Letter to small charities

Dear members,

Over the past few weeks there has been a public debate about whether NCVO’s commitment to small charities is changing. It stems from organisational changes we have made to our staff teams to ensure financial sustainability, and to be able to deliver our aim of helping more of you, in more ways.

I’d like to take this opportunity to assure you that we are working harder than ever to ensure that what we do, tackles the systemic challenges you face every day.

For accuracy, let me start by reassuring you:

1. We have not closed the Small Charities Helpline service. Our plan is to evolve this service so you can access guidance and support in ways accessible to you, whenever you need it. This will take time, and until then you can still contact us as you always have been able to here.
2. We have not made the ‘small charities team’ redundant. We didn’t have a small charities team. Supporting small charities is part of everyone’s role at NCVO, and we have experts, many of whom have worked at small charities, helping us develop guidance, policies, and campaigns as well as dealing with your enquiries.

Over the past year we have consulted widely with small charities on what you need from us, including during our member focus groups and our Listening Forum.  You have kindly answered our surveys which we always analyse by charity size. Please keep reading our emails so you can continue being involved. 

The responses that emerged fall into the following themes:

• Voice and influence – how to influence government, funders and decision makers
• Value of membership – specifically how we can better aid collaboration and build networks
• Data and technology – from how to gather data to prove impact, to how to harness AI
• Sustainable funding - the need for increased, sustainable unrestricted funds. 

All these issues have been carefully considered in our strategic thinking and our Board is working through the insight you have provided us, alongside the NCVO team, to understand our options and the potential scale of our ambition in these areas. It is exciting work and I am delighted to have been able to spend time with significant numbers of small charities since starting to explore these options.

At its heart, NCVO is a membership organisation, and always will be. But we can’t just be a sticking plaster for problems, because the environment we work in is not getting easier.

We must be louder and bolder – we must speak truth to power in government and build a more cohesive charity sector, where information and collaboration can happen more easily.  You need great information, sustainable funding, access to strong networks and examples of cutting-edge best practice.

This will benefit all our members, but particularly smaller ones, which tell me they struggle to get beneficiary lived experience heard in policy making and the commissioning and funding environments.

NCVO is also a charity, and we are not immune from the financial challenges facing charities. Like many of you, I have to balance the desire to help more people with the realities of increasing staff costs and how to invest so we can meet our ambitions.

In order to deliver that, NCVO needs to build a new culture, underpinned by a dynamic, diverse team of highly-experienced staff. We will therefore have fewer staff but will invest where we don’t have the skills and knowledge.

This is why we have made some redundancies and also advertised for six new Associate Directors, to drive change and complement the outstanding existing NCVO team, providing a new focus on quality and sector innovation. For some this feels radical – but we cannot meet the level of change needed without making brave decisions.

I fully appreciate your disappointment with how some perceive we have handled these changes and recognise it has caused uncertainty and confusion. I am genuinely sorry; it was not my intention. Transformation is not for the faint-hearted and your support and challenge will help keep NCVO on track in the coming years. 

Please stick with us through these months whilst we refocus, and together we will build a stronger civil society for now, and for future generations.

Kind regards,

Kate Lee OBE