Celebrating Small Charity Week 2025

This Small Charity Week, Altair is proud to join a national celebration of the vital role small charities play in communities across the UK. This year’s campaign shines a spotlight on financial resilience, recognising the incredible efforts of small charities to keep delivering, even as costs rise and funding falls. Resilient charities create stronger communities, but many are now under more pressure than ever. 

At Altair, we understand the pressures on small charities and community organisations, having worked extensively with many to create fundraising strategies, business plans, and investment readiness reviews. We are committed to supporting socially-focused organisations to overcome challenges and recognise the value of bringing like-minded people together to inspire each other and develop creative solutions for future resilience. 

Having a clear income diversification plan that aligns your income generation approach with your strengths and weaknesses will allow you to focus on a range of fundraising activities, spreading the risk if one source drops or disappears completely. It is crucial to test and implement various approaches with different funders or fundraising mechanisms, ensuring agility and adaptability to sector trends or external factors. Regularly reviewing your plan ensures it aligns with both your internal resources and the external environment. 

Creating a fundraising plan can be as complex as you choose to make it. Whether you’re a large or small charity, the process is broadly similar. Below is a step-by-step guide to help you get started: 

Step 1. Stakeholder consultation   

The first step is to undertake stakeholder consultation. Start by identifying who your key stakeholders are and how you plan to engage with them.   

Step 2. Perform a SWOT analysis  

By performing a simple SWOT analysis, you can begin to build a clear picture of what’s working, potential areas for development, and what risks you may need to mitigate. 

Step 3. Identify your aspirations 

Your aspirations should be long-term in nature: what goals would you like your charity to achieve over the next 3,5,10 years? 

Step 4. Set out your core values  

Your values are the guiding principles that define your charity’s culture and ways of working.   

Step 5. Define your strategic focus areas and goals 

Focus areas help to give your plan structure by breaking it down into distinct sections, with each section underpinned by its own goal.  Goals are high-level, purpose-driven statements that set out exactly what it is you want to achieve. 

Step 6. Draw up your action plan   

A detailed action plan to operationalise your vision into reality.  You should start by setting your strategic objectives. These are the definitive, quantifiable targets that organise your high-level goals into explicit actions which are driven by a deadline.   

Altair is proud to be part of Small Charity Week, recognising the power of small charities. To support financial resilience, our Community Impact team is offering any small charity a free support call and tailored report of recommendations. We are eager to offer our time for free as part of this important campaign, having had the privilege of working with many inspiring small charities over the years. Our experience has helped these organisations become agile and adaptive in an ever-changing funding landscape, and we would love to share our insights to help others.  

To book your free support call, please click here.