2025 Nonprofit Website Benchmarks

The simplest way to understand a session is to think of it as a single “visit” to your website. It represents the time a person spends actively interacting with your nonprofit’s website.

A session isn’t limited to just one page. Whether a visitor looks at only your donate page or clicks through many different pages of your website, it all counts as the same session as long as they remain active.

Google Analytics has a few rules to decide when a session is officially over:

• If someone leaves your website open in a browser tab but doesn’t click or interact with the page for 30 minutes, the session expires.
• If that same person comes back to their computer later and clicks a link on your site, it will count as a brand-new session.

There isn’t one perfect number for every nonprofit. In our 2025 benchmark data, the median session duration is 2m 3s, which can be a helpful reference point. That said, this number can look very different depending on the page type and your specific goal. For example, a long session can be a positive sign when someone is engaged with your blog or your impact stories. But for task-based pages (like registration forms or donation pages) longer sessions could signal that there’s some friction in the process.

The median engagement rate for nonprofit websites in our data is 43.2%. This means that for about 4 out of every 10 visits, the visitor stayed for more than 10 seconds, triggered a key event or had at least two page views. That’s the Google Analytics definition of an “engaged session.”

Donate pages stand out with an 83% engagement rate, which makes sense: someone who makes it to your donate page is already motivated. Blog posts come in lower at 52%, but they keep visitors reading for the longest amount of time.

If your engagement rate is significantly below 43%, start by reviewing your homepage and top landing pages. Make sure each page clearly explains what your organization does, who it’s for and what you want visitors to do next. If you’re not sure where to begin, our guide on How to Nail Your Nonprofit Website Homepage includes a practical rubric you can use to evaluate and improve your homepage.

Organic search and direct traffic are two different ways people arrive at your website.

Organic search means someone found your site through an unpaid search engine result (like Google or Bing). For example, they might search for “animal rescue near me” and click on your website in the search results.

Direct traffic means someone came to your site without clicking a link from another source that can be tracked. This often happens when they type your URL into their browser, use a bookmark or click a link in a place where tracking information isn’t passed along.

Both can be valuable. Organic search can show how well people are discovering you through search, while direct traffic can be a sign of brand awareness or returning visitors. According to our data, organic and direct traffic together account for nearly 75% of visits.

Some month-to-month variance is completely normal. Website traffic and engagement can shift based on things like:

• Seasonality
• Campaigns
• Events
• Email promotion
• Social posts
• News coverage
• Changes to your site content

Our Monthly Traffic Trends data shows a seasonal pattern across nonprofit websites, with traffic peaking in the fall and year-end giving season. November accounts for 11.2% of annual sessions, December 10.9%, and October 10%, while May–July are lower at around 7% each.

For most nonprofits, it’s more helpful to look at trends over several months (or year over year) than to judge performance based on one month alone.

If you see a sudden spike or drop, that’s usually a good reason to investigate. But smaller ups and downs month to month are normal, and not always a sign that something is wrong.