Projects & Programmes salaries

It's certainly been a busy year for those in charity projects and programmes: this is a buoyant area of the sector, popular with candidates, and with no shortage of opportunities to choose from.

Many of these have been generated by recent charity mergers, often requiring project management assistance to oversee the transition, or by organisations implementing new systems and ways of working.

We’ve also seen an increase in permanent projects roles, where staff are hired not simply to complete one project, but to lead on subsequent projects for the same charity too.

A sting in the tail

Yet the considerable activity and growth in this field may not be an entirely positive sign, but indicative of a rather less welcome trend: charities finding it harder to secure permanent, ongoing sources of income to support their long term strategies, with funding increasingly being allocated on a short-term basis for specific projects.

Great news of course for those projects, but with the danger that long-term work to deliver lasting change may remain on permanent hold due to doubts over future funding, while all energies focus on the short-term wins.

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Pay vs projects

Salaries remain reasonably robust, if tempered by the caveat that staff can rarely be sure of their earnings beyond the end of each project, making it difficult to plan ahead.

But one thing they can always count on is having to pay the bills, so project workers need to be fairly rewarded for their work as much as anyone else. However in our experience, once pay reaches a level where those everyday needs are comfortably met, the cause they’ll be supporting often becomes a bigger factor than salary in their choice of projects.

International appeal

Speaking of chosen causes it seems there’s no denying the continued popularity of international development work, judging from the huge demand from our candidates and the high volume of applications from CharityJob’s busy international category.

Indeed such is the demand for jobs in this field that organisations rarely need external help to fill them. Where recruiters like ourselves are involved, it’s generally for the more unusual, harder-to-fill or more senior positions with a significantly smaller pool of potential candidates.

Contact your specialist consultant

If you'd like to know more about the market in your particular field, discuss recruitment requirements or potential career opportunities, why not talk to our specialist?