midsize (between $500 and $5,000) donors and major (between $5,000 and $50,000) donors. Total dollars donated also fell across all categories, but with smaller declines among midsize and supersize (more than $50,000) donors.

“While those figures may not seem like much, we have to remember that giving grew significantly in the first quarter of the year, by more than 6 percent, while the number of donors grew by 10 percent,” said AFP Foundations for Philanthropy executive vice president Lori Gusdorf. “We’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop, so to speak, when giving would plummet back to typical rates, but that didn’t happen in the second quarter or third quarter, either. Growth rates have remained flat, which means giving is still happening on that very high level set in in the first quarter. That’s a good sign for fundraising in the all-important fourth quarter when most charities see a large percentage of their annual giving occur.”

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