The Catholic Generosity Report has reached Rome, where it was presented to Pope Leo XIV. It is the first detailed study of how Catholics in the UK give and the charities they support. The findings point to a substantial contribution. We estimate that UK Catholics give around £2.9bn a year through parishes, dioceses, schools, hospices, missions and hundreds of smaller charities.

In 64% of the UK's top 100 charities, the most senior fundraiser is also responsible for marketing and communications. A year ago, that figure was 56%. Among charities raising more than £100m in voluntary income, it reaches 76%.

Blind Veterans UK wanted to make better use of data to understand its audiences, improve services, strengthen fundraising and show its impact. The difficulty was turning that aim into practical change.

The average salary for the most senior fundraising leader at the UK's top 100 charities is now £122,778, up from £116,774 a year ago. That is a rise of 5.1% and the headline figure from AAW Group's (AAW) 2026 salary benchmark. But the average only tells part of the story…

Charity lotteries are a significant source of fundraising income, but how much do we really know about their performance, costs and potential? The Lotteries Council asked AAW Group (AAW) to build the most complete picture yet of UK charity lottery income, costs and performance.

What should a charity pay its most senior fundraising leader? It’s a question we hear regularly from charity leaders and Boards. But finding a useful benchmark for these roles can be surprisingly difficult. That’s why AAW has published its second annual Fundraising Leadership Salary Benchmark, looking at salaries for the most senior fundraising leaders across the UK’s top 100 charities by voluntary income.

For most of my career I've wanted one thing that didn't exist. A single, consistent picture of the UK fundraising market. How big it is, where the money comes from, which parts are growing and which are quietly falling away.

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?

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.