Written by Hossam Amin

I have been closely following the online donor trends associated with five different Masjid organizations during Ramadan. In particular, I focused on data from the Ramadan periods of the years 2021, 2022, and 2023. Below I have summarized some of my findings.

Average Online Donation

I had to take a moment to contemplate the following statistic:

• The average online donation was $302

Think about it for a moment, this is not a small number for an online donation, masha’a Allah. Just to put things into perspective, LaunchGood reported that “80% of supporters will give less than $50”, and in the FAQ section of this MSN article it says that “the most common donation on GoFundMe is $50”. Of course these two numbers are based on donations from the whole year, but it just goes to show you how valuable Ramadan is.

I personally believe that the average online donation during Ramadan of the analyzed organizations was significantly higher for the following reasons:

1. Most of the online donors are local to the organization they are donating to; it’s not some distant organization that they haven’t dealt with or maybe even benefited from (by local I mean within driving distance of the organization)
2. Donors are donating on the organization’s website, so fears of any portion of the donation going to a 3rd party are diminished, and the comfort level in donating relatively large amounts is higher
3. Donors likely heard of the organization’s online campaign through a trusted source, such as the organization’s mailing list, social media campaign, or a close friend

Repeat Donors

Now, I’d like to draw your attention to statistics relevant to repeat donors. Just to be sure we’re on the same page, repeat donors are those who have donated to an organization in the past and have decided to donate again during an active fundraising campaign. Here’s what I found:

• Repeat donors consistently donated more than 50% of the total online funds raised by a Masjid, and in some cases over 70%
• In cases where the Masjid purposefully targeted repeat donors in their marketing, these repeat donors donated more than 3 times what was donated by first-time donors
• Repeat donors donated online an average of $360.24 while first time donors donated online an average of $243.08

If anything, these observations show the importance of maintaining the records of donors. Actually, what this really shows is how fruitful our Ramadan fundraising campaign can be when we make a specific marketing effort that targets our past donors.

Last 10 Days of Ramadan

We all know how much more Muslims are inclined to donate during the last 10 days of Ramadan, but for the longest time I was wondering by how much compared with the rest of Ramadan. Well, here goes:

• On average, 77% of online donations came in the last 10 days of Ramadan

We all expected some large number. But, masha’a Allah, this number is quite significant: 3/4 of funds raised were in the last 10 days! Yes, it’s based on online numbers only, but at least it gives us an idea of just how crucial these days are from a fundraising perspective (not to mention from a 3ibadah perspective of course).