2024 Salary Survey: finance and temps market trends

What's happening in the job market for those in charity finance, and for temporary and interim staff throughout the sector? Here's what our specialists had to say in our 2024 Salary Survey, where you'll also find the latest rates for around 200 charity sector positions.

Finance market trends

Wage growth might be outstripping inflation somewhere, but it’s not in the world of charity finance, where last year’s healthy increases have largely fizzled out. That’s more to do with weaker demand than a plentiful supply of candidates, although numbers are expected to creep up in the wake of numerous closures, restructuring and general weakness in the market.

Market conditions certainly seem to have emboldened employers to be more particular about what they want, and to hold out until they get it. Where a choice of six strong candidates once sufficed, they may now have more than a dozen, but still be prepared to keep looking if none tick every last box.

Recent experience suggests they’ll eventually find someone who does, which they’d sooner do than raise the salary, so we’re seeing considerably longer campaigns, often taking up to six months or more for positions that were formerly filled in two.

The law of unintended consequences strikes again

Finance departments appear to be particularly fertile ground for the growth of hybrid jobs, bolting finance roles together with operations, IT, HR and more. However there’s a particular reason it may be a mixed blessing here.

Thanks to highly transferable skills, finance roles have long been a viable route into the sector for external candidates. However the non-finance half of a hybrid role often requires charity sector experience, cutting off that valuable source of talent.

The bigger picture

It’s not all about salary, however: candidates increasingly want to know more about pensions and benefits, weighing up the whole package, and offering good schemes in these areas can at least partly compensate for lower pay.

Charities can be sure of getting who they want by moving more quickly – many an ideal candidate is lost during the long wait for a decision.

Meanwhile for their part, some senior candidates (although by no means all) could help their own cause by doing more to tailor CVs and research organisations ahead of interview. Perhaps understandably, having landed good jobs with little effort in the past, some see no need to start trying now, but are losing out on some great opportunities as a result.

​For the finance figures, as well as those in all other major charity departments, see the full 2024 Salary Survey here, while for help with recruiting or your job search in this field, please contact our specialists:​

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Temporary and interim market trends

While recruitment activity is down across the board this year, demand for temporary staff has held up better than most, partly due to the uncertain outlook that makes temporary hires easier to justify than permanent additions to headcount.

Activity has also been buoyed by significant restructuring, creating temporary gaps while charities evaluate their long-term needs, and – albeit in the least desirable way – boosting the number of experienced professionals available for temporary work.

That’s made it marginally easier to find temps in areas like business services, but not (of course) in fundraising, where most are whisked off the market the moment they arrive, and temps are often covering permanent posts that the organisation is unable to fill.

Meanwhile marketing temps are increasingly seeing employers asking twice as much of them, failing to offer a penny more in return, and wondering why they’re not interested; candidates preferring to hold out for somewhere that values the extra work, skills and experience being requested at slightly more than zero.

Easier at the top

Perhaps unexpectedly, candidates for more senior positions are currently proving easier to find than their junior counterparts, but roles at any level below £35,000 (or equivalent) struggle to drum up interest, as do roles requiring more than two days a week on site.

Both problems can be solved by raising the salary, but if that option is out of stock, some are happy with extra flexibility as a substitute.

Temp, contract or freelance?

In the past year we’ve seen contracts starting to overtake traditional temp roles, making up more than 50% of our placements. Employed directly for an agreed term rather than week to week through an agency, it tends to be slightly cheaper for the organisation and gives everyone a little more security.

However, if an extra contract on the books isn’t ideal, charities can also turn to the highly skilled and increasingly available army of consultants and freelancers working as sole traders. This route requires a little care to stay on the right side of IR35 regulations, but is no more expensive and can lead to a valuable trove of talented available candidates.

Ask us if you’d like to know more!

For any queries on recruiting temps or working on a temp or interim basis, please contact our specialists:

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