LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks for Non-Profit Organizations (2026)

Key Takeaways

In non-profit management, the average LinkedIn connection acceptance rate is 29.7%. Replies to the connection note average 5.0%, and replies to a message after the connection is accepted average 8.0%. Those numbers come from 73,905 connection requests sent by 83 non-profit management accounts between May 2025 and April 2026. Against the cross-industry averages of 28.5%, 3.0% and 10.4%, non-profit management is above on acceptance and note replies and below on message replies.

Non-profit Organization Mgmt vs. the platform average

Metric	Non-profit Organization Mgmt	All industries	Difference	Rank
Connection acceptance	29.7%	28.5%	+1.2 pts	9th of 38
Connection-note reply	5.0%	3.0%	+2.0 pts	3rd of 38
Message reply after acceptance	8.0%	10.4%	-2.4 pts	36th of 38

Across the 38 industries with at least 50 sending accounts, acceptance runs from 21.8% (telecommunications) to 36.5% (staffing & recruiting). Note replies run from 1.8% to 6.6%, and message replies from 7.2% to 18.9%.

What the numbers say about non-profit outreach

Non-profit senders get the third-best note reply rate of the 38 reported industries and the third-worst message reply rate. Note replies of 5.0% rank 3rd of 38, two points above the 3.0% cross-industry average and behind only staffing and recruiting and venture capital and private equity. Message replies of 8.0% rank 36th, 2.4 points under the platform. No other industry has a wider gap between its best and worst rank.

The second fact decides the result. End to end the sector converts about 2.4 in every 100 recipients into a reply to a follow-up, 33rd of 38 against a cross-industry 3.0. That figure multiplies acceptance by message replies, so the note replies the sector is good at do not appear in it, and acceptance of 29.7%, 9th of 38, is not enough to offset a follow-up this weak.

Its three nearest matches, human resources, professional training and coaching, and transportation, trucking and railroad, rank 4th, 5th and 6th on note replies, so the strong-note shape is shared. Non-profit is the most extreme version of it: a higher note rate than any of the three and a lower message rate than all of them. On 83 accounts both ranks deserve some caution, though the same tilt toward the note shows up in all three neighbours.

If your numbers sit below these

The dataset says where an account sits, not why. From what we see in campaigns, three gaps come up most often in this sector, and they point at different problems.

Message replies under 8.0%. The sector line is already 36th of 38, and this is the step that decides the end result. From what we see in campaigns, a number below it usually means the first message starts the conversation over instead of continuing the one the note opened, which wastes what the note achieved.

Note replies under 5.0%. This is the sector’s strongest measure, 3rd of 38 and two points above the platform. Platform-wide, note replies fell from 3.5% in May 2025 to 2.2% in April 2026 and the report does not break that decline out by industry, so a recent campaign a little under the sector line may simply be tracking the trend. Well under it usually means a templated note.

Acceptance under 29.7%. The sector accepts above the platform, 9th of 38. A shortfall here costs less per point than one on messages, but it shrinks the pool the follow-up has to work on, and in a sector where the follow-up is already the weak step the two losses compound.

Further reading:

• Improving your LinkedIn Sales Navigator targeting
• How many LinkedIn invites can you send a week?
• Personalising a LinkedIn message request without tripping limits
• The LinkedIn message follow-up formula
• Tips for building a LinkedIn content strategy for B2B sales
• The best AI lead generation software to add to your stack
• Fundraising on LinkedIn: finding investors for nonprofits

Frequently asked questions

What is a good LinkedIn acceptance rate in the non-profit sector?

29.7% is the sector average, 1.2 points above the 28.5% cross-industry figure and 9th of 38 reported industries. Above 31% is doing better than the sector. Acceptance is not the problem for non-profit outreach: replies to the message after acceptance are.

Should non-profits focus on the connection note or the follow-up message?

The follow-up. Non-profit accounts already reach 5.0% note replies, 3rd of 38, while message replies of 8.0% rank 36th. The end-to-end result, about 2.4 replies per 100 recipients against 3.0 across the platform, is built from acceptance and message replies, so the message is where the sector loses ground.

How does the non-profit sector compare with other industries?

Acceptance ranks 9th of 38, note replies 3rd and message replies 36th. End to end about 2.4 in 100 recipients reply to a follow-up, 33rd of 38 against roughly 3.0 across all industries, with the whole shortfall coming from the message after acceptance.

How this data was collected

Non-profit Organization Mgmt is reported from 83 accounts and 73,905 connection requests sent between May 2025 and April 2026, drawn from the LinkedIn Outreach Benchmarks 2026 dataset of 13.2 million requests across 13,302 accounts. That report carries the full methodology, along with the breakdowns by sender seniority, company size and month that are not repeated here.

Two things to hold in mind while reading any of these figures. The industry is the sender’s, taken from their company profile, not the recipient’s. And only industries with at least 50 sending accounts are reported at all: below that, a single unusual account moves the average by several points, which is why some of the most extreme numbers in the full appendix are not published here.

Related industry benchmarks

• Human Resources, 30.5% acceptance and 9.7% message replies
• Professional Training & Coaching, 27.4% acceptance and 8.6% message replies
• Management Consulting, 28.0% acceptance and 9.2% message replies
• All industry benchmarks

Grade your own outreach against these numbers

Enter your own acceptance and reply rates and grade your outreach against the non-profit management benchmark, plus see where you sit among all 38 reported industries. No signup.

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Data updated 19 August 2026. Refreshed quarterly against the source report.