Sarah Nathan & Peter Dawson

The charity sector in Scotland, Wales, and Northern Ireland entered 2025 facing significant financial pressure. Rising costs, increased demand for services, and uncertainty around long-term funding have created a climate of anxiety. Yet, despite these challenges, there are clear reasons for optimism, with promising trends in giving, public sentiment, and government collaboration offering a brighter outlook.

Pressures Facing the Sector

Jo Fischl

In the latest of our focus group series, last month saw us exploring the views and opinions of the Scottish public. Our regular polling and interviews with the people of Scotland provide vital insights to charities working both exclusively in the country, as well as UK-wide organisations looking to better understand this specific audience.

Jo Fischl

Last month, we carried out a focus group discussion with a group of charity donors aged in their 50s to 70s. Charity was an important aspect of their lives; they have given at least £40 to charity in the past month, with some also volunteering time or fundraising to support various charities. Suffice to say, they were passionate about the causes and charities they supported. Today, we’re sharing some of the key themes we noted from our discussion with this group.

With a General Election imminent, the public's attitudes toward charities getting involved in politics have become more of a focus.  The Shelia McKechnie Foundation and nfpResearch wanted to understand how aware the public is of the political work of charities.  We were interested in hearing if people felt charities should be occupying the political space and who they felt should be involved in politics. Our report unpacks our findings on campaigning and activism from nfpIntelligence (our regular general public research focussed on charity sector trends).

Aymen Habib 

Ben Roberts

We’ve spoken at length about the Royal Family and their long history of charitable involvement. Following the passing of the Queen, we shared a retrospective of her record of charity patronage, and spoke about the direction we might expect the new king to take as he takes over or shares the various roles previously occupied by his mother.

Ben Roberts

Alix Moussy

One of the most useful questions that we ask the public is about their levels of trust in various institutions. The figures that we get back are often very telling, revealing a lot about political and social attitudes. However, we’ve recently been seeing drastic shifts in public views towards certain institutions and services.