What a charity
should spend on marketing.

Charities differ too much for one number. In the ACNC's 12th Australian Charities Report, donations and bequests made up 38.3% of revenue for small charities, 23.9% for medium, 14.2% for large and just 2.2% for the very biggest. A small charity living on gifts needs to find donors. A large one funded by government contracts may need marketing mostly to reach the people it serves, and volunteers.

Costs are rising too. In 2024, charity revenue grew 7.5% while expenses grew 8.6%. Costs rising faster than income is why boards push back on marketing, and also why doing it well matters more.

Marketing usually gets lumped in with overheads, and overheads get judged harshly. The ACNC's own view is that using administration costs as a measure can be misleading: charities classify the same cost differently, and a high figure says nothing on its own about impact.

Australian research backs that up. Social Ventures Australia and the Centre for Social Impact studied nine not-for-profits and found their indirect costs averaged 33% of total expenses, ranging from 26% to 47%, while funding agreements typically allowed 0% to 20%. The gap gets made up somewhere, often by under-spending on the things that bring the next dollar in.

Economist Jonathan Meer's review puts it bluntly: overhead ratios are not a reliable measure of a charity's effectiveness, and spending on fundraising can be one of the better uses of a donated dollar, as long as the next dollar spent brings back more than a dollar.

Finding a new donor often costs more than their first gift. The return comes when they give again. Put in one campaign's numbers below and it follows those donors for three years.

The ACNC report found 52.9% of charities have no paid staff. For most, time is shorter than money, so budget both. A grants account worth up to US$10,000 a month in Search ads still needs someone to run it.

• Free first: Google Ad Grants, a Google Business Profile, clear pages for each service and each way to help.
• Tracking next, so every later dollar can be measured: gifts, volunteer enquiries, requests for help.
• Donor care: thank-yous, receipts and updates. It's what turns a first gift into a second.
• Paid tests last: a fixed amount, a fixed time, a clear measure.

Boards don't need a marketing plan. They need five lines: what you'll spend, what it's for, how you'll measure it, when you'll stop if it isn't working, and when you'll report back. 'Up to $3,000 over eight weeks to find new monthly donors in the Illawarra, measured by new monthly gifts, stopped at week four if fewer than ten have signed up, reported at the March meeting' is a decision a board can make.

Then report the way you said you would, including when it didn't work. A board that sees a test stopped on time trusts the next request more.

Start smaller than feels useful, measure, then step the budget up while the return holds. Every channel has a point where the next dollar brings back less. The Spend Curve method is how I find that point, so the board hears 'this is where it stops paying', not just 'it works'.