SALARIES AND BENEFITS IN OUR SECTOR

trustee positions, opening up the board to younger first-time trustees.”

Our aim for this research is to support our members with meaningful information about salary and benefits, increase awareness of good practice, as well as highlight approaches to diversity, equity and inclusion. We couldn’t do this without our members’ participation and would like to thank everyone who contributed.

This is the third consecutive year that we’ve compiled the report, working, as before, with executive recruitment experts Peridot Partners. We used knowledge gained from the previous two surveys to adapt and improve where possible. For example, we revised the bandings related to grant expenditure from the previous £1m-£5m to include both £1m-£3m and £3m-£5m, as this banding better reflected our membership.

The discussion on salaries is very topical this year as the UK and other countries are in double digit inflation. This data relates to that recorded on 1 January 2022.

WHO RESPONDED?

• There were 139 responses – compared to 115 in 2020 and 142 in 2021. Around 40% of this year’s respondents were different to 2021. Less than half were from London, and we had a good mix of responses from across the UK. (Around 67% of the ACF membership is from London and the South East.)

• 54% of respondents had five staff or fewer, which is similar to the previous two years.

• Just over a half of respondents were from national independent foundations or family foundations.

• 39% of organisations had grant expenditure of up to £1m and 39% had grant expenditure of £1m-£5m.

• 69% had net assets of under £100m, with 9% of organisations holding net assets of over £750m.

Homeworking

We asked if staff have the option of homeworking following the lifting of Covid-19 restrictions – 63% said ‘yes, some of the time’, with 34% stating ‘yes, all of the time’. Over 60% of respondents said their homeworking policy has changed as a result of Covid-19.

When asked to consider what percentage of time staff are working from home, 72% of organisations reported that staff are homeworking for more than half of their hours. This is much more than was expected last year, when 46% of respondents estimated that their staff would work more than half of their hours from home once restrictions were lifted.

DIVERSITY, EQUITY AND INCLUSION

We asked if organisations’ diversity initiatives had evolved in the last year. Of those that responded, 71% had increased their focus on becoming more diverse. Smaller organisations were less likely to have recruited in this period, which means there was less likely to be a notable impact on their workforce. But overall, there were a variety of examples of initiatives to achieve greater diversity.

Comments included:

• “We have made our first participatory grant for care leavers and have funded a fellowship programme for leaders from diverse backgrounds.”

• “We have stopped using CVs and traditional interview processes for

• “Advertising in a wider range of media, including networks for under-represented groups, and specialist websites such as Evenbreak. All applications anonymised by someone not involved in shortlisting process. Removing Barriers to Work form as part of recruitment pack for individuals to request any adaptions or support required. Guaranteed interview for anyone meeting essential job criteria and identifying with a disability.”

• “All staff undertake diversity training. All staff involved in recruitment and interviewing undertake special training for diversity recruitment.”

Benefits

Flexible hours and remote working were the most prevalent benefits, followed by enhanced pension schemes and enhanced sickness pay and support. Other enhanced benefits mentioned included: wellbeing activity allowance and personal development days; employee assistance phoneline or programme; BUPA health checks and annual medicals; insurance, such as critical illness and income protection insurance; long-service leave; and enhanced family-friendly policies, such as maternity leave.

Salaries

57% of respondents said they had given staff pay increases in the last year (2021). But they were significantly more cautious than in 2020 and pay increases were below national averages. 32% of respondents indicated that staff salary increases were to some extent dependent on performance, which is less than last year. There was a trend towards higher percentage increases, with 3%, 5%, and 4% being the most frequently selected answers. This trend is particularly notable as in 2021 annual earnings for full-time employees reportedly fell by around 0.6%*

* statista.com/statistics/802113/annual-earninggrowth-in-the-uk/ across the UK. It’s important to bear in mind that those who responded were using information that predated recent inflation rises.

For context, according to the Office for National Statistics**, the Consumer Price Index including owner occupiers’ housing costs (CPIH) rose by 4.8% in the 12 months to December 2021. By comparison, the same has risen by 8.8% in the 12 months to July 2022***.

Ceo And Investment Roles

• The lowest median salary for a CEO or equivalent role was £63,184 (a combined figure for Northern Ireland and Wales) compared with a high of £126,937 for London.

• In general, the size of the organisation has more influence over the CEO (or equivalent) salary than type of organisation, although there are exceptions.

• Based on the medians, salaries were lowest in community foundations. They were highest (£100k+) in family foundations; voluntary organisations where grant-making is not a primary focus; membershipfunded grant-makers; city livery foundations or similar; and those in the combined category of benevolent fund, and ‘other’.

• The data collected for investment roles shows that specialist investment roles are most prevalent in larger foundations and salaries generally increase as the grant expenditure level rises, though there are some exceptions.

Salaries varied widely across all categories of organisation:

– Investment officers from £15k to £45k

– Investment managers from £30k to £100k

– Head of investment from £40k to £110k

– Director of investment from £50k to over £150k.

GRANT-GIVING ROLES

Organisations with zero to five full-time equivalent roles (FTE) including self-employed or freelance staff

We reviewed the data from 76 organisations with up to five FTE. It’s interesting to note that in the smallest organisations, the most common roles were ‘grant-making assistant’ and ‘grant-making manager’, although ‘officer’ and ‘director’ are not far behind.

Organisations with six to 29 FTE