The CAF published its UK Giving Report this week. The numbers are not easy reading. Donations fell by £1.4 billion between 2024 and 2025. There are six million fewer donors in the UK than there were a decade ago. The average gift has dropped from £72 to £65, and nearly half of people who didn’t give last year said they simply couldn’t afford to.
For charity leaders, this lands on top of years of accumulated pressure: rising costs, contract squeezes, increasing demand for services, and a statutory funding environment that has been tightening for some time. None of that is new. But seeing it distilled into a single headline figure has a way of making it feel more final than it is.
The anxiety that doesn’t get named
What I notice in conversations with CEOs and boards right now is something that often goes unsaid. Alongside the very real financial worry, there is frequently an assumption that difficulty of this scale must point to something going wrong internally. A board that hasn’t been strategic enough. A CEO who should have diversified income sooner. A team that isn’t performing well enough to survive a leaner environment.
That is almost never an accurate diagnosis. Most of the charities I work with are led by people who are working extremely hard, making considered decisions, and caring deeply about the people they exist to serve. The funding environment is hostile in ways that are largely outside their control.
Placing that weight on individual leaders, or allowing boards to carry it silently, is both unfair and practically counterproductive. It tends to produce either paralysis or reactive decision-making, and neither serves the organisation well. Naming the anxiety for what it is, a structural and systemic problem rather than a personal or organisational failing, is not about offering reassurance. It is about creating enough clarity to act.
Looking at what you’re actually doing
When the pressure mounts, the instinct is often to focus on income: new funders, new streams, a more compelling case for support. That work matters, but it is harder to do well when the underlying model hasn’t been examined.
Over time, and particularly when resources are tight, organisations tend to accumulate activity. Work gets taken on because funding is available, even when it sits at the edge of the mission. Projects continue past the point at which they are delivering real value, because stopping feels like failure or concession. Staff structures that made sense at a different size or income level persist because change feels risky.
An honest look at what the organisation is currently doing, what it was set up to do, and whether those two things still align is often more useful than another income diversification plan. It doesn’t have to be a lengthy process. But it does require the willingness to ask direct questions and sit with the answers, even when they are uncomfortable.
The governance piece
It is also worth looking clearly at how the board is functioning. This is not about assigning blame. Governance tends to drift under pressure, sometimes because trustees are overstretched, sometimes because the relationship between board and leadership has become blurred, and sometimes simply because nobody has had the bandwidth to notice.
A board that is not meeting effectively, or that lacks the confidence to engage substantively with financial risk, is not well-placed to support a CEO through a difficult period. Equally, a CEO who is managing the board rather than working with it is carrying more than they should be. These are structural problems, and they are fixable, but they are hard to see clearly from the inside.
Hard decisions, made well
Some of what comes out of this kind of review is genuinely difficult. Narrowing the scope of what an organisation does. Restructuring how it is staffed. In some cases, considering whether merger or managed closure is a more responsible path than continuing to operate in ways that are not sustainable.
These are not signs of failure. They are the kinds of decisions that well-governed organisations are able to make when they have good information, clear thinking, and the right support around them. The charities that navigate difficult periods most effectively are rarely the ones that avoided hard choices. They are the ones that made those choices deliberately, with enough time to do so thoughtfully.
What this looks like in practice
I work with small and medium charities and CICs at exactly these moments: reviewing structure, strategy, and governance so that leadership can make informed decisions rather than reactive ones. Sometimes that work is a formal review. Sometimes it is lighter-touch support for a CEO or board navigating a period of uncertainty.
If your organisation is under pressure and you’re not sure where to start, I’m happy to have an initial conversation at no charge. Sometimes it helps just to think out loud with someone who understands the sector, and has been in this exact position.