How do fundraising consultants charge?
This is one of the first questions that many charities ask us. So, in this article we will briefly set out how fundraising consultants fees normally work.
Almost all fundraising consultants work on an hourly or daily fee basis. These fees vary depending on skills, experience and the nature of the services required. Individual consultants or those that are new to consulting may charge from £200 or £300 per day, whereas some specialist agencies may charge up to £2,000 per day. At Charity Fundraising Ltd, we pride ourselves on achieving excellent value for money by bringing together a team of highly experienced employee consultants but keeping our fees towards the lower end of this range. The exact fee level we charge is subject to the nature of the service required, the skills, experience and of course the time required to deliver what the client needs.
The most important factor for us as an organisation supporting Charities is that we are providing excellent value for money to our clients. We recognise that charities rightly have a high burden of care over their funds and so we will only agree to work with charities where we know we can provide excellent value for money and add substantial value to their organisational development. Indeed for many of our clients, our support is transformational. Our direct fundraising services have secured over £35 Million for our clients. In addition, through enhancing clients fundraising strategy and operations we have been able to support clients to double their income in only three years – Sickle Cell Society Case Study.
We measure the value for money we achieve for clients in two ways:
1. We measure Return on Investment (ROI) on all of our fundraising services contracts. The results show an average across all clients of £14 generated per £1 spent on our fees. This compares very favourably with sector benchmarking data such as the NCVO almanac, which shows the sector as a whole achieves an ROI of £4.21 per £1 spent on fundraising.
2. Since 2012 we have been asking all clients across the full range of our services to complete an end of contract survey to rate the quality of our service across a number of measures including value for money. The results from this show 98% of clients agree or strongly agree that we provided good value for money.
Many charities assume that fundraising companies work on commission based fee agreements but this is a common misconception. In section 2.5 of the Fundraising Code, The Fundraising Regulator strongly recommend charities should avoid commission based fundraising and the Association of Fundraising Consultants actively prohibit it. There are good reasons for this. For example:
- Commission based remuneration must be declared to donors and can undermine their trust and even exclude them as a potential supporter.
- Fundraising is a team effort and combines many factors beyond the control of the fundraiser. It is therefore almost impossible to identify and allocate appropriate levels of credit for all involved in securing funding.
- Commission based fundraising can be counterproductive to building a strong and effective client – consultant relationship, which is crucial for effective fundraising and organisational development.
- Commission based remuneration focuses incentives on short term gain rather than the best longer term interests of the charity client. It risks poor adherence to fundraising standards and reputational damage. A good fundraising consultant will always seek to enhance the organisational development of their client and leave them in a much stronger position.
- Consultants should be remunerated based on their skills and experience. Commission based fundraising is an ineffective way to do this and can result in excessive levels of remuneration.
More details on our fundraising consultancy services.
To discuss how we can support your charity, the costs involved and expected returns please get in touch.
