Adrian Sargeant


Dr. Adrian Sargeant is Co-Founder and Co-Director of the Institute for Sustainable Philanthropy. He is an Adjunct Professor of Philanthropy at the Lilly Family School of Philanthropy at Indiana University where he was the first Hartsook Chair in Fundraising. Sargeant is also an Adjunct Professor of Fundraising at the Australian Centre for Philanthropy and Nonprofit Studies, Queensland University of Technology, Brisbane, Australia.
Sargeant is one of the world’s foremost authorities in the domain of fundraising, being consistently voted one of the top ten most influential people in the field by readers of Professional Fundraising Magazine. He was cited as the Wall Street Journal's Gift of the Week, 13 October 2006

Professional life

In 2004, Sargeant pioneered the public information website www.charityfacts.org designed to bolster public trust and confidence in the UK’s charity sector. The site is underpinned by an ongoing benchmarking study tracking the fundraising performance of a cross section of charities. More recently, Sargeant developed the UK’s new National Occupational Standard for Fundraising, specifying the skills and knowledge required of fundraisers working in a variety of different roles within the profession.
In 2008, he was honoured by the Institute of Fundraising for his services to the profession of fundraising, becoming an Honorary Fellow of the Institute. Along with Stephen Lee, Lindsay Boswell and Peter Maple, Sargeant is calling for a greater investment in meaningful fundraising research in the UK
In 2010, he received a Civil Society Award for his Outstanding Contribution to Fundraising and was named to the prestigious Nonprofit Times' Top 50 Power and Influence List.
In 2012, Sargeant joined Bloomerang, a nonprofit fundraising software start-up, as Chief Scientist, helping to incorporate concepts from his 2004 book Building Donor Loyalty: The Fundraiser's Guide To Increasing Lifetime Value into the company's software.
In 2014, Sargeant was tapped to lead the philanthropic psychology research centre at Plymouth University.
In 2018, Sargeant left the University of Plymouth to launch the Philanthropy Centre Ltd, offering fundraising education and consultancy services.

Books