Charity CEOs face headwinds in 2025 – in the UK with increased National Insurance and wage costs against the background of a continued cost of living crisis. Also, the decision to cut US and UK aid will have wide reaching implications. In a nutshell – everyone is feeling the squeeze. The upshot closer to home is that many people have constraints of less time to give and less to donate financially. So how do charities innovate in 2025 to battle organisational siloes to build brands that have purpose which can cut through and get attention. In addition, how do CEOs balance that with a supporter experience that meets ever higher brand expectations across multiple channels? The private sector has implemented the ‘Customer Success Manager’ role coupled with software to automate customer relationship management from quarterly business reviews and online surveys to check the health of the customer relationship.

Charities, like businesses, have to look ahead to plan for their mission and strategic objectives as well as achieving fundraising objectives to achieve them. Supporter-led culture and technology can lay the foundations to drive growth. There is an opportunity to learn from customer-led growth from tech Software as a Service (SaaS companies) with Chief Customer Officers as a right hand person of charity CEOs to drive it. Customer Success arose in 2004 at Salesforce when it realised it was losing or ‘churning’ 8% of its customers each month. Then in 2009 Gainsight, a US tech company founded and pioneered the ‘Customer Success’ term and role of the Customer Success Manager.

Customer Success is the function responsible for managing the relationship between an organisation and its customers. Translating this to the charity sector, the goal of charity success managers is to make the supporter as successful as possible – whether that’s achieving their volunteering aims, financial giving or assisting with regulatory compliance such as GDPR. Recent research from Rathbones highlighted that one in five fundraisers and volunteers have stopped taking part in fundraising or giving up their time for good causes since the start of the cost-of-living crisis. This means that charity CEOs really need to think in terms of improving their experience and overall ‘supporter lifetime value’ (SLTV). One way customer success technology could help is by optimising fundraising campaigns – for example, analysing data, identifying trends, and providing insights into donor behaviour.

The Charity Success Manager (CSM) is a great opportunity to transform cross-functional alignment around the supporter at a time when they are demanding ever slicker, more integrated experiences. The CSM should be responsible for ensuring a successful experience across the entire supporter lifecycle – even before the supporter has made direct contact with the charity such as the digital experience via chatbots to signpost and purchase. Also, a CSM can make a significant impact during onboarding and their initial support.

Also, CEOs need to give consideration to how CSMs should be incentivised and compensated: first on successful supporter outcomes; and secondly on securing supporter renewals such as repeat annual/monthly donations, being an ambassador like speaking at events - through to retail purchases. The CSMs should not be given sales incentive targets as this drives the wrong behaviours. Sales incentives should remain with fundraising teams which gives rise to how CSMs can seamlessly work with related departments such as supporter relations. This all contributes to a greater supporter-led culture to give supporters an effortless and integrated experience.

‘Charity Success Managers’ have the potential to be the answer to scale a more holistic view of supporters with a transformational experience to drive growth and achieve the mission of charities. The role represents a golden opportunity to be a catalyst for a supporter-led culture, breaking down organisational siloes in charities. This is an exciting prospect to drive a fundamentally different supporter experience which will enhance charity brands and enable growth for both supporters and charities in equal measure.

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