Fundraising Salaries: How leadership pay really moves

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. Looking at the same 98 charities individually, pay at this level rarely moves up gradually each year. In most cases, it either stays within the same reported band or changes substantially.

Two ways of measuring the rise

The 5.1% increase compares this year's published average with last year's. Both figures include an inflation uplift because most of the data comes from annual accounts that are 12 to 18 months old by the time they are filed.

This year, we changed the calculation. Instead of applying a flat 3% uplift, we used 3.4% per year, calculated from each charity's year-end. We also revisited the latest accounts for every charity rather than carrying forward estimates from last year's report.

To account for these changes, we compared the figures before any inflation uplift. On this basis, pay rose by 3.5%. Regular pay across the UK economy increased by 3.4% over the same period. In real terms, fundraising leaders at the largest charities have seen much the same increase as the wider workforce.

More than a third of posts did not move

Of the 98 charities, 37 reported no change in salary band.

This needs some care. Charities report salaries in £10,000 bands, so a director could receive a modest increase without moving into a higher band. The figures cannot tell us exactly what happened to every individual's pay. They do show that, for more than a third of these posts, any change was insufficient to shift the role into a different reported band.

Where pay rose, it rose a long way

Pay increased at 41 charities, by an average of £16,700. That is around 14% of the average salary and roughly four times the rise across the panel as a whole.

Increases of this size are unlikely to reflect an annual pay award alone. In our data, they are most often associated with a role being re-recruited or re-scoped, with the salary reset against what comparable charities have recently paid.

At one in five charities, it fell

Pay fell at 20 charities, by an average of £14,600.

In some cases, posts have been restructured or incorporated into a wider engagement role at a different grade. In others, last year's estimate has been replaced by better information. A lower reported salary for a role does not necessarily mean the person in post took a pay cut.

What this means for boards

Boards setting salaries for their fundraising leaders will often start with what they paid for the role last time. But the market is shaped by what comparable charities are willing to pay when they recruit.

Where those figures have drifted apart, the gap can become clear when a role is next advertised. Salary benchmarking helps boards understand where their offer sits in the current market and whether it is likely to attract the leaders they need.

Want to learn more? Download our 2026 Fundraising Leadership Salary Benchmark Report - for free!