The primary trend for the 2025 end-of-year season so far is “More Donors, Fewer Dollars.” While news organizations are successfully attracting more individual donations (+3.9%) than last year, the average donation size has dropped significantly (-6.4%), leading to a slight decline in overall revenue for the period.
However, Giving Tuesday was a major outlier, defying the broader trend with significant growth in both volume (+10.9%) and total revenue (+6.1%).
How do we know this?
GlueLetter imports publishers’ reader revenue payments data as part of our “Conversion Tracking” features to deeply attribute and analyze how their marketing emails and newsletters drive revenue.
This analysis includes all reader payments received by GlueLetter publishers who have a voluntary donation model (it excludes required subscriptions).
The year-end season of November and December usually accounts for the largest share of fundraising, especially when supported by the NewsMatch program that offers matching funds during this season.
Let’s look deeper at the donation trends we’re seeing so far this season, and in particular for this week’s “Giving Tuesday” (a day each year on which many nonprofit organizations of all types encourage giving.)
The season of year-end giving so far
Comparison: Nov. 1–Dec. 3, 2025 vs. Nov. 1 – Dec. 4, 2024
The broader holiday giving season since Nov. 1 shows a disconnect between engagement and financial return.
- Participation is up: The number of payments increased by 3.9%. This suggests that audience calls to action are working and readers are willing to chip in.
- Total revenue is down: Despite higher volume, total revenue fell by 2.8%.
- Smaller average gifts: The driver of this revenue drop is a 6.4% decline in the average donation amount (from $37.01 down to $34.64).
- Fewer major donors: The number of donations of $300 or more this season is currently down by 21% from 2024. The overall revenue drop is driven in part by a decrease in high-value gifts.
The ‘Giving Tuesday’ bump
Comparison: Dec. 1–3, 2025 vs. Dec. 2–4, 2024
Giving Tuesday (or “Giving News Day”) remains a critical driver for news philanthropy.
- Surge in volume: Payments skyrocketed by 10.9% year-over-year.
- Positive revenue growth: Unlike the broader period, Giving Tuesday revenue grew by 6.1%.
- Efficiency drop: Even during this successful window, the average revenue per payment still dropped by 4.3%. The success of Giving Tuesday relied on volume overwhelming the lower donation amounts.
- Fewer recurring gifts. While giving volume is up, the commitment level of donors is flat or declining.
Immediate revenue was up 6.1%, however the annualized value of those contributions was only up 4% from the prior year. (A new $10 monthly donor counts as $10 in immediate revenue but $120 in annualized revenue.) This implies that on Giving Tuesday people were less willing to commit to long-term recurring support compared to last year.
What’s causing this?
One way to explain this trend is that consumers are facing economic pressures that trickle down to their giving habits.
While more people than last year are giving money to news orgs, they are giving less and are less willing to make a commitment of recurring payments for the future.
Major donors are also declining, signaling that even at higher income levels, people are feeling less secure.
See your own donations data
Publishers included in this analysis use GlueLetter to track and support their email fundraising efforts. The software can attribute each reader payment to the email activity that preceded it. It also provides tools for generating fundraising campaigns, and targeting emails to segments based on their interests and behaviors.
Connect your organization’s payments data to GlueLetter to see in detail how your revenue is trending, and which newsletters and fundraising campaigns drive results.
Visit our features page to learn more, and contact us for a demo.