The Coronavirus crisis has upset plans all over the charity sector during the last 18 months. Finance teams have been forced to navigate new government systems for furloughing staff and accessing emergency loans, all while changing service delivery plans and hastily rewriting budgets. Those teams have been under pressure like never before, rewriting finance forecasts week by week as new income streams emerge and disappear and staff shortages and national and local restrictions play havoc with long-term planning.

In the background to all this, it has been a rocky time for the financial markets, too, although the substantial volatility seen in the early days of Covid-19 have been followed by a fairly robust recovery and greater stability since. As a result, finance teams with plenty of money held in investments will have kept a nervous eye on how those investments have performed and the income they have generated, as well as their relationship with the fund managers responsible for their money.