CIOF Strategy

A lifetime of impact, a career in fundraising.

The Chartered Institute of Fundraising’s three-year strategic plan comes to an end this year, giving us an opportunity to set out a new purpose that tackles some of the key challenges facing fundraising.

Many of these problems require a long-term strategic approach, creating behaviour change to better solve the challenges that fundraisers face.

We have been working for the past year – in consultation with members, our wider staff team and volunteers - on understanding the key issues now facing fundraising and our role to address these.

Our new purpose seeks to address these problems across four pillars of work, doubling our impact in a decade by reversing the decline and creating a sustainable future for fundraising focused on inspiring people to give.

Pillar 1: Attract, retain and nurture fundraising talent

Charities are struggling to find, nurture and keep skilled fundraisers. Job ads aren’t getting enough strong applicants, and the fundraising profession still lacks diversity.

We want to change that by:

In 5 years: Creating clear and accessible paths into fundraising, removing the barriers that make it hard to join and remain in the profession.
In 10 years: Making fundraising a respected and appealing career that draws in people from all backgrounds.
Our impact: A more skilled and diverse fundraising workforce that brings in more support for good causes.

Pillar 2: Change the perceptions of fundraising

Many people don’t fully understand fundraising or see it as something worth investing in. Despite its importance, spending on fundraising has gone down since before the pandemic.

We want to shift perceptions by:

In 5 years: Helping charities and the wider sector better understand the value of fundraising and the people who do it.
In 10 years: Encouraging more thoughtful, timely investment in fundraising across the sector.
Our impact: Fundraisers are better supported and able to raise more money for their causes.

Pillar 3: Drive excellent fundraising practice, setting standards, ethics and guidance

Fundraising must be done to a high standard, with honesty and transparency. Complaints are rising, and more charities are reporting when things go wrong.

We aim to raise standards by:

In 5 years: Helping more charities fully embrace ethical and best practice fundraising.
In 10 years: Making sure more fundraisers have the knowledge and skills to do their work well, with fewer complaints and happier supporters.
Our impact: Greater trust in fundraising, leading to more donations.

Pillar 4: Foster a culture that inspires more people to give

Fewer people are giving to charity, even though the total amount donated has gone up slightly. This means fewer donors are giving more, which isn’t sustainable.

We want to grow public support by:

In 5 years: Tackling myths and obstacles that stop people from giving.
In 10 years: Making giving simpler and more inspiring so more people want to support good causes.
Our impact: A stronger culture of giving, where more people feel encouraged to donate.

Harpreet Kondel: Working together to drive the change we need
Katie Docherty: A ten-year strategy to ensure fundraising & fundraisers thrive

Harpreet Kondel: Working together to drive the change we need

Fundraising – let’s not shy away from it: it’s hard work! The emotional weight of what we do, the pressure to deliver more services with fewer resources, the constant navigation of ethical complexity, the expectations, the scrutiny – it adds up, and it takes its toll.

We keep going as much as we can, because we know the cause matters and our help as fundraisers is essential. But as a result, our sector is facing significant burnout with too many of us leaving.

As a lifetime fundraiser myself, I know as well as you do that things have to change. To reverse the decline in giving, meet the demand for services and create sustainable futures for our charities, there needs to be more of us. But for more people to consider fundraising, greater support is needed for both. Fundraising must be championed right from the top of the organisation, invested in and valued, and fundraisers respected and nurtured.

Driving the change we need

I’m proud and excited then that at the Chartered Institute of Fundraising we have just announced our key priorities for the next ten years, which are all about driving the change we need. We’re aiming to double our impact in a decade by reversing the decline of fundraisers, the decline of donors, and creating a sustainable future for fundraising focused on inspiring people to give.

We’ll do this through four key pillars of work – the foundations for the Institute’s vision: attracting, retaining and nurturing fundraising talent; changing the perceptions of fundraising; driving excellent fundraising practice, setting standards, ethics and guidance; and creating a culture that is easier and more inspiring to give. You can read more about the four pillars.

A collective future

Essentially, it's about investing in the collective future of our sector. Our overarching purpose at the Institute is to help fundraisers have a lifetime of impact through this very special career that supports charities in navigating their challenges and delivering on their mission. With these areas of focus front and centre we believe we can achieve that.

We want to make fundraising an attractive, respected profession – elevating the sector’s profile by sharing success stories, career impact narratives and profiles of fundraisers from varied backgrounds, and ensuring the pathways, training and nurturing are in place to make it a viable lifetime career for more people.

I know from my experience that as well as sometimes being tough, fundraising really is the best of careers – I wouldn’t have stayed in it for so long if it wasn’t! There are so many of us who are proof that it’s a career worth pursuing – and our vision at the Institute is to ensure more people see it as such.

We also want to help others see the value of fundraising and fundraisers – to invest in them, and to trust them so that fundraising reaches its potential in every charity. That’s where our other pillars come in. There’s nothing more demoralising than fundraising being under-valued internally, and as a trustee myself I’m committed to supporting and championing our fundraisers at board level. Working to improve this across every charity will be a key focus.

Engaging hearts & minds

But as fundraisers we all know that the other people we need to engage more are the public. People want to give, yet fewer are doing so. Not least because of the relentless rise in living costs, from our food shop to our mortgage rates and energy bills. But there’s also still a job to be done to bolster trust, so people feel confident about where their money is going, and to tackle misconceptions and build understanding – so they know that even just giving a little makes a lot of difference.

This starts with improving how we engage and ensuring we’re all up to date with best practice, ethics, and legislation. For me, I know learning is a lifelong journey – there is always a new rule, an update to guidance, or change to legislation to find out about! So, we’ll also be working to help fundraisers keep up to date with changes that impact them and implement best and ethical practices that inspire confidence among the public.

