What 20 years of M+R Benchmarks data tells us about email

The M+R Benchmarks study turns 20 this year. 🥳

The first report, released in 2006, included 15 organizations and 32 charts. This year’s edition has 219 participants and 109 charts covering email, ads, SMS, web traffic, social media, and more.

At the Nonprofit Technology Conference earlier this month, M+R’s data analytics team walked through how the study has evolved. 

If you’re an email person, the 20-year view is worth sitting with. 

TL;DR, email’s role has shifted more than most of us realize.

Email was THE lead
For roughly the first ten years of Benchmarks, email metrics took center stage.

That made sense. Email was the primary digital channel for nonprofits, and the numbers reflected it.

As recently as 2021, email accounted for 35% of all online revenue.

By last year’s report, the share of online revenue attributable to email had fallen to 11%. Nonprofits sent 9% more emails in 2024 than the year before, and email revenue dropped 11% on average.

Email’s job has changed
That revenue decline doesn’t mean email is dead!

It means email went from being the primary revenue channel to being the connective tissue between channels. 

Your ads drive people to your list. Your emails build the relationship. Your donation page closes the gift.

Email still touches almost every conversion path, even when it doesn’t get direct credit for the revenue.

The metrics we track shifted, too
Open rates used to be a go-to benchmark. M+R’s team was blunt about this at NTC.

Since Apple introduced Mail Privacy Protection in 2021, open rates have been inflated by machine opens that don’t reflect real human behavior. 

Different CRMs handle this differently, which means open rates can’t be reliably compared across organizations anymore.

If you’re still reporting open rates to your board as a primary measure of email health, it’s worth rethinking that.

Meanwhile, monthly giving went from about one-tenth of online revenue a decade ago to nearly a third in last year’s report.

That’s a story about email, even though it doesn’t look like one. Recurring giving programs depend on email to build a real relationship with your one-time donors, priming them for the big ask.

What’s coming on April 22
The 2026 Benchmarks launches April 22. M+R shared some early findings at NTC, and I want to flag a couple of them.

Online giving grew by double digits from 2024 to 2025, with some issue sectors up by more than 30%. That’s huge!

Email showed mostly steady growth or held even with 2024. M+R described it as “email did okay.”

After last year’s decline in email revenue, steady is a positive.

The bottom line
Twenty years of Benchmarks data tells a clear story for email. 

The channel’s direct revenue share has shrunk, but its role in the fundraising ecosystem is more critical than ever.

If you only look at email revenue, it’s easy to think the channel is declining. 

If you look at how every other channel depends on it, the picture is different.

Email is where the relationship lives. The numbers just took 20 years to show it.

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‘Til next time!
Sara