In November 2020, the BBC Shared Data Unit reported experts' fears that thousands of smaller charities across the UK could cease to exist in the new year, following a shift in the nature of giving.
The cancellation of all participation events since March had seen overall donations to non-NHS charities drop by 46% on a leading fundraising site.
But our analysis found that smaller charities - without the reserve levels of their larger counterparts - were at greater risk of having to cease operating entirely.
The leader of the Charities Aid Foundation (CAF) said the declining income from collection tins, charity shops and community events such as fetes and raffles had already hit the incomes of smaller operations by “hundreds of millions of pounds”.
Even though he said overall giving in 2020 was up by £800m compared to 2019, the majority of those funds were absorbed by NHS charities.
Meanwhile, a poll carried out among 580 charity bosses in April found only a third had enough funds to meet running costs for the next three months.
The Small Charities Coalition said parts of the sector faced a “slow death”, the true scale of which would not be realised until early in 2021 when that grant funding ran out.
For this investigation, we used a variety of sources:
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Charitybase.org (A database of every charity in the UK, its location, annual income and expenditure)
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Polling on charitable giving conducted by YouGov
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Data released by Virgin Money Giving.
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“Pulse polling” carried out during the pandemic by the Charities Aid Foundation and the Small Charities Coalition
We shared a story pack containing analysis of the data above and key interviews with the Small Charities Coalition, the Charities Aid Foundation, Virgin Money Giving as well as local charities Yorkshire Cat Rescue Centre and Designability in Bath.
We also shared a curated version of the Charitybase database, allowing local titles to assess the scale of the small charities sector in their area.
The BBC Shared Data Unit makes data journalism available to the wider news industry as part of the BBC Local News Partnership.
Stories written in print and online by partners based on this research included:
- Liverpool Echo: Warning many small charities may no longer be sustainable 'within a year' 25 November 2020
- Gainsborough Standard: Small charities could be facing a ‘slow death’ due to Covid-19 6 November 2020
- Cannock Chase Radio: Coronavirus: Small charities face 'slow death' 6 November 2020
- Tenby Today: Local charities face ‘slow death’ - experts state 2 November 2020
- Hexham Courant: Small charities may not survive second lockdown 6 November 2020
- South Wales Evening Post: Charities facing 'slow death' due to pandemic 7 November 2020
- Bath Chronicle: Smaller charities 'at ris of closure' 7 November 2020
- Gedling Eye: Smaller charities in Gedling borough could be facing financial ruin because of coronavirus 6 November 2020
The story also featured on the BBC England homepage as well as the morning bulletins for BBC Radio Lancashire, BBC Radio Cumbria and BBC Radio Shropshire.
You can find all coronavirus-related stories by the BBC data units tagged 'coronavirus' here