An air ambulance charity increased its income by more than 30 per cent after scrapping fundraising job titles and income targets.

Speaking on this week’s Third Sector Podcast, Keith Wilson, director of income and engagement at the Hampshire and Isle of Wight Air Ambulance, said the charity changed its approach about three years ago and had seen income increase steadily since then.

The charity’s income was £10.9m in the year to the end of September 2024, up from £8.3m three years earlier. 

Wilson said the charity emerged into a “really difficult” world of fundraising and income generation following the pandemic.

“Ultimately, we could see our colleagues in charities around us sort of surging ahead and we just couldn’t gain any traction,” he said.

“So we knew something pretty significant had to change and we got the team together.”

The newly hired senior leadership team held a meeting with all staff to discuss a better fundraising strategy.

“Our team told us all of the good things that they do, the things that they do each day that encourages our supporters to get behind our cause.

“Ultimately, we decided that the knowledge [of our staff] was far more important to us than any income target we could come up with in a trustee meeting or a senior management team meeting.

“It was the stuff that they wanted to do and they felt happy doing, they are experts in their trade.”

After the meeting, the charity removed income targets and the word “fundraising” from its role titles.

The charity launched a £3.6m capital appeal last September for a new airbase.

“There’s always been this question mark as to how we would approach a capital appeal, which traditionally has a very public income target attached to it,” Wilson said.

“We started building out this appeal and were ultimately wrestling with this question and we just stuck out a public figure and said to ourselves: ‘We do our best.’

“It is not a target for us, if we don’t get there in time we will still open this building. 

“We may make some sacrifices, but ultimately, we’ll continue the appeal until we get to that target.”

Wilson said the approach had been working well and had brought in about £1.1m so far.

The Third Sector podcast episode featuring Keith Wilson can be found here.