Fundraising Managers

At $125,470 — $75,450 a year clear of the $50,020 all-occupation midpoint — Fundraising Managers sits at the top of what BLS publishes. Read the gate before the figure: at this level there is always one, and it is usually measured in years.

With 38,810 employed as Fundraising Managers, most metros have a working market: several employers, visible turnover, and the ability to change jobs without moving house.

Marketing, advertising and sales management suits people who can commit a budget to an outcome they will only ever partly be able to attribute, and argue for it again next year.

How long it takes to become one of the 38,810 people doing this is not something we have a source for. BLS counts and pays them; it does not record how they got there, and we would rather say so than guess.

A quarter of the field earns under $95,970 and a quarter over $169,990: $74,020 between them, a ratio of 1.8x. Wide enough that the first offer you get tells you more about your prospects than the median does.

Even at the 25th percentile Fundraising Managers pays $95,970, $45,950 clear of the $50,020 national midpoint. Almost the entire distribution sits above the typical American wage, which is rare and worth weighing against the entry cost.

Avoid it if you need your contribution to be provable; attribution in this function is contested every budget cycle.

You will not find a "what share make it" figure here. 38,810 is a headcount of the employed, which is a numerator without a denominator — everyone who qualified and never got hired is missing from it, and we will not estimate them to complete a percentage.

At 1.8x, the distribution for Fundraising Managers is open enough that specialisation starts to pay. The distance from $95,970 to $169,990 is mostly what you can do that others in the same title cannot.

Put in money rather than ratios: $95,970 at the 25th percentile, $125,470 at the midpoint, $169,990 at the 75th. $74,020 separates the quarter of Fundraising Managers at the bottom from the quarter at the top.

Between $95,970 and $169,990 — the two ends of the middle half — sits $125,470. Moving from the midpoint to the upper quarter is worth $44,520; the whole climb from the lower quarter is $74,020.

$44,520 separates $125,470 from the $169,990 top quarter, while only $29,500 separates it from $95,970. The range leans upward, which means the middle of Fundraising Managers has more room above it than a symmetric reading of the median would suggest.

Converted to an hourly rate over a full-time year: $46.13 at the bottom quarter, $60.32 at the midpoint, $81.72 at the top quarter. The typical American job works out at $24.04 on the same basis.