Fundraising Managers Salary and Pay

The national wage ladder (BLS OEWS, May 2024)

A percentile marks a point in this occupation's pay distribution: the worker one quarter of the way up the Fundraising Managers ladder earns the 25th percentile wage, $92,880. BLS top-codes very high wages ($239,200+ a year, $115.00+ an hour) and marks estimates it cannot publish as n/p.

Employment and concentration

May 2024 employment stood at 36,920, or 0.02% of the U.S. total. California leads the state table with 5,820 jobs; the top three states sum to 34.9% of the occupation. The concentration measure tells the more interesting story: District of Columbia posts a location quotient of 6.45, so a worker there is far more likely to meet a colleague in this field than the national pattern suggests.

Pay inside the occupation is wide: $142,960 separates the ends of its ladder. The 90th percentile ($216,660) is 2.9 times the 10th percentile ($73,700), a gap of $142,960 a year. The mean of $137,290 sitting above the median of $123,480 tells you the top end pulls the average up: most workers cluster below the mean, and the high tail is thin.

Pay by state

New York posts the highest median annual wage in the state table at $166,420, and California the largest headcount. The full table, sorted by employment:

The occupation in context

Ranked against all 826 published occupations, Fundraising Managers stands number 444 by employment and number 65 by median pay. Inside its own major group, Management Occupations, the group median wage is $106,980 across 38 detailed occupations, so this occupation pays 15% more than its group median, and it supplies 0.3% of the group's 10,966,830 jobs. In 15 of the 48 states with a published median, the state median beats the national median of $123,480, which is the single best quick test of whether this occupation's pay is set nationally or locally: a high count means local markets regularly outbid the national figure.

Metropolitan areas: where the jobs and the pay sit

New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ is the largest metro employer with 3,950 jobs, 10.7% of the national total. The first table ranks metros by employment; the second ranks them by mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs in the occupation, because a three-person metro can top a pay table by accident.

Largest metro employers

Highest-paying metros (500+ jobs)

At the other end, Dallas-Fort Worth-Arlington, TX posts the lowest mean pay among metros with at least 500 jobs, $110,880 a year, against $180,420 in New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ. A gap that size between two metro labor markets is why the same occupation title can fund two very different budgets in two different cities.

What the median pay looks like as a budget

The median annual wage of $123,480 works out to $10,290 a month before taxes, $4,749 per biweekly paycheck, and $2,375 a week. Moving from the 25th percentile ($92,880) to the 75th ($166,420) is worth $73,540 a year, which is the realistic size of the experience and specialization premium inside this occupation. Run the median through the paycheck calculator for a take-home estimate in your state, compare an offer against your current pay with the salary calculator, and check whether a raise actually beats prices with the raise vs inflation calculator.

To place a real offer: a salary of $135,828 would sit between the median ($123,480) and the 75th percentile ($166,420), inside the top half but outside the top quarter of this occupation's ladder. An offer at the 25th percentile, $92,880, is $30,600 under the median, the typical size of the discount attached to entry-level or low-cost-market postings in this field.

Related occupations in Management Occupations

Pay for the neighboring roles in the same BLS major group: Public Relations Managers, Education and Childcare Administrators, Preschool and Daycare, Education Administrators, All Other, Training and Development Managers, Lodging Managers, Entertainment and Recreation Managers, Except Gambling. The full directory is on the Careers hub.