Sales and marketing recruitment inNot-for-Profit
Recruitment for fundraising, partnerships, income generation, marketing and communications roles across charities, membership bodies, social enterprises and purpose-led organisations.
Recent result
1 hire delivered material growth in followers and sponsor engagement.
£18.3bn
UK civil-society GVA, 2024
11,516
Registered charities in Ireland, end-2023
In Not-for-Profit, more income does not automatically mean a stronger organisation. A large grant, contract or corporate partnership can look like a commercial success while bringing restrictions, additional delivery costs or commitments that leave very little flexibility for the organisation itself.
People with deeper sector experience learn to look at what sits behind the headline amount. Where can the money be spent? Does it cover the real cost of delivery? What does the organisation have to promise in return? And does accepting it strengthen the mission or quietly pull resources away from it?
Fundraising and partnership professionals work within that tension.
Marketing does too. The organisation needs to create enough urgency for people to care, give or participate, while representing the work accurately and treating the people whose experiences make the story powerful with care.
Income generation, communication and public engagement all have to remain accountable to beneficiaries, funders and the wider public.
Live roles in Not-for-Profit
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Believing in the cause is not enough. Relevant experience depends on the income model, audiences, governance, organisational scale, evidence requirements and relationship with service delivery.
Consideration
Income Model & Relationship Leverage
Not-for-profit income may come through donations, grants, memberships, corporate partnerships, contracts or trading activity. Each model creates different expectations, timescales, evidence requirements and levels of negotiating leverage.
Take these into your next interview. A free hiring checklist for Not-for-Profit.
Get the checklistRoles we recruit in Not-for-Profit
Sales
Sales that secure sustainable support
Director of Fundraising
Leads sustainable income generation across donations, major gifts, trusts, events, legacies or other fundraising channels.
Corporate Partnerships Director
Builds strategic relationships with businesses that create income, reach, expertise or shared social value.
Head of Income Generation
Coordinates commercial, fundraising, membership, grant or trading income around the organisation’s mission and capacity.
Major Gifts Manager
Develops high-value donor relationships through research, stewardship, credible impact evidence and long-term engagement.
Membership or Partnerships Manager
Grows and retains members or partners by communicating value, managing relationships and creating meaningful participation.
What employers look for in sales
Employers may be looking for someone who can:
• Understand the income model properly. Individual giving, major donors, trusts, corporate partnerships, contracts, membership and trading require very different approaches.
• Look beyond gross income. Restricted funding, delivery cost and fundraising cost can materially change the actual value of the money raised.
• Build relationships before asking for money. Strong supporter and funder relationships often develop over repeated contact, evidence and stewardship.
• Protect organisational priorities. A funder or partner can be valuable without their priorities automatically becoming the organisation's strategy.
• Think about retention as well as acquisition. Regular supporters, established funders and long-term partners can be more valuable than repeatedly replacing people who leave.
• Understand delivery. Winning funding for something the organisation cannot sustainably deliver creates a problem rather than solving one.
Restricted versus unrestricted income is a particularly useful indicator of commercial understanding.
Someone reporting £500,000 of new funding may have performed very differently depending on whether that money contributes to core organisational capacity, carries substantial delivery obligations or can only be used against tightly defined activity. A smaller amount of flexible funding can sometimes be considerably more useful than a larger restricted award.
Public contracts need similar judgement.
A large commissioned service can create stable income and significant impact, but it can also become an underfunded obligation if the organisation carries staffing, demand, reporting or delivery risk without being paid the full cost of providing the service.
Marketing
Marketing that moves people to act
Marketing and Communications Director
Leads brand, audience, campaign and reputation strategy in support of mission, participation and sustainable income.
Campaigns Manager
Plans public-facing or supporter campaigns that build awareness, action, participation or donations around clear objectives.
Digital Fundraising Manager
Generates and converts online support through paid media, email, social, landing pages and ongoing optimisation.
Content and Impact Manager
Turns evidence, outcomes and human stories into accurate content that demonstrates relevance and builds trust.
Supporter Engagement Manager
Develops communications and journeys that improve supporter participation, retention, advocacy and long-term value.
What employers look for in marketing
The stronger Not-for-Profit marketers tend to:
• Connect purpose with action. Awareness alone may not be the objective. The audience may need to donate, participate, volunteer, campaign, join or change behaviour.
• Communicate impact credibly. People need to understand what changed as a result of the organisation's work, not simply what activity took place.
• Use stories responsibly. The most emotive story is not automatically the right one to tell.
• Understand different audiences. Beneficiaries, supporters, funders, trustees, commissioners, partners and the general public can all need different information.
• Work closely with Fundraising and Services. A campaign promise needs to reflect both what the organisation needs commercially and what it actually delivers.