Essentially, these changes are what we as fundraisers hope and strive for every day, but achieving them sector-wide will take a long-term strategic approach that we can all play a part in. That starts here, and we will be seeking your support, and announcing initiatives and opportunities to share your expertise over the coming months. Watch this space – but don’t just watch it, join us and get involved!

Katie Docherty: A ten-year strategy to ensure fundraising & fundraisers thrive

Diminishing income combined with increasing demand for services and the need to do ever more with less is putting charities at crisis point right across the UK. Fundraising and fundraisers are suffering too. From lack of investment, recruitment issues, and people leaving the profession due to burnout or poor experiences.

They’re problems I don’t just hear about daily at the Chartered Institute of Fundraising but that I’ve seen firsthand in my own charity roles. But every fundraiser should feel valued and nurtured, while for many charities, fundraising is central to their ability to deliver on their mission. That’s why this week at Fundraising Convention we’ve announced our new purpose: tackling these challenges with a ten-year strategy focused on where we can pull levers of change to bring the difference we’d all like to see.

We want to make sure that in 10 years’ time, fundraisers aren’t leaving the profession because they've had enough, pathways are in place to be welcoming in many more to a career in fundraising, and charities are flourishing. To do this, we’ve chosen four areas of focus – or pillars of work – establishing clear five- and ten-year targets and an action plan for meeting them.

No more revolving door – tackling recruitment & retention issues

Charities of all sizes are reporting a shortage of quality candidates for jobs, and less staff doing more. If we haven’t experienced burnout ourselves, we all know people who have. Worryingly, there also remains a startling lack of diversity within fundraising. So, we’ve made attracting, retaining and nurturing fundraising talent our first pillar, because addressing these issues is not just about finding ways to bring new people into fundraising, but ensuring they want to stay.

In five years, we aim to have clear and accessible pathways to careers in fundraising, with talent nurtured and barriers to recruitment tackled. And in a decade, for fundraising to be regarded as an attractive profession that measurably appeals to a wider pool of talent.

This work will start with mapping out entry points, roles, skill level and progression routes, like the frameworks in other professions. We’ll also continue to offer training and certification (including our proposal to offer individual chartering), and help our members explore apprenticeship opportunities and other career pathways with the support of our strategic partner THINK. For early-career fundraisers, we’ll establish new mentorship programmes, pairing them up with experienced professionals. Because without the right nurturing and training in place, all we’ll have is a revolving door.

Reframing the narrative to change perceptions of fundraising

We all know too that fundraising isn’t always properly understood or invested in, impacting not only what it can achieve but how much fundraisers are valued, and in turn, retention. Sector-wide, annual spend on fundraising is decreasing year on year, falling from £8bn in 2018/19 to £6.3bn in 2024 according to NCVO’s Almanac, so we’ve been looking at how we can help make a difference here too, making changing perceptions of fundraising our second pillar of work.

In five years, we aim to have achieved a significant shift in the sector’s understanding of why and how charities fundraise, the role fundraisers play in creating a better world, and the need for investment. And in 10 years, a measurable increase in the amount charities invest in their fundraising.

The starting point will be reframing the narrative by building that understanding of fundraising’s role. Right across our organisations as well as more widely – but particularly among the decision-makers: charity boards and senior management. We’ll do this through stories of impact, debunking common misconceptions and working with key stakeholders, strategic partners, government and opposition politicians (as well as lobbying them for better and more consistent funding).

Driving standards & best practice to build public trust

To encourage more vital support for our causes, we also need to do two other important things: build public trust and make it easier and more attractive to give. We’ve seen how a small number of negative news stories can make a large dent in public confidence, and that there are common themes year after year in complaints to the Fundraising Regulator. So, the focus of our third pillar is driving excellent fundraising practice, setting standards, ethics and guidance.

Again, working with our partners and sector stakeholders, and with the Fundraising Regulator and ICO, we will develop our guidance and training to ensure we all remain up to date and compliant with legislation changes, and that in five years’ time, more charities understand and are embedding ethics and best practice in their fundraising. Move forward to a decade’s time and we want to see more fundraisers equipped with the knowledge and skills to provide an overall better supporter experience that brings greater trust and confidence in fundraising – and raises more money.

Turning the tide to grow giving

Our fourth pillar is to foster a culture that inspires more people to give, so that we can reverse falling donor numbers, which dropped from 61% of people in 2016 to 58% in 2023, and build vital income.

The cost-of-living crisis has tightened budgets for many, while for others, the choice of who to donate to can be overwhelming. We can encourage more people who can, to give, by showing them how a small donation still makes a difference, and ensuring we provide the information they need to feel confident about their decisions.

Over recent years, we’ve made huge gains in normalising legacy giving thanks to our Remember A Charity campaign, and it’s a model we plan to follow to help people better understand other forms of fundraising and the difference their support makes. In five years, we want to have identified and addressed the misconceptions and barriers to giving, and in a decade for it to be easier, and more attractive, to support good causes.

Join the movement

Our ultimate goal is to double our impact in a decade: by reversing the decline of fundraisers and of donors, and ensuring a future for fundraising that’s sustainable and focused on inspiring people to give.

Our new strategy will launch in January 2026, so these next months will be about preparation. But this is more than a CIOF movement: achieving this level of change requires a whole-sector approach and there will be opportunities to share your expertise and experience. We’re excited to get started, beginning by setting up four panels to help steer us through our pillars of work, which we’ll recruit for in the autumn. Look out for further announcements as we progress!

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