Fundraising Benchmarks: What we learned in 2025
By Tobin Aldrich, 11th September 2025
We are launching the 2025 Fundraising Benchmarks report, in collaboration with the Chartered Institute of Fundraising.
This is the second year of what we hope to be an annual study. In 2025 we have had 53 charities take part who, together, account for £1.8bn of voluntary income, about 8% of the total of the UK voluntary sector.
Benchmarking charity performance is hard. The charity and nonprofit sector is incredibly diverse. How charities organise, deliver and report on their fundraising varies hugely. And fundraisers are busy people with limited time and resource to devote to activities they can’t see as directly and immediately benefiting their charity. So this isn’t the easiest thing to do but it is we think, really valuable.
The Fundraising Benchmarks we produce focus on answering a small number of key questions about fundraising performance. What is the income being generated by each fundraising area? What are charities spending on fundraising in these areas? And therefore what returns are being generated? Over time we will be able to see how these are changing and draw conclusions about the trajectory of fundraising.
Other information that we are gathering in this process includes data on the size of fundraising teams - this is proving particularly useful for charities looking at whether they have the right level of resourcing in key areas. And the information we are gleaning across each fundraising area is showing some fascinating insights.
The four things I found most interesting this year were:
Scale helps. The average charity with voluntary income under £10m has £300k of voluntary income, one with £100m+ has £900k.
Legacies are critical. Legacies and individual giving account for over two-thirds of income. Legacies are even more important for net income, accounting for nearly two-fifths of charity net income.
But are they prioritised? Investment in legacy marketing is increasing significantly but remains a small proportion of fundraising spend.
Investment in new donors remains significant. Over half of expenditure on individual giving is on recruiting new donors, with the charity in the sample with the largest recruitment programme bringing in over new 100k regular givers last year.
We are planning to continue this survey every year. We are also looking at doing versions for specific sub-sectors. Do get in touch if you’d like us to look at doing it for your sector.
If you want a copy of the 2025 Fundraising Benchmarks report, email us at info@aawpartnership.com.