Championing Small Charities

We share evidence and insights with policymakers to advocate for the vital role of small charities and create a better environment for them to work in.

How we're influencing policy and practice

Jump to:

Building the evidence base
Civil Society Covenant
Supporting small charities to influence
Improving commissioning
Strengthening the sector
Influencing other funders

This page was updated on 5/02/2025

Small and local charities play a vital role in local communities that is often overlooked. They are often the first to respond to new challenges within their communities, can be flexible and tailor their approach to each individual and many offer long term support to people who have been turned away from other services.

Through our relationships with small charities, we gain significant insights into the challenges and opportunities they’re experiencing at a local level across England and Wales. We want their in-depth knowledge and valuable experience to be heard by decision makers so that it can inform policy and practice. We share evidence from our charity partners with Government and other decision-makers to influence change, as well as continuously advocating for small charities to get the support and resources they need to continue their vital work.

Value of small - building the evidence base

We know small charities matter. But how can we make sure government, funders, charities and others know that too? Research and evidence help us champion small charities by showing what is happening to small charities and why it matters, highlighting problems as well as indicating solutions and identifying best practice.

We funded ground-breaking independent research, Value of Small, which showed that small and local charities are distinctive in what they do, how they do it and where they do it. Importantly, this enables small charities to deliver high levels of value – to individuals, the economy and communities.

The value of small charities was never more evident than in the response to the coronavirus pandemic. Our Value of Small in a Big Crisis research showed how the distinctive role of small and local charities allowed them to respond to crisis and support communities.

Our own research with grant holders has also highlighted how small and local charities face rising demand yet falling resources (Expert Yet Undervalued). The Trading for Good report shows that many small and local social enterprises face similar challenges – and highlights that even social enterprises are more reliant on grants in more deprived areas. We’ve also supported research to explore how social value can be used to better support local communities and economies (Front and Centre). That is, the additional benefits that an organisation can bring beyond delivering a service – it could include developing volunteering opportunities, employing local people, generating social capital or driving down the demand for other services for example.

We use this evidence to make the case to Government to better support small and local charities, including directly influencing their Civil Society Strategy in England. This has been shared with Ministers and government officials.

You can read some of our government consultation responses below:

Civil Society Covenant

In early 2024, the Foundation was pleased to support a Labour and Civil Society Summit where Keir Starmer spoke of the value he places on charities and other civil society organisations and his intention to involve them in the delivery of Labour’s five ‘missions’ if elected.

In the spring, the NCVO and ACEVO called upon political parties to agree to a new Covenant between national Government and civil society. Following the General Election, NCVO and ACEVO launched a consultation on the principles that should underpin this Covenant. The Government Department for Culture, Media & Sport later endorsed the consultation and encouraged charities and other stakeholders to respond to it. This briefing sets out our responses to the questions in that consultation.

Read our response to the consultation.

Supporting small charities to influence

Our charity partners are experts who are often picking up the pieces from broken systems. Small charities step in where the state or others have failed and help people to turn their lives around. This work is critical. In doing it, small charities also see where things aren’t working and are well placed to innovate new approaches to support. They know what’s going wrong and, often, how it can be fixed. That’s why we believe that small and local charities should be able to use this knowledge to influence change – to innovate and strengthen their communities, and to stop the problems they see from occurring in the first place.

We offer organisational development support to all our charity partners alongside their grant, and this can help to upskill charities in developing their influencing and communications skills. Alongside this we’ve developed resources to help charities influence change and navigate local and general elections. We also bring small charities together for peer support and learning through our networks and events.

The Foundation hosts the Welsh Small Charities Forum, which meets about once a quarter, to discuss key issues affecting small charities in Wales. The forum’s pilot year (2023/24) was focused on public sector commissioning of vital services. Collectively, members of the forum identified ten good practice recommendations linked to the Welsh Government’s Funding Code of Practice, and launched a report about these, called Finding the Good, at the Welsh third sector conference, gofod3, hosted by WCVA. This report has catalysed an action learning project we are leading with social value experts, Cwmpas, small charities, and several CVCs from across Wales.

Our funding has already supported the Sheila McKechnie Foundation Social Power project which examines what makes social change happen – it’s a useful tool for anyone wanting to bring about change.

Improving Commissioning

Many of the small and local charities that we fund receive some funding from government. But the ways in which government pays for services can make it difficult for small but vital charities to access vital funding. We’re working to address these challenges and improve the commissioning environment.

Commissioning and procurement - the processes that guide what services government will pay for and how - too often disadvantage smaller charities. Yet, as our research shows these charities are often best place to deliver services in local communities.

Our research, Commissioning in Crisis, shines a spotlight on the challenges small charities are facing. We have used it to show that three core problems make it much harder for small charities to compete:

a lack of understanding about what services are needed and who can best deliver them – resulting in services that meet people’s needs effectively
specifications which prevent small charities from competing, such as needing an income of over £1m to deliver a contract worth £400,000
processes which make it much harder for small charities to participate because they don’t have professional bidding teams – so service managers are having to meet tight timescales when completing a 50,000-word application in evenings and on weekends, on top of their day job

We work with partners to try and improve commissioning and procurement practice.

At a national level we are trying to influence the Procurement Bill which will set out new rules to guide how contracting authorities pay for local public services. Charities can help to make sure the Procurement Bill addresses the challenges they face when it comes to commissioning and procurement by getting in touch with your MP.

We’ve pulled together a briefing that explains all you need to know about the Procurement Bill, how it could effect your charity and how you can contact your MP about it.

At a local level we have also worked with Locality on Keep it Local. The campaign encourages local authorities to move away from large-scale contracting and better work with local organisations. 17 local authorities have already formally adopted a Keep it Local approach which has helped to improve local commissioning in those areas . If you want to encourage your local authority to Keep it Local, take a look at the resources you can use to start the conversation.

You can read some of our consultation responses pushing for changes to commissioning below:

Strengthening the sector

While we want to amplify the voices of small charities in all our work, we also want to support charities and the small charity sector to speak up for themselves. That means helping to build the confidence, capabilities and capacity of the sector to influence change.

We’ve invested in initiatives to support the sector more broadly. We contributed to Civil Society Futures, the independent inquiry into civil society that is helping the sector to question how we can be fit for the future. Our own publication, Facing Forward, is also aimed at helping charities, funders and government to think through how they can prepare for the future and ensure small charities can thrive.

To support the sector during and after the pandemic, we developed our infrastructure programme so that infrastructure organisations could be in the strongest position to support their local charity sector. And we are supporting ACEVO so that they are better able to meet the needs of charity leaders.

As a member of the Civil Society Group, we work with other national infrastructure organisations to advocate for small charities in government policy and work with partners on joint campaigns or initiatives. Some of our achievements include securing £750m for the sector during the pandemic, and securing £100m of extra support from the Government in 2023 to help charities with increased demand and higher costs.

Influencing other funders

We work to improve the operating environment for charities by also influencing other trusts and foundations to adopt more flexible and trusting funder practices. We contributed to ACF’s Pillars of Stronger Foundation Practice to build best practice among trusts and foundations. We funded 360Giving to build on their platform of open grant data and embed the routine sharing of grant data among funders. As well as this we continue to publish our new grants to 360Giving biannually. During the pandemic funders responded quickly to the increased challenges charities faced by making funding unrestricted, loosening reporting requirements, and simplifying application processes. We funded IVAR to ensure these positive practices remained over the long term by developing their Open and Trusting grant making principles. We continue to be a member of this movement and have undertaken a review of our own funding practices as part of IVAR’s accountability process.