Dr Priya Singh

Chair, Board of Trustees

National Council for Voluntary Organisations

A letter of concern regarding NCVO’s strategic direction and its implications for small charities

We are writing to you, and to the board of trustees, as practitioners who work directly with small charities and the leaders who run them. We do so with respect for the trustee role, and in the expectation that the concerns we raise are ones the board will wish to consider seriously.

We are also writing because the issues we raise are not new, and the public statements made by NCVO in response to recent events have not addressed them adequately.

The redundancies

It was recently reported that the team providing practical support to small charities at NCVO has been made redundant, in whole or in significant part. NCVO’s public statement described this as an inevitable consequence of sector contraction and financial pressure.

We would ask the board to consider whether that framing is accurate. NCVO’s most recent accounts show a surplus of just under £1m for the year ended 31 March 2025, total funds above £10m, and trustees designating surplus funds for digital investment. The board has a responsibility to satisfy itself that the rationale presented publicly is consistent with the financial position, and to be able to explain that consistency to members if asked.

The practical support team served the majority of NCVO’s membership. 67% of NCVO’s members are small charities. These are not abstract membership statistics. Many of them are organisations without HR support, legal resource, or professional infrastructure of any kind, run by volunteers, or by a single paid member of staff covering every function at once. For those organisations, access to practical, knowledgeable support is not a nice-to-have; it is often the difference between navigating a difficult situation well and getting it seriously wrong. Removing that support at a time when small charities are already under significant financial and operational pressure is a significant strategic decision, not an operational adjustment, and it warrants board-level scrutiny.

The recruitment of six Associate Directors

Shortly after the redundancies were announced, NCVO advertised six Associate Director roles at a salary of £85,000 each. We are not in a position to second-guess internal workforce planning, and we recognise that organisations sometimes need to restructure in order to invest differently. But the board will understand why the timing and the contrast have generated the response they have. The sector has noticed, and it is asking questions that NCVO’s public communications have not answered.

The use of “Small but Mighty”

The recruitment video produced to attract candidates for these roles opens with the line: “We might be quite a small organisation, but we are mighty.”

We would ask the board to reflect on this carefully. By NCVO’s own Almanac definitions, NCVO is not a small charity; it sits in the large to major category by income. The phrase “small but mighty” has been used for years by small charities, by Small Charity Week, and by those who support them, to describe their own resilience and distinctiveness. Using it as a recruitment tagline, in the same period that dedicated small charity support has been removed, has caused widespread and genuine hurt across the sector. The board should be aware of the scale and nature of that reaction.

What we are asking

The board of trustees carries ultimate responsibility for NCVO’s values, strategic direction, and accountability to its members, the majority of whom are small charities.

NCVO is about to launch a new five-year strategy. That is an opportunity, and we would ask the board to use it. Specifically, we would ask that before the strategy is published, NCVO makes a clear and public statement setting out what its support for small charities will look like in practice: what it will consist of, who will deliver it, and how NCVO will know whether it is working. A statement that small charities remain “central to our mission” is not sufficient. The sector needs something concrete, and it needs it on the record.

We would welcome a response from the board directly.

Yours sincerely,

Felicia Willow

Director, Interims for Impact / Charity Consultant and Interim CEO, Willow Charity Consulting

Esther Ardagh-Ptolomey

Charity Consultant and Interim CEO, Esther Ptolomey Consulting / Associate, Interims for Impact

and co-signatories