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.