For the past 12 years, we’ve benchmarked comms and marketing salaries in the charity sector, looking at how people feel about their role, how comms is valued, and how working culture has changed.
Our 2025 report is broken down into a series of insight areas focusing on key findings on salary and organisational culture and what strategic communications is and its value, releasing throughout May.
We’ll also look at the data through different lenses and with various collaborators in the months following our launch.
We’d like to thank the 325 people who responded to the survey, who work across a range of comms roles and levels, from charities of all sizes and causes throughout the UK.
Key report results
%
say they are happy with their role
Average salary
%
have no training and development opportunities planned
say they are burned out
say their organisation values comms
%
are planning a career move
More report trends
Audience insights
- Management: 34% work at manager level. While 58% of respondents manage people or teams.
- Size of charity: Most respondents work for medium charities, with 46% working in medium-sized organisations (11-100 employees).
- Charity sectors: 36% work at healthcare and health-related charities, with 8.6% in education and 7% in environment or conservation.
- Specialisms: The most common role specialisations are communications (26%), covering all areas (23%) and digital/social media (11%).
- Experience: Most have 1-3 years of experience in their current organisation (42%) and 7-10 years in communications (21%).
Salary trends
- Average sector salary: £43,168 (a slight increase from £42,174 in 2024).
- Management renumeration: Managers earn an average of £48,217, significantly higher than non-managerial role average at £36,297.
- Location, location: Large London-based organisations offer the highest benchmarks, averaging £49,392.
Benchmarking specialisms
- Top earners: Brand management leads the sector with an average salary of £48,000.
- Middle ground: General comms / marketing roles average between £44,000 and £45,000.
- Lower end: Fundraising (£38,069) and digital and social media specialists (£40,824) appear lowest on the pay scale.
Job satisfaction
- Smaller charity = happier: Staff at small charities (1-10 employees) report the highest job satisfaction at 82%, citing visible impact and respected expertise.
- Larger charity = unhappier: Happiness drops to 48% in extra-large organisations (1000+ employees), where “lack of role definition” is cited as a key issue.
- Pay ≠ happiness: Fundraisers report the highest levels of satisfaction (72%) despite having the lowest average salary.
The “squeezed middle”
- Pressure points: Middle management and senior officer roles report the lowest job satisfaction.
- Stress and pressure: These roles often handle significant management stress and stretched resources without the salary compensation seen at the top levels of an organisation.
- Least satisfied role: Only 40% of senior executives or officers say they are happy in their roles.
Future outlook
- Salary stagnation: There is widespread frustration that entry-level salaries have remained in the low £20,000’s for decades, failing to keep pace with inflation.
- Undervalued expertise: Many professionals feel that comms and marketing are often the first areas to face cuts during financial uncertainty, which is seen as “short-sighted”.
Source: CharityComms Salary and Organisational Culture Survey 2025 (325 respondents).
Salary and organisational culture findings
Our 2025 report looks at how salary levels have changed over time, what factors can influence how much money comms roles are making, and how people are feeling about their role and salary.
With a third of comms communicators telling us they’re burnt out, this section of our report looks at what’s happening behind the figures and how we can better support staff, manage workloads and resource our teams more effectively.
Dive into a summary of our respondents – their roles, working lives and what they care about most.
Retention and staff support checklist
No need to second guess your direction as a leader. Get the map that will support your team and help comms professionals feel valued and fulfilled at work.
Methodology
The 2025 CharityComms Salary and Organisational Culture Survey was conducted between November 2025 and January 2026. 325 people from the charity sector responded. AI tools have been used to support data analysis from our survey, suggest common themes and refine copy for this series of reports.
Our salary analysis excluded four extreme salary level outliers, as these would have significantly skewed the results, so a total of 301 valid salary responses were used for the average salary calculations. We have compiled an audience at a glance resource to show the breakdown of this group.
We received low responses from those in publications, campaigns and public affairs specialisms. Where included, points about these professionals should be treated as anecdotal rather than representative of the entire professional group.