The FY26 Benchmarks Are In: 5 Trends to Build Your 2027 Plan Around
Oct 2026 - READ IN 3 MINUTES
You already know your own numbers: which appeals landed, which events filled the room, and which volunteers moved the needle. That’s the right foundation for your 2027 plan. But your data can only show how you performed against yourself. Adding peer data to the mix answers a different set of questions: Where are you ahead of schools like yours? Where is there room to grow? And which peer strategies are worth testing next year?
The GiveCampus FY26 Benchmarking Reports are built to help you answer these questions. Each report contains anonymized, aggregate data from schools on the GiveCampus platform during FY26 (July 1, 2025–June 30, 2026), broken into two reports—one for higher-ed, one for independent schools. The data covers all things advancement from online giving performance to volunteer engagement to event trends to frontline fundraising efficiency, and more.
Below are five trends we saw show up across both segments but if you want the full data sets for your segment explore the free reports:
Higher Ed Benchmarking Report
Independent School Benchmarking Report
5 Trends to Take Into Your 2027 Strategy
1. The personal ask keeps winning
Across the board, donors who hear from a peer give more than donors who hear only from the institution. Donors assigned to a volunteer made about 2x more gifts than unassigned donors at higher ed institutions, and about 3x more at independent schools. Assigned donors also led to better retention of lapsed donors—both LYBUNTs and SYBUNTs.
People open messages from their peers, too. Volunteer emails saw open rates of 64 percent at higher ed institutions and 74 percent at independent schools. The typical nonprofit email gets a 28.6 percent open rate.
For your 2027 plan: How many of your donors will get an ask from a person, not just from your institution? If your volunteer program only kicks in for reunions, consider putting class agents and parent volunteers to work year-round with GC Volunteer Management.
2. A ticket price gets people in the door
Charging for an event does more than cover catering. It makes registrants more likely to actually show up. That was true for both segments in FY26:
- Higher ed institutions: Paid events checked in 49.7 percent of registrants, compared with 23.3 percent for free events.
- Independent schools: Paid events checked in 27.6 percent of registrants, compared with 16.3 percent for free events.
The gap shows up across nearly every event type. It’s widest at higher ed family and parents weekend events, where paid check-in climbs to 89.2 percent, and at independent school local and regional gatherings (43.8 percent paid vs. 12.5 percent free).
Here’s where the two segments split: which event type generates more dollars. At higher ed institutions, paid events raised about 125 percent more than free ones. Conversely, at independent schools, free events like Grandparents’ Day drove 54 percent of the dollars raised through events.
For your 2027 plan: Which free events on your calendar could carry even a modest ticket price? And which ones could add a giving option at registration with GC Events?
3. Recurring giving is compounding
More donors are signing up for recurring gifts, and they’re sticking around. In FY26, the average higher ed Partner processed 37.7 percent more recurring gift charges than the year before. The average independent school Partner processed 17.9 percent more than the prior year.
The two segments are winning in different ways:
- Higher ed institutions lead on setup. About 61 percent of new recurring subscriptions had no set end date, compared with 47 percent at independent schools.
- Independent schools lead on staying power. More than three-quarters (76 percent) of their indefinite subscriptions from last year are still active, the highest retention rate of either segment. Higher ed sits at 67 percent.
In both segments, open-ended subscriptions keep gifts coming.
For your 2027 plan: Are new recurring donors defaulting to “no end date” on your giving forms? If you’re on a calendar year, this is an easy change to make before your year-end push.
4. DAFs are going mainstream
Donor-advised funds are moving from a major-gifts niche to an everyday giving option. According to M+R research, DAF revenue grew 153 percent year over year in 2025. Donors who shifted from cash to non-cash gifts gave roughly 10 times more than before.
The GiveCampus Partner community is seeing the same thing. DAFpay lets donors give directly from their DAF on a school’s giving form, and adoption grew quickly in the first full fiscal year since DAFpay was offered on the platform:
- Higher ed institutions: 164 enabled DAFpay, with an average gift of just over $3,000.
- Independent schools: 125 enabled DAFpay, with an average gift of $1,938.
For comparison, the average giving form gift was $308 at higher ed institutions and $520 at independent schools. That gap is why DAF visibility matters well beyond your major-gift prospects.
For your 2027 plan: Is DAF giving front and center on your forms before your biggest giving moment of the year?
5. AI is everywhere
AI was a powerful asset for frontline fundraising in FY26. Across the GiveCampus platform, gift officers averaged 384 AI-assisted contact reports each. The ones getting the most value use it end to end: donor bios before a visit, smarter trip planning, and contact reports, follow-up emails, and task lists afterward. That frees up time for the work only they can do, which is building relationships.
AI is also showing up on the events calendar. Nearly 9 percent of higher ed Partners hosted at least one event about AI, like career workshops and faculty panels. Independent schools also ran AI programming such as AI literacy sessions for parents and faculty.
For your 2027 plan: Is AI in your plan as a team strategy, or is it still a set of individual habits? Start with the tasks that eat your team’s time, like writing contact reports or drafting personalized outreach at scale. Then build shared streamlined workflows that leverage AI.
Put the benchmarks to work in your 2027 plan
Again, your own data tells you what worked for your school last year. Peer benchmarks add context: what’s typical, what’s possible, and where schools like yours are finding momentum. Together, they give you a clearer picture of where to invest your team’s time and budget next.
How you use them depends on your planning rhythm, and many teams juggle more than one:
- Working toward FY27 goals? You’re already a few months in. Use the benchmarks as a mid-year gut check to adjust spring appeals, events, and volunteer outreach while there’s still time to move the needle.
- Setting calendar-year 2027 goals? Use the benchmarks to pressure-test your targets and prioritize new ideas before you lock in your calendar and budget.
Whichever cycle you’re on, here are a few questions to bring to your next planning meeting:
- How many donors will hear from a person, not just an institution?
- Which events could carry a ticket price, and which need a built-in giving ask?
- Are new recurring gifts set up to run with no end date?
- Is DAF giving visible before your biggest giving moment?
- Is AI part of your team’s strategy, or just individual habits?
These questions pull from our five trends above and are just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to FY26 insights. The full reports include benchmarks for giving form and social fundraising conversion, event giving rates, volunteer role trends, and so much more.
Dive into the reports to see how your program measures up against peer performance. .