What a fundraising manager earns, by metro

Pay for fundraising managers is unusually consistent across the country: $77,740 at the bottom of the range, $179,130 at the top, a spread of only 2.3×. Where you work matters less for this role than it does for most — which usually points to pay being set by structure (scales, licensure, collective agreements) rather than local bidding.

The band is wide — outcomes vary a lot

The top tenth of fundraising managers earn $222,350 or more; the bottom tenth earn under $75,130. That is a 2.96× gap within the same occupation, in the same year. A spread this wide means the job title is not what determines pay — specialisation, employer type, seniority or book of business is. Expect the early years to sit near the bottom of the band rather than the middle, and treat the $125,470 median as a waypoint, not a destination.

Geography barely moves this one

5 of the ten best-paying metros for fundraising managers are in CA. When one state dominates the top of the table like this, cost of living is doing part of the work but rarely all of it — state licensing rules, public-sector pay scales and the presence of a few large employers usually explain the rest. If you are comparing an offer in CA against one elsewhere, adjust for housing before concluding anything.

Highest paying metros

Lowest paying metros

Amherst Town-Northampton is the cluster

Amherst Town-Northampton has 7.17× the national concentration of fundraising managers — the densest market in the country for this role, with 120 employed locally. Pay there is $136,890, which does not put it near the top of the pay table. Concentration and compensation are different things — a dense market is easier to get hired in and easier to move around within, but the competition that makes it dense also caps what employers need to offer.

Where the role is most concentrated

Largest employers by metro

Current openings

About this data

Figures come from the BLS Occupational Employment and Wage Statistics programme, May 2025 release, SOC code 11-2033. OEWS surveys employers, so it reports what is actually paid rather than what job advertisements claim, and it excludes the self-employed. Estimates are published for 151 of 528 metropolitan areas; the remaining 377 had too few survey responses for BLS to publish without risking disclosure, so they are absent here rather than estimated. For a specialised role that is normal. Read the methodology.