Doing Less, Not Caring Less: Reflections from the Small Charity Friendly Collective Conference 2025

Last week I had the privilege of helping to organise and speak at our third annual Small Charity Friendly Collective conference. It was my first time being part of the planning team, and it was a real honour to contribute to such an energising and hopeful day. It also happened to fall on my birthday, and spending it in the company of so many thoughtful, committed people felt like a real gift.  

Our theme “Doing less, not caring less: rising to the challenges of running a small charity in 2025” couldn’t have been more timely. With the cost of living crisis, funding reductions, and rising demand, many small charities are under immense pressure. The NCVO’s Road Ahead 2025 report calls this the year of the “big squeeze”, and that certainly resonates with what we’re seeing across the sector.

But what stood out to me from the day was a shared understanding that, while the challenges are real, there are practical, purposeful ways for small charities to respond; ways that protect our values, support our people, and allow us to serve our communities with care and intention.

The Strength of Small Charities

Several of our funder speakers echoed a message that small charities really need to hear right now: your size is a strength.

Fozia Irfan OBE from BBC Children in Need shared that funders are increasingly looking for place-based work, community agency, movement-building, and systems-level change. These are things small charities do naturally. As Mohammed Afridi from the Civic Power Fund reminded us, many major changes in society begin with grassroots action, often driven by small, embedded, community-led organisations.

Even as funding becomes harder to access, our ability to create deep, lasting impact remains powerful. That’s a testament to the creativity and ingenuity of small charities up and down the country.

Facing the Pressure

Across the day, speakers shared practical approaches for navigating today’s uncertainty, tools to help small charities stay grounded, focused, and confident in their decisions.

Start with Governance

Michele Price’s session encouraged us to begin by checking whether our governance supports or hinders us. That includes looking again at our constitution, board structure, terms of office, and skills mix - not as a compliance exercise, but to ensure these frameworks work for the organisation we are now. Michele's advice was reassuringly realistic: you don’t need to overhaul everything overnight: just identify one thing you could improve to make your governance work better for you right now.

Claris D'cruz built on this, joined by Janet Thorne from Reach Volunteering and Dr Ambreen Shah from Smallwood Trust, focusing on one of the most pressing issues for small charity governance: board recruitment and diversity. Nearly 80% of small charities have trustee vacancies, and data published on the day of the conference showed that many boards still don’t reflect the diversity of the communities they serve.

Together, the panel offered six practical steps to build a stronger, more inclusive board:

1. Clarify what you need: Use tools like Reach Volunteering’s Board Skills and Diversity Audits to understand the mix of skills, experience, and perspectives you're looking for.

2. Identify who’s missing and why: Talk to the people you want to reach. Ask what barriers might exist (timings, format, expenses) and how you can lower them.

3. Build internal consensus: Ensure your current board genuinely supports your aims, beyond just lip service. This avoids pushback down the line.

4. Create a strong, welcoming advert: Be clear about the role, its purpose, and the impact trustees can make.

5. Advertise proactively and respond quickly: Relying on personal networks alone can lead to ‘carbon copies’. Be open and outward-looking.

6. Recruit with care: Shortlist and interview based on your original criteria - this is a leadership role, and deserves the same rigour.

The message was clear: better governance is about building the foundation for everything else to stand on - starting where you are, and moving forward with intention.

Anchor Strategy in Purpose

In the session I co-delivered with Yasmin Glover, we invited charities to reconnect with their purpose and use it as a compass for prioritisation. Yasmin encouraged us to view our governing documents as our “superhero origin stories” - reminders of why we exist, who we’re here for, and what makes our approach distinct.

From there, we outlined a step-by-step process to help small charities prioritise their work with clarity and care:

• Reconnect with your purpose: Revisit your constitution and founding values to ground your decision-making in why your organisation exists.

• Listen to your community: Gather input from service users, staff, volunteers, and partners. Understand current needs, hopes, and concerns.

• Map community assets and context: Take stock of strengths that already exist in your community, networks, partnerships, as well as what's happening in the broader sector.

• Assess feasibility: Look at your team capacity, infrastructure, finances, and existing commitments. What is realistically possible?

• Prioritise with purpose: Use a simple matrix to score potential activities against: (1) Alignment with your purpose (2) Impact on your community (3) Feasibility to deliver.

