How do you know your fundraising investment is working?
25th September 2025 by Tobin Aldrich
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.
The root issue usually isn’t effort—it’s clarity. Many organisations lack a unified view of where fundraising money is invested, how decisions are made, how ROI is measured, and which assumptions and risks sit underneath those projections. Inconsistent methods make it tough to compare channels, justify spend, or reallocate quickly.
To help our clients understand how their fundraising investments are performing , AAW have created a Fundraising Investment Healthcheck. This is a focused review of how your organisation invests in fundraising—process, metrics, assumptions and governance—so you can evidence performance and make better, faster decisions. It’s designed to assure trustees and senior leadership that decisions are taken on the right basis and to surface the gaps to address.
In this process we will look at relevant data and documents and interview key staff to review and score seven elements that determine the effectiveness of your investments:
How ROI is calculated.
Consistency of measurement across programmes/channels.
Basis of assumptions (growth, attrition, response, costs).
Quality of data feeding your models.
Quality of reporting to leadership and trustees.
Use of benchmarks (internal & external).
How decisions are made (governance, risk appetite, approval paths).
What you will get is a clear evaluation of whether your current investment process is fit for purpose, together with a concise set of prioritised fixes, a common language for Fundraising & Finance to align on ROI, risk and resource allocation and greater assurance for trustees and leaders that spend is working—and what to do next.
If this sounds like something that your organisation could benefit from, drop me a line on tobin@aawpartnership.com.