Fundraising Consultant vs In-House Fundraiser: Which Is Right for Your Charity?
When a charity needs more fundraising capacity, recruiting can feel like the obvious next step. There is work to do, nobody has enough time to do it, and a dedicated employee would give it the attention it needs.
But before writing the job description, it is worth asking what you actually need that person to achieve. Keeping an established fundraising programme running is a different job from identifying new funding opportunities or developing an approach the charity has never tried before. A fundraising consultant can be a useful investment where you need specialist experience, support for a defined period or access to skills that would be difficult to bring into one role.
This article sets out where a consultant makes sense and how a fundraising consultant compares with an in-house hire in practice, along with the situations where recruiting remains the better decision.
What does a fundraising consultant do?
A fundraising consultant is an external specialist who helps a charity raise income, either by advising on strategy or by carrying out the fundraising work directly.
The scope varies considerably. Some consultants provide advice that your team then implements. Others take responsibility for delivery, including maintaining a funding pipeline and preparing applications. A charity considering outsourced fundraising needs to understand exactly which responsibilities it is handing over, and which stay with its staff.
Job titles alone will not tell you this. A freelancer may provide strategic advice, while a fundraising consultancy may offer ongoing delivery. Ask what work will be completed, who will complete it and how the relationship will operate.
Depending on the arrangement, the work that VMC Consulting will carry out can include:
Prospect research to identify suitable trusts, foundations and funders
Writing grant applications, bids and contract tenders
Building and managing a pipeline of opportunities with values and deadlines attached
Developing individual giving and corporate partnerships
Setting fundraising strategy and reporting progress to trustees
When should a charity hire a fundraising consultant?
Charities still deciding whether they need help at all may find it useful to start with the signs that a charity needs external fundraising support. The situations below assume that decision has already been made. The question here is what form the support should take.
When a fundraising role is vacant
Recruiting a fundraiser rarely moves quickly. Between advertising, interviews and notice periods, a charity can easily go four to six months with nobody in post. A new starter then needs further time to learn the organisation before applications begin to land.
Funder deadlines do not pause for any of this. A consultant can keep the pipeline moving through the gap, and some charities find the interim arrangement works well enough that they never re-advertise the role.
Ahead of a major bid or funding round
A capital appeal, a multi-year grant programme or a significant contract tender can demand more specialist bid writing than the existing team can provide. Hiring permanently for a peak that lasts six months is difficult to justify to a board. Bringing in experienced bid writers for the period is usually the more proportionate response.
When income relies too heavily on one source
Where a single funder or contract accounts for more than a third of income, diversification should be a priority within any funding strategy. It is also slow work. A new income stream typically takes eighteen months or more to contribute meaningfully.
Most charities in this position need to start before they can be confident of the budget for a permanent post. A consultant allows the work to begin now, while the dominant income stream is still performing.
When launching a new income stream
Corporate partnerships and individual giving each call on different skills from trust fundraising. A charity that has always relied on grants is unlikely to have that experience in its current team, and a single new hire will bring real depth in one area at most.
A consultant can test whether a new stream is viable before the charity commits to a salaried post for it.
After a run of unsuccessful applications
Three or four rejections in a row from funders whose criteria the charity appeared to meet is a pattern worth examining. The cause usually sits either in how the case for support is made or in which funders are being approached.
Someone outside the organisation is often better placed to see which. The people who wrote the applications are, understandably, close to them.
When income needs to grow before a permanent role is affordable
Smaller charities can find themselves caught in a loop. They cannot raise more without dedicated fundraising capacity, yet they cannot fund that capacity until income rises.
A consultant on a flexible contract breaks the deadlock. The cost can be set at a level the charity can carry and reviewed as income grows, with no long-term salary commitment made on the strength of a forecast.
The benefits of a fundraising consultant compared with recruiting in-house
Results arrive sooner
Once recruitment, onboarding and relationship building are accounted for, an in-house fundraiser typically needs six to twelve months before income begins to flow in any meaningful way. Grant decision cycles add their own delay on top.
An experienced consultant starts with existing knowledge of funders and a tested approach to applications. The learning curve is about the charity itself, which is a far shorter one.
The true cost of a hire is higher than the salary
The salary advertised for a fundraising role is only part of what the charity pays. On top of it sit:
Employer National Insurance and pension contributions
Recruitment costs, whether agency fees or advertising
Equipment, training and professional development
Management time spent on induction, supervision and line management
The cost of starting again if the appointment does not work out
A consultant’s fee is usually the whole cost. There is no recruitment outlay, and the charity is not covering annual leave, sickness or a handover period when someone leaves.