This process helps create a clear picture of what to focus on now, what might need to wait, and what you may need to let go of entirely. It’s not about striving for perfection, it’s about making conscious, values-led choices in a difficult environment.

But prioritisation isn’t a one-off exercise. To stay focused and flexible, it’s vital to monitor and measure what you’re doing. Build in ways to check whether your work is actually achieving what you hoped. Are the right people being reached? Is the impact what you expected? Without this feedback loop, there’s a risk of drifting off course or assuming that what once worked still does.

Kye Lockwood, FRSA from DataKind UK brought this to life by reminding us to consider the cultural changes needed to support this approach. It’s not just about having a strategy, it’s about embedding a mindset that supports learning, adaptation, and progress over perfection.

Finances: Planning with Honesty

Fozia Irfan from BBC Children in Need and Kelly Ruder from The Fore were candid about the realities facing funders. The pressure is growing on all sides. They offered a series of practical, constructive suggestions for increasing your chances of securing funding:

• Be selective: Don’t waste time and resources on applications that don’t align with your work. If you’re forcing a square peg into a round hole, funders will spot it.

• Show how the funding is a bridge: Demonstrate how the grant will help move your organisation from where it is now to where it needs to be.

• Demonstrate understanding of your community: Consider intersectionality and show how your work meaningfully meets the needs of the people you serve.

• Use unrestricted grants wisely: Show how it will support both day-to-day operations and long-term sustainability.

• Use AI carefully: It can help you get started, but don’t rely on it to solely write your application - your voice and insight are what funders connect with.

• Plan for impact measurement: Think ahead to how you’ll collect data to evidence the difference your work is making.

Liz Pepler MIAB FRSA and Mike Zywina teamed up for a deeply practical session on finance and fundraising. Mike encouraged charities to flip the usual model: start by asking what you can realistically raise, then shape your delivery plans to match. Too often, organisations begin with ambitious plans and hope the funding will follow. This can create huge pressure on fundraisers and expose charities to serious financial risks.

Liz built on this by reminding us to budget with values, not just numbers. That means budgeting for fair salaries, training, and staff wellbeing - so organisational resilience isn’t built at the expense of individual resilience.

Together, they advocated for more open, visual approaches to financial planning: mapping income against expenditure in a clear, digestible format that shows what you can sustain, where the gaps are, and what might need to change.

Their message was clear: knowing your numbers helps you avoid chasing grants that leave you in deficit. It helps you “ride two horses at once”: surviving the worst, while working towards the best.

Looking After Your People

Sonia Wilson Chartered FCIPD delivered an incredibly practical session outlining the major employment law changes expected in 2026, likely to be the most significant updates in decades. These include: day-one rights to claim unfair dismissal and request flexible working; statutory sick pay from day one of illness and from the start of employment; the right for zero-hours workers to move to guaranteed hours contracts if they regularly work average hours; and a new requirement for employers to protect workers from third-party harassment. 

Sonia emphasised the importance of preparing now. That means reviewing recruitment and induction processes, establishing clear performance management practices, and ensuring your policies are up to date and accessible.

Just as importantly, she encouraged us to see this not just as a compliance issue, but a chance to align internal processes with our organisational values, echoing Liz’s earlier point that resilience should extend to the individuals behind the work, not just the organisation itself. Isobel Hunter MBE from Libraries Connected offered a practical example of this in action. She shared how updating policies like flexible working helped her team feel more supported, building goodwill and resilience through trust.

And the gunnercooke foundation highlighted the power of peer support—bringing together small charity leaders through their Inspire Hubs to share, reflect, and reduce the sense of isolation that can come with this work.

A Celebratory, Hopeful Space

Although the challenges facing small charities are serious, the atmosphere on the day was energising and optimistic. There was a real sense of solidarity and shared purpose in the (virtual) room.

As Mike reflected, it would be wonderful to host a future conference themed around “capitalising on opportunities in a growing economy and kinder society.” But in this current context, it felt all the more meaningful to come together, learn from one another, and leave feeling more prepared—and less alone.

Huge Thanks

Thank you to our brilliant guest speakers and spotlight contributors, my inspiring members in the Small Charity Friendly Collective, and the fantastic team at gunnercooke who supported the day.

If you weren’t able to join us live, the good news is you can still access the full recordings this month. Sign up to access the recordings here: https://resources.gunnercooke.com/doing-less-not-caring-less-rising-to-the-challenges-of-running-a-small-charity-in-2025.