Across this series I've argued two things that pull against each other and are both true. Rapid growth in the UK charity sector has come far more from causes rising in public prominence than from anything the charities themselves did. And within any given market, the difference in performance between organisations working on the same cause is enormous, and it comes down to their capability rather than their conditions.

In part one, I looked at every UK charity that grew voluntary income by 90% or more since 2019, and found that in most cases the main driver was a change in the world outside the charity rather than a change in what the charity did. Read on its own, this is rather unhelpful. If growth is mostly about conditions, why bother investing in fundraising capability at all?

Every fundraiser has a theory about who's winning right now. Sharper digital campaigns. A brand that finally clicked. A new chief exec who shook things up. Ask five people which UK charities have grown the most in the last five years and you'll get five similar lists, and five different, mostly unverified, explanations for why.

Following the launch of AAW’s AI CAM, it has certainly got conversation flowing. Ask most fundraising directors what they are doing with AI right now and you will hear a familiar set of answers. Better email targeting. Smarter segmentation. AI-assisted content. Prospect screening tools. All of it is real and actively being invested in. Much of it is delivering modest gains, but very little of it is strategic.

Following the discussion on global trends, the second part of the workshop explored benchmarking insights from a cross-alliance review of recent Disasters Emergency Committee appeals.

AAW was invited to join the final day of the EAA workshop to contribute to this discussion. We led a session focused on global trends and the shifting context for humanitarian fundraising.

AI is already part of day-to-day work in most charities.

It’s being used to draft content, support fundraising activity, speed up reporting and test new ideas. In many cases, it’s saving time and helping teams get through growing workloads.

Our Fundraising Benchmark Challenge, hosted by our quiz master Deniz Hassan, asked a series of simple (and not-so-simple) questions based on real benchmarking data. Hundreds of fundraisers, leaders and sector professionals took part - we think it’s a future quiz show in the making!

So, what did the sector get right? Let’s take a look.

Wrapping up a recent fundraising strategy project has been such a pleasure. Not just because of the big questions we’ve explored but also because of the brilliant team I’ve had the privilege of supporting.

If you look across the charity sector today, you’ll see a common theme: organisations of every size are struggling to make their fundraising and engagement strategies deliver. From grassroots groups to big household names, performance is stalling or slipping.

A well-crafted strategy pushes back against the natural drift of priorities and the constant pull of the urgent tasks over the important ones. It creates momentum, sets a clear direction and, in those early stages, it can feel powerful.

It’s been quite a year for AAW and our benchmarking work — and we’re delighted to launch our first ever Fundraising Leadership Salary Benchmark Report, offering a clear snapshot of pay levels for senior fundraising leaders across the UK’s top charities in 2025.

My very first fundraising role, back in the early noughties, was as a Legacy Marketing Exec.  I absolutely loved my meetings with legacy supporters and hearing firsthand their motivations for leaving the ultimate gift.  But for all the supporters we knew about, there were many more that we didn’t – a reminder that legacy giving can be as unpredictable as it is powerful.

Fundraising and Finance Directors often tell me a version of the same story: “We’re spending millions on fundraising… but I can’t quickly show the return—or how confident we are in it.” That’s a problem. The UK’s top 100 charities alone spent £1.5bn on fundraising in 2024; not being able to evidence current or future returns puts budgets, strategy and trustee confidence at risk.

We live in a sector awash with dashboards, reports, and metrics, so much so that it’s easy to assume everything is working as it should. But scratch the surface and you’ll often find something much less reassuring: fundraising programmes built on sand, behind smoke and mirrors.