Last night many people took to Twitter to rally support for smaller charities after the damning criticisms of larger charitable organisations on BBC’s Panorama.   

The documentary, which criticised the financial investments and other practices of Comic Relief, Save the Children and Amnesty International, prompted small charities and their supporters to argue why donors should invest in smaller organisations which have smaller overheads.

The CAREducation Trust, which aims to make a difference to the lives of disadvantaged and naturally challenged children around the world, tweeted: “Be careful what charity you choose, do your research and ask them the questions.”

Volunteers at the charity joined in to support the charity and other smaller organisations.

Dilosha Patel tweeted: “I #volunteer &dedicate my time to @CAREducationUK as they are transparent & 100% grassroots, no admin costs, nothing taken out of #donations”.

Another charity to use the opportunity to promote the positive impact of smaller charities was the Mlambe Project, who tweeted: “Give your money to a single project and make a real difference you can observe and measure.”

Commenting on the matter, Alex Swallow, chief executive of the Small Charities Coalition: “I'm obviously pleased to hear that people want to support the work of small, local charities.

“However, larger charities also do fantastic work that is desperately needed by vulnerable groups. I think we need to fight against the idea that overhead is a terrible thing - it is what keeps high-quality services running.”

Pauline Broomhead, chief executive of the FSI, said: “I’m passionate and I give to small charities because I believe the vast majority of their money goes direct to the local services and who knows that tomorrow I might need a local charity to help me out.”

However she also said people should donate to causes that they are passionate about, whether they are large or small charities. She added: “I wouldn’t want to stop anybody donating to an organisation that does great work if they are passionate about their organisation and passionate about what they do.”

Catherine Clark, head of development at the Royal School of Church Music, said donors should donate to where they think their money will be the most effective, and that isn’t always the smaller charities.

She said: “Some small charities are so small that they are just doing local stuff. But big charities like Cancer Research UK and the Royal School of Church Music - although we only have an income of £1.5m but that’s on the big spectrum - or others, the largeness actually allows them to do what they need to do, for instance research.”

Both Broomhead and Clark did reiterate the point that donors need to be aware of the practices of charity they are donating to. Broomhead said: “People should always check out the organisations they want to donate to, but what they should do is never stop giving.”

Clark reiterated that it was the charity's responsibility to be transparent, stating that that is what counts.

Other tweets throughout the Panorama episode that stated that people should focus their donations on smaller charities included: