Small Charities in Scotland 2026 ================================ **Size, shape, financial health, and current challenges** Summary ------- **Small charities are an essential part of communities across Scotland, and account for three-quarters of the Scottish charities. Here we pull together** **some key facts and figures about the importance of small charities in Scotland. We also look at some of the challenges currently facing smaller charities, and some of the resources and sources of support available.** **What counts as ‘small’?  [Small Charity Week](https://www.smallcharityweek.org.uk/) describes smaller charities as ones with annual turnovers under £1m.  But for our look at the Scottish landscape, where charities tend to be smaller, we have used annual turnovers of** **‘Under £100k’ as our definition - most of these charities employ no or less than 10 staff and tend to rely on a slightly different mix of income sources.** ** Key stats** * Nearly **18,000 small charities** in Scotland have annual incomes under £100k. * Small charities make up **over three-quarters of the charity sector**. * Despite their numbers, small charities account for just **4% of total sector income and staff**. * Their combined income has remained flat, at around £340m between 2019 and 2025. * In 2025, small charities spent £437m **- around £100m more than their income**. * Smaller charities are slightly more likely than larger ones to spend more than their income, with more than **4 in 10** **ending 2025 in deficit**. * Only **30% of small charities receive public sector funding**. * **43% report difficulty fundraising**, higher than larger charities. * **52% face volunteer** **Small charities: big picture** ### Number of small charities Just under 18,000 Scottish charities are small charities, with annual turnovers under £100k. Small charities account for over three-quarters of the Scottish charity sector. However, despite the huge impact these thousands of charities have on communities across Scotland their economic footprint is small - they account for only 4% of the sector’s income and paid staff. ![Table](https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/ONmJo/full.png) \- ![Scottish charities' composition, by organisation size (Stacked column chart)](https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/ahQZo/full.png) \- ### Growth trends over last decade The number of small charities has fallen slightly in recent years, in part due to a clean up of dormant charities from the OSCR charity register, but primarily due to a shift as the income of many small-to-mid-sized charities has increased and tipped them into a higher income band. This is due in large part to inflation. For example, a 'small' charity with a turnover of £80,000 in 2019 would have a turnover of over £100,000 in 2025 if its income increased in line with inflation. \- ![Number of organisations 2019 - 2015: small and large charities (Small multiple column chart)](https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/FNnij/full.png) **Small charities: financial picture** ### **Small charities' income and expenditure trends** * **The combined income of small charities has seen little growth in the last 6 years, sitting at around £340m in 2019 and 2025, with a small dip in income during Covid.** (This in part reflects that many of the charities who _did_ see significant income growth over that period will have moved up into a higher income band.) * Small charities’ combined expenditure rose to £437m in 2025 - £100m more than their income for 2025. * Large charities saw increases in both income and expenditure over the same time frame \- ![Income and Expenditure 2019 to 2025: small and large charities (Small multiple column chart)](https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/qLb8k/full.png) \- ### Surpluses and deficits Smaller charities are slightly more likely than larger ones to end the year in deficit with over 4 in 10 ending 2025 in deficit.  More positively, we have seen a small improvement in the proportion of charities ending the year in deficit – see Micro and Small deficit trends below: ![% of orgs reporting a Deficit, by year and income band (Line chart)](https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/LM2dP/full.png) **Small charities: main income sources** * Small charities have a different income mix to larger charities. \- ![Income sources in 2023, split by small, medium and large orgs (Small multiple pie chart)](https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/hoFYu/full.png) \- As we can see in the chart above, small charities rely heavily on **income from the general public** – this include things like donations, fundraising income, sales and charges for services including membership fees. While these income streams have mainly recovered from a large slump during Covid, donations and fundraising remain a challenge - fewer people now donate to charity, in a large part due the cost of living. Income from **grant-making trusts**, the lottery and private sector are also important income sources for smaller charities. Support from grant-making foundations is a core income source for many smaller organisations, but we know from funders and fundraisers that the competition for grants is very high just now. Only 30% of small charities received funding from the public sector in 2023, usually in the form of grants (not contracts). Small charities receive only a very small portion of public sector funds, highlighting the ongoing need for small and accessible grants programmes, alongside encouraging and facilitating the participation of smaller third sector organisations in procurement and tendering. For more on income sources and income trends see **[https://scvo.scot/research/stats-funding](https://scvo.scot/research/stats-funding).** \- **Small charities: challenges and future plans** **The following section on current challenges is based primarily on recent data from the** [**Scottish Third Sector Tracker**](https://scvo.scot/research/scottish-third-sector-tracker). ### Main challenges * **Smaller charities face most of the same challenges as larger organisations, but often experience them more acutely in some areas** The Scottish Third Sector Tracker’s latest wave in Autumn 2025 received responses from 663 organisations just over half of which were smaller organisations with incomes under £100k, giving us a good insight into their top current issues and challenges. The chart below shows the top 3 challenges, split by organisation size. ![Top 3 challenges by org size, Autumn 2025 (Grouped Bars)](https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/2yAck/full.png) \- **Donations and fundraised income** are a key source of funding for smaller charities, and ‘difficulty fundraising’ is one of the top three challenge for 43% of smaller charities – ten percentage points higher than larger charities. Smaller charities are far less likely to employ paid staff, and rely heavily on volunteers, including over 100,000 trustees. It’s therefore not surprising that **volunteer (including trustee) shortages** are a top issue for many – but at 52% the figure experiencing volunteer shortages is concerningly high.  Concerns for **staff and volunteer wellbeing** are also a concern for almost 1 in 5 smaller charities.  **Skills shortages** are an issue for around 1 in 10 smaller charities. While **rising costs and inflation** are more of a challenge for larger charities, they are still a top issue for a third of smaller charities. 6% of smaller charities report that they have not faced any challenges in the last 6 months, underscoring that smaller charities are often very resilient and effective despite their apparent lack of resources on paper. \- ### Delivering services Despite the many challenges facing smaller charities, size seems to make little difference when it comes to delivering planned services. The majority of small charities report delivering everything they had planned to, with many even having the capacity to do more than originally planned. ![Service delivery (Grouped Bars)](https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/dRONR/full.png) \- \- ### Resilience and sustainability Size has a small impact on confidence around the future - smaller charities are slightly more likely than larger charities to say they are ‘not very confident’ or ‘not at all confident’ that they will still be around in a year’s time. However, the majority of small charities are very or quite confident they will still be operating in 12 months’ time: ![Confidence for the future (Grouped Bars)](https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/tuuyU/full.png) **Small charities: paid staff** There has been a small shift in where paid staff are employed. There has been a slight increase in the number of paid staff employed by larger charities, and slight decrease in the number employed by smaller charities. The number of paid staff employed by smaller charities fell by 3,000 between 2019 and 2025, from just over 8,250 to just over 5,250. ![Paid staff 2019 to 2025: small and large charities (Line chart)](https://datawrapper.dwcdn.net/g1EkX/full.png) \- Based on our recent [2025 Scottish Voluntary Sector Workforce Survey](https://scvo.scot/research/reports/2025-scottish-voluntary-sector-workforce-survey) over 2 in 5 respondents from smaller charities were employed part-time, in contrast to larger charities where only 1 in 5 worked part-time. Around 1 in 3 respondents from smaller charities have a non‑permanent contract – higher than the 1 in 4 seen in larger charities, and a far higher proportion than in other sectors. Non-permanent contracts tend to exacerbate concerns about job security and these worries can impact negatively on job satisfaction. Despite this, employees in smaller charities show high levels of job satisfaction, are in the main satisfied with flexibility of work place and time, are happy with management and generally feel they have access to training opportunities, although for 2 in 3 respondents this is only ‘to some extent’.   Respondents from smaller charities are also more likely to agree that their organisation feels ‘open, inclusive and welcoming”. However, small charities typically lack access to dedicated HR support and due to their size often cannot offer paid staff the same levels of benefits and support structures as larger charities. **For more on the experiences of the sector's paid staff, volunteers and trustees see the [2025 Scottish Voluntary Sector Workforce Survey](https://scvo.scot/research/reports/2025-scottish-voluntary-sector-workforce-survey)** \- ### Support for small charities, from SCVO and others As outlined above, key challenges for smaller charities include difficulty fundraising, rising costs, volunteer and trustee recruitment and wellbeing, and skills shortages. There are many sources of support for smaller charities around these topics including: * [**SCVO Membership**](https://scvo.scot/membership) – free for organisations with under £100k annual income, giving access to things like Funding Scotland Premium, Information Service support, free legal advice, HR resources and discounts on training. * [**F**](https://funding.scot)[**undin**](https://funding.scot)[**g Scotland**](https://funding.scot) * **SCVO [HR resources](https://scvo.scot/support/hr)** and [**HR Service**](https://scvo.scot/services/hr) * [**Governance support**](https://scvo.scot/support/running-your-organisation/governance) * **Volunteer Scotland’s [volunteering resources](https://www.volunteerscotland.net/knowledge-gateway)** * **[TSI Scotland Network](https://tsi.scot/)** --- ## About SCVO SCVO (Scottish Council for Voluntary Organisations) is the national membership organisation for Scotland's voluntary sector. Our role is to champion the role of voluntary organisations in Scotland and to support them to do work that has a positive impact. SCVO supports members and the wider voluntary sector with all aspects of setting up and running a voluntary organisation. SCVO represents the needs and concerns of the voluntary sector to the Scottish government in Holyrood and UK government and Westminster. Through our learning and events programme SCVO offers training and development opportunities to the sector. Members access an extensive membership benefits package including specialist, in-depth, 1-to-1 guidance from our Information Services team and from professional service partners. Access to exclusive membership networks (including comms, employers, governance and policy) supports members to grow their connections, stay up to date, exchange ideas and views with peers, and learn through tailored, learning opportunities. SCVO members enjoy free access to Funding Scotland Premium to stay on top of funding opportunities to support their organisation’s financial resilience. Discounts and savings savings on SCVO products and services (including our HR service, managed IT support, payroll service and events and training) and partner offers provide members with support to allow them to focus on delivering their organisation’s goals. Further SCVO products and services include [extensive digital support](https://scvo.scot/support/digital), a climate action resource [Growing Climate Confidence](https://climateconfident.scot), a voluntary sector publication [Third Force News](https://tfn.scot) and a voluntary sector jobs and recruitment service [Goodmoves](https://goodmoves.org). For more information on SCVO membership, visit [SCVO membership](https://scvo.scot/membership)