In the CAF Charity Landscape report of 2019, charity leaders said that income generation remained the number one challenge for their organisations. Of the £77bn combined annual income of the 168,000 charities in the UK, around 90% is fundraised income, including from the public, government, trusts and corporates. Less than 1% of those 168,000 charities have turnover greater than £10m and only a quarter are thought to have reserves that would cover three months’ running costs.

This was the situation even before Covid-19 made its terrible impact felt – and we all know what happened to charity revenues in 2020. Thousands of organisations saw their income projections wiped out virtually overnight as charity shops closed, fundraising events were cancelled and face-to-face fundraisers were furloughed. A new report from Pro Bono Economics suggests that a £10bn charity funding gap has been created by the coronavirus, and 59% of charities are to cut back on services as a result. Charities’ reliance on fundraising and fundraisers has been brought into sharper focus than perhaps ever before, at the same time when fundraising has suddenly got a whole lot harder.