What We Learned From Year-End Digital Fundraising Performance

The final days of the year mark one of the most important fundraising windows for nonprofits. With our results officially in, year-end data highlights how digital fundraising performed across channels. From December 26 through January 1, channels showed meaningful growth, strong return on ad spend, and clear opportunities to build on in the year ahead.

Across Moore clients, year-end revenue increased 25% year over year during the December 26 to January 1 period.

Several channels stood out for both scale and efficiency.

Text Messaging: A Standout Growth Channel

Texting was a significant growth channel for clients at the end of the year, with 62% revenue growth year over year and 94% more donations.

Timing was one of the biggest contributors to this success. Our research into optimal send times paid dividends, particularly on New Year’s Eve. Research showed early afternoon sends performed best.

Text messaging continues to prove its value as a high-impact channel when informed by data and executed with precision.

Email: Consistent Revenue and Strategic Growth

Email revenue increased 9% year over year at year end, while the total number of gifts grew by 27%.

January 1^st ended up being a great day for email. Sends on that day generated as much email revenue as December 26th, showing a clear opportunity for future growth and optimization around post-holiday messaging.

We also saw strong performance from Founding Partners using SimioCloud’s Email Acquisition. Results included:

• One organization breaking even within five days
• Another driving a 260% ROAS
• A local nonprofit breaking even within eight days across a newly acquired national email audience

These organizations are positioned to grow even faster in 2026, having expanded their email files during the year-end period.

Programmatic: Scaling Despite Higher Costs

Programmatic advertising revenue was up 26% year over year during the final week of the year.

This growth came despite CPMs increasing by 35%, driven by a strategic shift toward more premium inventory. Even with these higher costs, return on ad spend remained strong at almost 5x,[AR1]  making programmatic a powerful channel for both revenue and scale.

In addition, donor numbers increased by 19%, reinforcing programmatic’s role in expanding reach while maintaining efficiency.

Paid Search: Strong Gains Amid Rising CPCs

Search revenue increased 47% year over year, outperforming significantly higher costs per click.

Performance Max campaigns were a major driver of success. Many clients workshopped them throughout 2025 to strengthen year-end performance. These campaigns were the top performers in search and often delivered lower costs per click than standard responsive search ads.

Paid Social: Higher Engagement Drives Efficiency

Paid social users engaged at far higher rates than in recent years during this year-end period.

Despite higher CPMs year over year, a nearly 90% increase in click-through rate led to:

• 22% increase in gifts
• 10% decrease in net cost per gift
• 24% increase in ROAS

Looking Ahead

Year-end fundraising remains one of the most important moments of the year, and these results highlight what’s possible when strategy, testing, and execution come together across channels.

We’ll also be creating a webinar focused on GivingTuesday and end-of-year best practices; watch this space for that!