Flexibility to scale up or down
Fundraising demand is uneven across the year. A charity might need intensive bid writing in the run-up to a major deadline and far less once applications are submitted.
An employee is a fixed cost regardless of workload. A consultant on a rolling monthly contract can be scaled back or ended with notice measured in weeks rather than months, and without any redundancy risk to manage.
Breadth of expertise
A single fundraiser, however capable, will have strengths and gaps. Someone with a background in trusts and foundations may have little experience of corporate partnerships, and the reverse is just as common.
A consultancy brings a team. Bid writers, researchers and specialists in individual giving can each contribute where they are strongest, giving the charity access to a range of experience it could not realistically employ on its own payroll.
Putting a financial value on your charity’s impact
The evidence behind a funding application can be as important as the writing itself. A charity may know that its services make a difference but need specialist support to calculate the financial value of that work. Access to that expertise can strengthen the case it presents to funders and commissioners.
At VMC, we have helped charities build and implement cost-benefit models, including ones based on the Greater Manchester Cost Benefit Analysis methodology. This methodology was adopted as supplementary guidance to HM Treasury’s Green Book in 2014.
These models estimate savings to public services alongside financial gains for the people a charity supports and wider social value. Comparing those benefits with the cost of delivery allows the charity to express its estimated impact as £X of benefit for every £1 invested. For example, support that helps people maintain a tenancy could reduce demand for emergency accommodation, creating value beyond the charity’s own finances.
The calculation needs to account for what might have happened without the service and make its assumptions clear. The resulting figure describes the value generated by the charity’s work, rather than the fundraising income secured.
An in-house fundraiser can use this evidence effectively, but may need additional analytical support to develop it. A consultancy team with both capabilities can bring the modelling and fundraising work together, helping the charity explain what a funder’s investment could achieve.
No single point of failure
When fundraising knowledge sits with one person, the charity is exposed every time that person is away or moves on. Funder relationships and the history behind past applications can leave with them.
A consultancy spreads that knowledge across a team. It should also document the pipeline as it goes, so the charity is never starting from a blank page if circumstances change.
What does a fundraising consultant cost?
Fees vary with the scope of the work. A one-off strategic review is priced very differently from ongoing delivery across several income streams, and contract length will also affect the rate.
The fairer comparison is with the full cost of employment. Once on-costs, recruitment and management time are included, a permanent fundraising post costs considerably more than its advertised salary. Against that figure, an ongoing consultancy arrangement is frequently the more economical option, particularly for charities that need more than one specialism.
Cost is only half of the calculation, though. Any fundraising arrangement should be judged on the income it generates relative to what it costs, and a consultant should be able to evidence that return for existing clients before any contract is signed.
When recruiting in-house is the better choice
A consultant is not always the right answer for every charity and it tends to depend on the circumstances of the organisation. Recruiting in-house usually makes more sense where:
The charity runs a large, established fundraising programme with a predictable workload all year round.
Income depends heavily on major donors, where years of personal relationship with one consistent contact carry real weight.
Fundraising is closely tied to community events or supporter care that needs someone on site.
Funding for the role is secure for several years, along with the management capacity to support it
There is also a middle route. Some charities use a fundraising consultant to build the pipeline and processes first, then recruit once income has grown enough to sustain a permanent post. The new fundraiser inherits a working system rather than a blank page, which shortens the time it takes them to deliver.
What to look for in a fundraising consultant
The market for fundraising support is broad, and quality varies considerably. Before appointing anyone, charities should check that there is the following:
Charity sector experience
Evidence of results
Clear measures of success agree at the outset
Agreeable contract terms
An appropriate knowledge transfer
How VMC Consulting can help
Deciding between a consultant and a hire is easier with the full numbers in front of the board. Finding the capacity to raise income while that decision is made is usually the harder part.
VMC Consulting acts as the outsourced fundraising team for charities that need experienced support without the cost and risk of a permanent post. Our fundraising consultants cover bid writing, prospect research, individual giving and corporate partnerships, and many of the charities we work with hand over their income generation to us entirely.
We measure ourselves on return. Race Council Cymru outsource their income generation to us, and we have secured over £700,000 on their behalf, a return of £32 for every £1 invested. Every client working with us beyond three months has a positive return.
Our income generation work runs on a rolling monthly contract at £21,600 a year. A full-time fundraiser costs more than that in salary alone, before recruitment, on-costs and the management time that never appears in the business case.
To see the experience behind that work, meet our consultants, or speak to our expert team about what your charity needs next.