Small Charity Week 2025 | Showcasing Small Charities
Small Charity Week runs from 23rd-28th June 2025 aiming to showcase, support and connect small charities across the UK.
What is a small charity?
A small charity is generally defined as having an annual turnover of less than £1million. This represents 96% of all UK charities, but this 96% receive only 10% of total charity income. In fact, the Centre for Social Justice reports the largest 16 charities in the UK receive the same funding as the smallest 160,000 charities combined. Wow!
The reality is that many small charities are under increasing pressure with rising costs, increased demand for services and a fall in funding for crucial programmes that make a real difference to those supported by small charities.
Why are small charities so important?
At African Children’s Fund, we’re incredibly proud of our ‘Small Charity’ status and are also honoured to work with small charity, grassroots partners in-country in Kenya, Tanzania, Uganda and Zimbabwe. Our collective small charity status means we are:
Agile – we can quickly pivot and help our partners provide new solutions in the face of difficulty. We saw this during the Covid pandemic and again last year when flooding unexpectedly hit Kenya.
Personal – we love getting to know our supporters and working with you to create tailored support for your fundraising, as well as being able to send personalised acknowledgments for your kind contributions.
Flexible – Some of the projects our partners run are simply too small to be supported by bigger organisations with large-scale, fixed programmes.
Scalable – the only thing that holds our partners back from expanding their projects further is funding. The more donations we receive, the further our partners can extend their reach on the ground.
Despite being small, our impact is mighty
What difference does your support make?
Our partners collectively help 5,000 children go to school each day. 5,000. That’s vast! Whether that’s through a nutritious mug of porridge, the provision of sanitary towels, the payment of school fees or an improved understanding of their rights, that’s 5,000 children who are safe, learning and creating better opportunities for the future every day.
A year’s supply of porridge for a Kenyan child costs less than £20. Locally-sourced reusable sanitary towels for a Tanzanian girl cost a little under £7. Even a whole new toilet block in a Tanzanian school can be built for around £6,000.
This week and beyond, please continue to champion small charities like African Children’s Fund so the children we support can have even more opportunities for a prosperous future free from poverty.
Thank you.