2026 Salary Survey: finance market trends

It's a story of smaller teams and fewer vacancies in the charity finance market this year, and if you're wondering when workloads will reduce accordingly, how's your first week in the sector going?

Here's what our finance specialists had to say about the current market in the 2026 Harris Hill Salary Survey.

Charity finance recruitment market trends

We’re seeing a mixed approach to salaries for Finance roles, with some organisations taking full advantage of the current market to hold rates down, while others (typically smaller organisations) recognise that doing so hasn’t attracted the top-flight talent they hoped for, and are now prepared to pay slightly over the odds to put that right.

They can expect plenty of interest, however, as the numbers looking for work have risen sharply, including plenty of strong, fully qualified candidates who until recently would have been spoiled for choice.

Expect plenty of interest too, from applicants based far beyond any reasonable commuting distance (few roles being fully remote), having been forced to look further afield by the lack of opportunities closer to home.

Where four or five of the best might have been recommended for interviews in the past, both the quantity and quality of applications now make it a challenge to keep shortlists in single figures.

That, together with the scarcity of vacancies, has led to longer recruitment processes, which can sometimes run to a third or even fourth round of interviews over a period of several weeks.

Even now however, it’s wise to move more quickly if there are candidates you don’t want to lose. That said, one reason the process can take time is that interview skills aren’t every finance professional’s strongest suit, shall we say, with a fair proportion tending to ramble and leave out key examples. Which isn’t for want of advice, but perhaps a result of having landed jobs with relatively little effort in the past.

Masters of the miscellaneous

Once hired though, everyone’s happy, yes? Well, not quite. We’re seeing a higher turnover of staff in Finance than just about anywhere else, which is often a matter of workload.

Charity finance teams of three or four people have in many cases been reduced to one severely overburdened manager or head of finance, battling with responsibilities that have turned out to extend far beyond the promised scope of the role.

And as if they didn’t already have task lists that seem to have been written for a team of six, finance people are increasingly finding non-finance tasks like booking travel or ordering office supplies landing on their plate, inherited from someone apparently rather less redundant than they were recently made. 

Being perceived as sensible, numerate and the sort of people who can be trusted to book a return to Manchester without accidentally buying a horse, finance staff are often seen as a safe pair of hands for all kinds of responsibilities.

Still, perhaps it’s useful preparation for their eventual promotion to director level, where they’re now far more likely than not to become Director of Finance and [insert largely-unrelated department of choice here].

For more on the market, including this year's figures across each major department, see the full 2026 Salary Survey here, or for help with recruiting or your charity job search, just contact our specialists, call us on 020 7820 7300 or email info@harrishill.co.uk