What our strategy research with Cranfield Trust tells us about the sector's needs
Cranfield Trust was one of three winners of the nfpResearch Small Charity Research Award, a programme that offers organisations with an income under £1 million the opportunity to receive a research project at no cost. The award reflects our view that access to professional research should not depend on the size of an organisation's budget. Small charities carry out important work, often with limited resources, and good evidence can help them direct those resources more effectively.
Cranfield Trust provides free management support and mentoring to small and medium-sized charities and non-profits across the UK, drawing on a network of skilled business volunteers. Developing their next strategy, Cranfield Trust needed to understand how the needs of the organisations they serve are changing and where Cranfield Trust could have the greatest impact in the years ahead. In March 2026, nfpResearch carried out a survey with 368 respondents across four of the Trust’s audiences: organisational clients, funders and supporters, volunteers, and staff and associates.
This blog shares what the research found about the challenges facing small charities, the skills they need to develop and the kinds of support they are looking for.
Income generation as the dominant concern
Across all four audiences, income generation and fundraising was the most frequently cited management and leadership challenge for small charities. Two thirds of charity clients, funders and volunteers, and almost all staff and associates identified it as one of the three most pressing challenges charities face. The consistency of this finding across such different groups points to how widely the financial pressures on small charities are felt and understood.
Secondary concerns varied by audience. One in two volunteers placed strategy and long-term planning second, suggesting a view that financial pressures are crowding out forward thinking in many organisations. Funders ranked leadership capacity and wellbeing second (46%), indicating a concern about the personal and professional demands placed on those running small charities. Charity respondents, however, were broadly spread across their remaining selections, with one in four choosing succession planning, strategy and long-term planning, or leadership capacity and wellbeing. The spread suggests that small charities are contending with a range of pressures simultaneously, rather than one clearly defined secondary challenge. One respondent acknowledged this commenting: “[Choosing] three priorities; I found this almost impossible. As small charity leaders, we are pulled in so many directions as we wear so many hats."
Training needs follow a similar pattern
When asked about training and development needs over the next few years, financial sustainability and income generation again came first across all four groups. But beyond this, audiences perceived different charity needs. Strategy and planning was the second most common need among volunteers keeping with their view that many charities need more capacity to plan for the longer term. But organisational resilience and risk management was selected by 40% of charities and 46% of funders, suggesting that the ability to manage uncertainty and change is seen as an area requiring attention. Digital capability and systems was named by 38% of charities and 46% of funders.
When budgets are tight, the cost of training is not just fees
One finding that cuts across the challenges and training data is how difficult it is for small charities to access development and support at all. Budgets for training and professional development are, for many organisations, among the first things to be cut when income is under pressure. This makes free or low-cost provision not a secondary consideration but a prerequisite for participation.
This came through clearly in responses from charity clients. As one respondent put it: “Free, high quality training is so valuable when training budgets are being squeezed. I often end up paying for training myself rather than asking for it out of an organisational pot.” The implication is that for a significant share of the sector, the choice is not which training to attend but whether to engage at all.
Desire for collaboration and connection
Several findings in the research point beyond the immediate challenges of individual organisations to the question of how the sector as a whole functions. Across audiences, there was appetite for more collaboration among organisations facing similar challenges to promote shared learning. Funders cited the ability to connect and convene across the sector as an important characteristic of organisations working in this space. Among volunteers, helping charities collaborate was a recurring suggestion; they commented that many of the pressures small charities face are structural, and that peer connection and shared knowledge can offer some relief where individual capacity is limited.
What the findings suggest
Taken together, the findings describe a small charity sector navigating a difficult period. Financial pressure is the central concern, but it sits alongside questions of leadership, succession, long-term planning and organisational capacity – and, for many charities, these challenges are not sequential but concurrent.
What comes through consistently is that the value of expert support is inseparable from its accessibility. For a significant share of the sector, free provision is not a nice-to-have but the condition that makes engagement possible in the first place. Equally, the appetite for collaboration and peer connection reflects an understanding that individual organisations cannot absorb all the pressure alone and that some of what the sector needs is structural rather than something any single charity can address through better management.
Right support, right time: Insights from the sector: read the full report on the Cranfield Trust website.