Small Charity Week 2025 - how resilient is your charity?
Julian Lomas
The vital importance of small charities is something we’ve written about many times over the years. We’re evangelical about the critical role small charities play and there have been countless surveys and studies to back this up.
Small charities are more flexible, more trusted and often more innovative. They fill the gaps left by shrinking state services and do so with enthusiasm and compassion. A recent report from the Cranfield Trust highlights the essential role of small charities, calling for action from funders, policymakers and charity leaders to protect the vital services delivered by small charities.
Small Charity Week 2025 (23-28 June) is focussing financial resilience as its key theme. Today’s ever more rapidly changing world (local, national and global) presents many challenges for small charities, not the least of which is financial resilience. Rising costs, growing for services and a mixed funding landscape all add to the challenge. The key recommendations small charities, funders and the Government are:
Invest in leadership and capacity-building – to strengthen financial management, governance, and strategic planning.
Seek smarter collaboration opportunities – to maximise resources and expertise.
Strengthen governance through diversity and strategic recruitment – to ensure leadership teams reflect the communities they serve.
Provide multi year, unrestricted long-term and streamlined funding applications.
Align policies with the Civil Society Covenant and recognise small charities as a national asset requiring urgent investment.
On the topic of financial resilience, the Cranfield Trust has also published a really helpful article with advice, support and tools to support charity leaders to feel confident in their financial management. The article suggests ten practical actions (with associated tools) to strengthen financial resilience:
Forecasting your cashflow
Forecasting your income
Managing your fundraising pipeline
Setting targets using comparisons from previous years
Making sure everyone in your organisation understands its finances
Understanding your costs
Having strong contingency plans
Being targeted rather than adopting a scattergun approach
Diversifying income
Developing a comprehensive business plan that takes account of opportunity cost
That is why we are so proud to have been working with Clarion Futures, Places Foundation and the Fusion21 Foundation for the last few years to deliver a range of programmes to support the resilience of small charities. The most recent programme was the Resilience Programme, which provided free consultancy support and capacity building grants to small charity and social enterprise partners of housing associations across England. We are proud to be the provider of consultancy services through this programme and to be supporting its future development. The programme has had immense impact, details of which we will be able to share when the evaluation report is published.
We have recently been selected to continue our capacity building support for small charities through the successor to The resilience Programme, to be called Community Catalyst. The new programme will last for at least 3 years aiming to reach over 300 small charities and non-profits working in communities served by housing associations. More details will follow when the programme launches.
Meanwhile, if your organisation is struggling with financial reislience we and our network of trusted associates can help. To find out more about the support and training we offer, please contact us at julian@almondtreeconsulting.co.uk to arrange free initial discussion.