Seven in 10 fundraisers didn’t see their pay rise high enough in 2017 to keep pace with inflation, according to a new survey.

On average, fundraiser pay rose 11 percent in 2017, according to the latest annual report by the Association of Fundraising Professionals. But those gains were not evenly distributed. Inflation stood at 2.1 percent last year; only three in 10 fundraisers received salary increases of 4 percent or more. Twenty-one percent of fundraisers got no raises, and nearly 6 percent took pay cuts.

Fundraisers’ median pay was $67,100 last year, a level that has budged only slightly since 2010, when it was roughly $65,000.

The reasons underlying the sluggish pay increases, despite the hot market for fundraisers’ skills, are puzzling, says Melissa Brown, co-founder of the Nonprofit Research Collaborative, who helped analyze this year’s data for the report.

Nearly half of all fundraisers looked for a job with another employer in the past year, according to the report. Thirty-eight percent of all fundraisers who said they were thinking about changing jobs said the reason was to earn more money.

Brown was surprised that fundraisers are finding different reasons for looking for new jobs than "the types of things we talk about at AFP conferences."...