Australia’s fundraising sector exists to create positive change.

Every day, charities, fundraising agencies, technology providers, suppliers and sector partners work together to build relationships, raise funds and deliver impact for communities across the country.

Yet despite the sector’s growing sophistication in measuring fundraising outcomes, donor acquisition costs, supporter retention, campaign performance and financial returns, very few organisations consistently measure the conditions that determine whether those outcomes can be sustained over the long term.

Culture. Inclusion. Wellbeing. Productivity. Sustainability.

These are often viewed as “soft” organisational issues.

In reality, they are business performance indicators that influence an organisation’s ability to attract and retain talent, maintain strong stakeholder relationships, adapt to change and continue delivering impact in an increasingly complex environment.

The question for fundraising leaders is no longer whether these factors matter.

The question is: how do we measure them?

The hidden challenge facing the sector

Fundraising is, and always will be, a people-powered profession.

Success depends on engaged employees, effective leadership, collaborative teams and organisations that can sustain performance over time. Yet many organisations continue to face challenges including staff turnover, burnout, leadership capability gaps, workforce disengagement and increasing operational pressures.

Most organisations are excellent at measuring outcomes. Far fewer are measuring the underlying conditions that influence those outcomes.

As a result, organisational risks often remain invisible until they become costly. A valued team member resigns. A culture issue impacts performance. Workplace stress increases absenteeism. Productivity declines. Donor relationships suffer.

By the time these symptoms appear, the underlying causes have often been developing for months or even years.

For a sector built on trust, relationships and purpose, understanding these drivers has never been more important.

Introducing the Thrive Stars framework

Thrive Stars was created to help organisations identify, measure and improve the factors that contribute to long-term organisational prosperity.

Rather than focusing solely on financial or operational performance, the framework examines five interconnected pillars that influence organisational health:

Culture

The collective heartbeat of an organisation. Are behaviours aligned with values? Do people trust leadership? Are teams working together effectively?

Inclusion

The extent to which people feel valued, respected and able to contribute. Do employees feel heard? Are diverse perspectives encouraged and welcomed?

Wellbeing

The physical, emotional and psychological health of employees. Are people energised and supported, or are risks such as stress and burnout emerging beneath the surface?

Productivity

The organisation’s ability to convert effort into meaningful outcomes. What factors are enabling performance, and what barriers may be limiting it?

Sustainability – Economic, Environmental & Social

The organisation’s capacity to thrive over the long term. This includes environmental responsibility, operational resilience and the ability to adapt to future challenges.

Together, these five pillars provide organisations with a more complete picture of performance and offer an early warning system for issues that traditional reporting methods often miss.

Measuring What Matters

One of the challenges facing many organisations is that important issues are often difficult to quantify.

How do you measure trust?

How do you identify emerging burnout risks before they affect performance?

How do you understand whether employees feel genuinely included and supported?

Thrive Stars addresses these questions through a 360-degree assessment methodology that combines confidential employee feedback, external stakeholder sentiment and an independent organisational review.

The result is a practical framework that helps organisations move beyond assumptions and anecdotal observations, providing leaders with actionable insights about where strengths exist and where improvement opportunities may lie.

Importantly, the framework is not designed to identify problems for the sake of reporting them.

Its purpose is to support continuous improvement.

The goal is not perfection. The goal is progress.

The FIN Agency’s journey

As a specialist consultancy supporting charities and not-for-profits across Australia, The FIN Agency understands the importance of helping organisations build sustainable futures.

In 2024, The FIN Agency partnered with Thrive Stars to begin measuring organisational performance through the Culture pillar, establishing a baseline assessment and identifying opportunities for future improvement.

Rather than approaching Culture as a standalone exercise, the organisation chose to integrate it into a broader performance framework that now considers Wellbeing, Sustainability, Inclusion, and Productivity alongside Culture.

For The FIN Agency, this approach reflects a growing belief that organisational success is not driven by individual initiatives operating in isolation. It is created when all aspects of organisational health are understood as part of a connected system.

As Michele Wilkinson, CEO of The FIN Agency, explains:

“This allows us to embed Culture into an existing organisational performance framework, rather than building a completely separate reporting process. That alignment is exactly what we were hoping to achieve.”

The experience demonstrates how organisations can begin measuring and improving the factors that influence long-term resilience, performance and impact without creating unnecessary complexity.

What is a 5-Star rated supply chain?

Imagine a fundraising sector where charities, agencies, suppliers and technology partners all committed to improving their organisational health and measuring progress against a common framework.

Not because they are required to.

Because they recognise that stronger organisations create stronger outcomes.

This is the vision behind the concept of a 5-Star Rated Supply Chain.

In such an ecosystem, organisations actively work to improve their Culture, Inclusion, Wellbeing, Productivity and Sustainability, while being transparent about where they currently sit and where they aspire to be.

The benefits extend far beyond individual organisations.

When people thrive, workplaces become stronger. When workplaces become stronger, services improve. When services improve, stakeholder trust grows. And when trust grows, organisations are better positioned to fulfil their missions.

In a sector built on collaboration and shared purpose, those benefits ripple across the entire fundraising ecosystem.

Building a stronger future

The fundraising sector has become highly skilled at measuring outcomes.

The next evolution is measuring the conditions that make those outcomes possible.

Culture. Inclusion. Wellbeing. Productivity. Sustainability.

These are not secondary considerations. They are the foundations on which long-term performance is built.

As expectations continue to evolve and organisations face increasing pressure to demonstrate impact, accountability and resilience, the ability to measure what truly matters will become a defining capability.

The organisations that embrace this shift today will be better positioned to attract talent, retain trust, strengthen performance and create lasting impact tomorrow.

People. Performance. Prosperity.

Together, Thrive Stars and The FIN Agency are helping organisations build stronger foundations for sustainable growth, sector leadership and long-term success.