UK Charity Fundraising Trends

This regularly updated charity fundraising trends report uses Charity Excellence data to look back at fundraising resilience 2020 to 2025 and what future trends might look like into 2026 and beyond.

For what the charity sector and Government could and should do to respond to the ongoing crisis, see our Charity Sector Road Map for Recovery.

Fundraising Trends Summary - What Will 2026 Look Like?

• Crisis Recovery Timescale. The sector has now been through 3 crises in recent years.  The time taken to recover gets longer each time - the last time it took 15 months (Oct 23 to Dec 24).
• Failure to Recover. For the 1st time, fundraising recovery is significantly below previous recovery levels.  In light of this, we think that any crash would potentially be deeper than any previous one.
• Risk of Another Crash. The current situation appears very similar to that which triggered the last crash, except the sector is in a far weaker position.  We believe the risk of a further fundraising crash to be high.
• Impact of Another Crash. If it were to occur, it might well be the deepest yet, with no recovery until at least 2027.
• Longer-term. We don't see anything that would suggest a recovery anytime soon but any significant change in the economy will impact fundraising either positively, or negatively.

Charity Excellence Data Store - UK Fundraising Trends

Charity Excellence has aggregated all user data (anonymously), since 2018, using its 500+ health check metrics, which are combined into various models.

Our Charity Sector Data Store is now conservatively estimated to be 1 million data points.  Reporting is via 5 Power BI dashboards that are able to track, and dice and slice data in a large variety of ways. One of the models reported is fundraising resilience, which tracks 83 of these of the 500+ metrics.

Power BI - Dashboard 5

We simply don't have the capacity or influence to fully exploit the huge and growing data set we have. We plan to do so as part of our next generation Charity Excellence 2.0. This will see the existing web sites and underpinning eco system disappear and become part of the new emerging agentic web, delivering not only a far more accessible system but also one that is far more powerful.

UK Charity Fundraising Trends - What We Know From Looking Back

From Covid to the Cost of Living Crisis: Nov 19 to Sep 22

The Covid crisis really began to impact in Mar 20, but the data shows sector fundraising falling from late 2019. We're not sure why.  We have data from mid 2018 but our community numbers only really surged with Covid, so we're wary about how robust pre-2020 data is.

What the data shows is that we reached bottom in Apr 20 The dip on the left) and were back to Mar 20 levels by Jul 20. Fundraising resilience then continued to surge and to far higher levels than before, peaking in Feb 21 (the peak in the middle) before slowly falling back to 2019 levels.

Nov 19 to Sep 22

Nobody really knows but in our Covid Lessons learned exercise, we use our grants data and other sources to estimate the Covid funding provided to have been in the region of £5 billion.

The Cost of Living Crisis - Oct 22 to Sep 23

In Aug 22, we used our Covid data to create a predictive model of the coming Cost of Living crisis. This accurately predicted that it would be much deeper and longer than Covid and we'd hit bottom in Q1 23.  Recovery began in Mar 23. This time it took a year for fundraising to return to previous levels; twice as long.

Jul 22 to Sep 23

The 2nd Charity Cost of Living Crisis: Oct 23 to Dec 24

We'd been raising concerns about Government budget cutting and, having carried out a survey to support our data, in Sep 23 released our £1billion funding cut report. This predicted a crash, driven by cuts to contracts of mainly larger charities but also in grant funding to small charities, because this is non statutory.

Sep 22 to Dec 24

This 3rd crisis was as deep as the initial CoL crisis.  Fundraising recovery began in Apr 24 and ran through to Dec 24.

Fundraising Trend Update to Nov 25

This time, we saw something we hadn't before.  Fundraising did not recover to previous levels. It appears to have stabilised (far right in the graph), but at a much lower level than before. We don't yet know why this is.  We know that fundraising is taking longer and longer to recover each time and it may simply be either that we've been so ground down that we may be approaching a tipping point and/or the huge surge in applications.

The ACF report Foundations in Focus (2025) stated that in 23/24 grants increased by 12%.  However, applications surged dramatically, with some foundations reporting up to 400% more. Driven by inflation, cost-of-living pressures, and increased demand for charity services.

Jan 22 to Nov 25

What is particularly worrying us is that the current economic conditions appear to be very similar to those in mid 2023, reported in our £1bn Funding Cuts report and which led to the last crash.

Fundraising Trends - Future Outlook

Might We Reach a Tipping Point?

Given we have been unable to recover this time and the potential for a further crash begs the question of whether the sector will reach a tipping point. However, I think that uneven deterioration is more likely than a tipping point that takes down the whole system, thanks to the sector’s diversity, institutional trust, and adaptive capacity.  However, we think that we may well see localised tipping points in subsectors and local ecosystems.  

Longer term, AI may have an impact too.  Either in supporting growing resilience or, less positively, super large charities potentially creating digital moats and becoming super dominant to the detriment of large and medium sized charities. 

Economic Trends & Likely Sector Impact

Economy. The UK’s economic outlook as of November 2025 shows slow but positive growth, tight public finances, and pressure on household incomes. GDP is forecast to grow modestly at around 1.2% in 2026, with inflation easing but real wages still lagging behind pre-pandemic levels. Disposable income remains squeezed due to high tax burdens and elevated interest rates, despite targeted relief like energy bill subsidies and fare freezes. The government plans £15–20 billion in departmental budget cuts over four years, focusing on unprotected areas such as local government, justice, and transport, while shielding health, schools, and defence.  There are also wider issues to consider.  We might hope that an unforeseen event such as a surge in exports or major trade deals might help boost the economy but there are also major downside risks such as the potential for the AI bubble to burst.  In either case fundraising resilience will follow the economy.    

Fundraising.

• Demand Costs. The growing tax burden may push more into poverty but the significant increases in wages and benefits seem likely to outweigh that.  Hopefully, that will not drive another surge in grant applications to meet demand driven cost increases.
• The Economy.  However, it seems unlikely that there will be a boost in in economic growth, so there's no real expectation it will boost fundraising income.
  • A significant change in the economic outlook remains possible.
  • If the economy falls, so will fundraising income for everyone and.
  • Demand  will grow again, mainly impacting poverty related charities but driving up fundraising competition for everyone.
• Large Workforce Charities. The significant staff costs increases will impact charities with large workforces; NICs last budget, minimum wages in Nov 25 and the National Living Wage Increases in Apr 26.
• Public Funding. In terms of public funding, unless the Government makes good on its promise to invest in the sector, it seems very likely that potentially significant cuts will be passed on the charities.
  • That is charities with contracts but also small charities who rely on local Government grants, which are not statutory provision, so are unprotected.  Both were cut significantly in 2023.
• Confidence.  If the Government loses the confidence of consumers, they will reduce spending, companies investment and the bond markets, the cost of Government borrowing.
• Timescale.  There doesn't appear to be anything on the horizon to suggest any significant improvement in fundraising over the next few years. The one possible area is if the Government were to follow through on its proposed investment on charity services.  We proposed this in our 2023 report and nothing happened and we suspect that in a scramble to protect as many Civil Service jobs as possible, they'll do what they've always done and cut funding. Stupid but predictable.

Outlook

We think there is a significant risk of a 4th crash in fundraising resilience and, if it does happen, it may well be deeper that even the last and we would not expect recovery until at least 2027. There is a risk of localised tipping points. We do not foresee any near term recovery but any significant changes in economic conditions will impact fundraising.

How to Improve Your Charity Fundraising

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Thank You!  My thanks to Sujith Murughan Mudaliyar who volunteered to build the Power BI dashboards that made this analysis possible and also to the OR Society pro bono team for finding him.  Here's the case study.