For trustees, CEOs and founders doing three jobs at once
Practical guidance for the people running small UK charities - trustees carrying legal duties alongside a day job, CEOs holding a service together with a team of two, and founders working out what they've taken on.
Every article is checked against the regulators rather than against what other people have written, and it's pitched at the scale you actually work at. Nothing here replaces advice on your own situation. It should tell you what the rules say, what they mean at your size, and what to do next.
Five Patterns to Spot Before They Break Here is what keeps small-charity CEOs awake at three in the morning. It is not the fundraising target. It is not the trustee meeting next week. It is the feeling that something is…
The Free £2,000 Most Small UK Charities Are Leaving Behind HMRC will give your charity up to £2,000 a year. It is called the Gift Aid Small Donations Scheme, and most small charities are leaving it on the table. Some…
Most UK charities today aren’t losing ground because they lack passion. They’re losing time, money, and donors because they lack the right systems. It’s a pattern that plays out across the sector every single day. Brilliant teams running on spreadsheets,…
The Code changed at the end of 2025, and the change matters more than most summaries suggest. The old version listed rules for almost every situation, and charities used it as a checklist. The current one is around 45% shorter…
You’ve got a brilliant idea that could change lives in your community. Perhaps it’s setting up a food bank in your local area, creating mental health support groups for young people, or establishing a poverty relief charitable organisation that could…
Giving Tuesday falls on 1 December 2026. It always lands on the first Tuesday after Black Friday and Cyber Monday, which is why the date moves each year. That’s the easy part. The harder question is whether it’s worth your…
Charity accounting software tracks money by fund, so you can show what a restricted grant paid for and what came out of general income. Two things decide if your charity needs it: how many separate pots of money you hold,…
A supporter gives £50 in March. In April, an appeal arrives asking her to consider making her first gift. In May she gets a text, though she unsubscribed from your emails last year. In June she’s invited to an event…
Most advice about charity funding starts with the sources available. That’s the wrong end. A small charity can list twelve possible income streams and still have no idea which two to work on this year. The useful question is narrower:…
Most rejected applications from small charities were not rejected on the writing. They were rejected on things an assessor checked before reaching the project description, or on a mismatch that no amount of redrafting would have fixed. That matters because…