What I wish I’d known as a fundraising director

In my early months at THINK I’ve come across a few things I wish I’d known about when I was a fundraising director. I remember almost 10 years ago when I was working on my fundraising strategy, I came across a document from nfp Synergy aptly named ‘Look! nfpSynergy did my PEST analysis’. It saved me so much time, listing sourced data, analysis and insight on all the factors that I needed to consider when framing my strategies.

But what I also wanted was a real depth of data in terms of fundraising benchmarks – both the general big picture and for specific income streams in fundraising and trading at that time. Such data can be conflicting depending on the methodology, but I didn’t have the capacity to seek out various sources to get that rounded and in-depth picture.

When leading a hospice fundraising team, I recall trying to persuade my senior management team and board of trustees that we needed to make significant investment in acquisition of new lottery players. While I was successful in making the case, and the investment proved highly beneficial, I wished I’d had the time and know-how to fully research the current market situation of charity lottery, regular giving and the wider context of individual giving.

Fast forward to early 2025 and I find myself working to update the THINK Market Trends and Insights Monitor, the new edition of which we’ve just launched this month.

Within the Monitor there’s a chapter on individual giving, which collates lots of useful statistics. For example, according to the latest CAF UK Giving Report, donations and sponsorship levels from the general public are at the lowest levels since 2019. In 2019 65% of those asked had made a donation and this dropped steadily and consistently to 55%. Compared to 2019, there are four million fewer donors and the number of people sponsoring has fallen by nearly six million. However, those that are giving are consistently giving more; in 2019 the average (mean) monthly donation was £46, and this has steadily increased to £72 for the year 2024. This has led to a rise in total donations from the general public from £10.6 billion in 2019 to £15.4 billion in 2024.

There’s also handy case studies of organisations who have been undertaking different fundraising methods within individual giving and what the success rates are. I would have loved having that at my fingertips – not only would it have been easier to persuade sceptical colleagues, more crucially it would have given risk-averse trustees much needed reassurance as we stepped boldly into the future in the knowledge of the market we were entering.

But its not just individual giving fundraising – as well as an overview of the UK fundraising market, there are detailed chapters on the core fundraising disciplines of legacy, community and events, philanthropy and grant giving, corporate and trading.

Each chapter contains key facts and figures around market value, audiences and activities for each income stream, an overview of the trends in the changing landscape and how charities are responding, THINK’s experts’ views on what is likely to happen in each area in the year ahead – taking into account the cost of living crisis and the changing external environment – and an overview of the key attributes required for fundraising success in each income stream.

Some charities choose to subscribe to the whole report; others choose to purchase the overview and a specific chapter.

I know I’m close to sounding like Victor Kiam, saying “It was so good he bought the company”, but honestly, as I was researching and updating various chapters I thought if I’d have known about this when a fundraising head or director, I would definitely have bought it.

You can find all the details here on our website: thinkcs.org/THINK-Monitor

John Brady, THINK Consultant
July 2025

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