This year's CFG Small Charity Survey aims to understand how small charities are coping with a difficult financial environment. The 2025 survey found that many charities were struggling to cope with increasing demand and rising costs, so we now want to know what, if anything, has changed in the last 12 months.
Small charities are at the heart of communities across the country. They deliver vital services, fill critical gaps, and often do so with limited resources and under growing pressure. Yet too often, their voices are missing from the conversations that shape policy and sector support.
That is why we are calling on everyone working for or connected to a small charity to take five minutes to complete our small charity survey, and to share it as widely as possible with colleagues and contacts across the sector.
What the survey covers
The survey asks about your charity's current financial confidence, the challenges you are navigating day to day, your experience of processes like Gift Aid, and the support, if any, that you’re currently receiving.
Your responses will be used to build a clearer picture of the pressures facing small charities right now. The findings will directly inform our advocacy work, and help us make the case for better support across the sector.
The deadline for completing the survey is Friday 12 June 2026.
Why this matters
Last year's CFG small charity survey painted a concerning picture. One third of respondents (33%) reported that their charity's financial situation had deteriorated over the previous 12 months, with only 11% reporting any improvement. Additionally, 50% of respondents said they experienced an increase in stress, as these financial challenges being compounded by the fact that over half of small charities had experienced an increase in demand for their services. Taken together, those findings reflect a sector under sustained pressure, with very little room for optimism built in.
We want to know whether that picture has shifted, stayed the same, or worsened in the past 12 months.
Small Charity Week 2026
We will be sharing the results during Small Charity Week 2026, which runs from 22 to 29 June. That week is an important moment to celebrate the contribution of small charities and to shine a light on the challenges they face. Having up-to-date, sector-specific data to draw on will make that conversation sharper and more powerful.
Alongside the survey findings, we are also planning a range of other activity for Small Charity Week. This includes refreshing our existing guides for small charities and developing new ones, as well as producing further content specifically aimed at smaller organisations. We will share more details on that in due course.
Please share this widely
If you work for a small charity or are a trustee of one, we would love to hear from you. The survey should take no more than five minutes to complete, and every response genuinely makes a difference to the quality of the findings.
If you are not based in a small charity yourself, please consider passing this on. Whether through your networks, your newsletter, or a direct message to contacts in the sector, sharing the survey is one of the simplest ways you can support small charities right now.
Complete the survey here and please share before Friday 12 June 2026.