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This regularly updated charity fundraising trends 2025 report uses Charity Excellence data to look back at fundraising resilience and what future trends might look like in 2025 and beyond. The fundraising recovery we first reported in 2024 has continued but there are real near term concerns the Government may crash it, as it did in 2023, and there are also significant wider threats.
Charity Excellence has aggregated user data anonymously since 2018 and, for fundraising, uses a bank of 83 questions. For what the charity sector and Government could and should do to respond to the ongoing crisis, see our Charity Sector Road Map for Recovery.
For the charity sector the cost of living crisis ran from Sep 22 when fundraising resilience began to collapse, through to the 2024 recovery we've previously reported.
| The graph on the right is Charity Excellence Fundraising resilience data for Aug 22 to Jan 25.
The peak in the middle is the initial recovery that was completely derailed by the Government Funding cuts of £1bn we highlighted in autumn 2023. |
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The rise on the right is a second recovery that began mid 2024, which is mirroring the initial recovery in 2023. But will it continue or will the current round of cuts crash it, as happened under the Conservative Government?
International Aid. The biggest issue at the start of the year has been the Trump presidency. He has halted almost all international aid and the US is the world's largest aid funder. Moreover, they are also the largest funder of the WHO and will be withdrawing from membership over the coming year. That will have a massive impact, significantly increasing the already unmet demand, particularly in healthcare, such as Aids/HIV and Malaria, where the US has delivered some incredibly good work. The UK Government announcement of a cut of around 40% in the aid budget will have a huge impact on our international development charities and make a very bad situation even worse.
Charity Funding Cuts. And whilst the cut to international aid may be the largest, we are seeing the same pattern of cuts to charity public sector grants and contracts that we saw in mid 2023. That crashed the 2023 fundraising recovery. The graph above shows just how bad the impact of that was on fundraising resilience. The Labour Government may be repeating the mistakes of the previous Conservative government. In our 2023 £1 bn Funding Cut Report we outlined how savings could be made far more effectively. What may be about to happen in the near future would be as avoidable as it was under the previous Government. Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose.
Potential Demand/Cost Increases. Beyond that, most fundraising is driven by the state of the economy. The Chancellor's growth budget does not appear to be working and more Departmental budget cuts must now be on the cards. That would probably drive even deeper cuts in charity funding and, the impact on the public, would drive up demand for charity services and, with it. And we can't borrow to pay for the defence increase, which some think is too low anyway. A radical rethink of what to cut and by how much may be needed.
Potential Global Headwinds. There are external risks too. For example, the US tariffs being imposed on its biggest trading partners (China, Canada and Mexico) will lead to retaliation and that will be harmful to global economic trade. Some have also begun voicing concern over the health of the US economy. I don't think anyone is yet talking about a global recession but these are certainly very real risks.
There are simply too many risks to be able to make an assessment out to 2026 but here are some factors that may well be very relevant.
'tariffs would halve GDP growth in the UK — amounting to a £21.5 billion hole in Rachel Reeves’s tax and spending plans — push up inflation by 3 to 4 percentage points'. National Institute of Economic and Social Research (NIESR Economic Outlook 4 Nov)
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