• Protect trust while creating urgency. Strong calls to action do not need to exaggerate impact or simplify people's experiences beyond recognition.
Impact communication is central: organisations need to demonstrate what their work changes rather than merely describe what they do.
Good impact communication can include what did not work, what the organisation learned and where limitations remain. Over-polishing the story can reduce rather than increase credibility with beneficiaries, delivery teams and sophisticated funders.
Same CV. Different Capability.
Not-for-Profit titles can conceal completely different commercial experience.
Two Fundraising Managers may both show income targets, donor relationships and successful campaigns.
One may specialise in individual giving, digital acquisition, supporter journeys and retention.
Another may build trusts, foundations or corporate partnerships through long decision cycles, evidence-led proposals and significant stewardship.
The income may look comparable while the source, restrictions, cost to secure it and relationship complexity are completely different.
Professional A
Fundraising Manager
- Uses digital acquisition and supporter journeys
- Works with high volumes of individual donors
- Focuses heavily on retention and lifetime supporter value
Professional B
Fundraising Manager
- Develops trusts and foundation relationships
- Builds complex evidence-led applications
- Manages significant funder stewardship and restricted income
- Works across long institutional decision cycles
We find out which one you need. Brief a role
Case study
Charity needed a sales and marketing hire in a difficult, non-traditional fundraising market.
We looked beyond conventional charity marketing profiles for someone combining digital capability with the persistence to build new commercial relationships. The person appointed has since strengthened visibility, audience growth and sponsor engagement across the organisation.
1 hire delivered material growth in followers and sponsor engagement.
The Not-for-Profit Economy
996k
UK civil-society filled jobs, 2024
THE UK PICTURE
The UK voluntary sector employed approximately 978,000 people in 2024, around 3% of the UK workforce. More than half worked for organisations employing fewer than 50 people. (NCVO) The scale of registered charitable activity is also substantial. At 31 March 2026, the Charity Commission register for England and Wales contained 171,112 charities, with registered charities reporting approximately £107 billion of annual income. (GOV.UK)
THE IRISH PICTURE
Ireland had 11,445 registered charities at the end of 2024. Research undertaken for the Charities Regulator has previously estimated that charities employ approximately 280,000 people in Ireland, excluding the HSE. (RTÉ) Within that economy, however, a charity dependent on individual donations operates very differently from a contracted service provider, membership organisation or organisation funded predominantly through trusts and foundations.
Building your Sales, Fundraising & Marketing career in Not-for-Profit
Career progression often means becoming responsible for more of the relationship between income, impact and organisational sustainability.
FUNDRAISING, PARTNERSHIPS & INCOME GENERATION
Careers may begin in community fundraising, events, individual giving, supporter engagement, partnerships or grant fundraising before developing into more specialist or senior income-generation roles.
Different paths build different judgement.
Someone progressing through individual giving may develop deep experience of acquisition, regular giving, supporter journeys, CRM, retention and lifetime value.
Trusts and foundations work can develop expertise in research, cases for support, impact evidence, budgets and long-term funder relationships.
Corporate Partnerships can progress from sponsorship and employee engagement towards complex strategic relationships involving senior stakeholders, shared objectives and multi-year funding.
Business Development in organisations delivering public services can become increasingly commercial, involving tendering, commissioning, pricing, contractual risk and decisions about whether a funded opportunity genuinely fits what the organisation exists to do.
At senior level, the question increasingly becomes not simply how much money can we raise?, but what kind of income makes this organisation more resilient?
Total income and financial resilience are not the same thing.
MARKETING & COMMUNICATIONS
Marketing careers can develop through Campaigns, Digital, Content, PR, Communications or Supporter Engagement before broadening into reputation, audience strategy, fundraising integration and organisational leadership.
More senior marketers often work across several objectives simultaneously.
A campaign may need to raise money, increase awareness, protect reputation, influence policy and represent beneficiaries accurately.
The organisation may also be speaking to very different groups at once: someone receiving a service, someone funding it, someone regulating it and someone deciding whether to support it publicly.
That develops a particular type of judgement.
The strongest people become better at knowing when emotional communication is appropriate, how much simplification is useful, what evidence different audiences require and when a compelling story risks becoming misleading or exploitative.
For employers
For employers, we look beyond the obvious charity name and job title and spend time understanding the income model, audiences, organisational scale, governance, evidence requirements and real responsibility behind someone's experience.
Discuss a Sales or Marketing HireFor professionals
For professionals, we help make sense of the experience you have built, what you are genuinely good at and where that might take you next.
Register Your InterestHiring in Not-for-Profit? Most briefs take one 20 minute call.
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