Small Charities Coalition to Close

The trustees of SCC regret to announce their decision to formally wind up the charity.

This has been an extremely difficult decision. It has been taken after the Trustees and SCC’s team have exhausted all possibilities to secure funding that would have put the charity on a secure, sustainable financial footing to continue its work in support of thousands of small charities.

Our aim is to close the charity responsibly in Spring 2022 and secure ongoing support for small charities through other channels and organisations. SCC started life back in 2008, a time when there were limited resources and support available for small charities. The founders wanted SCC to be the “go to” place, enabling small charities to start up and run themselves well.

Since then, enormous progress has been made, particularly during the past two years when smaller charities have played a critical role in supporting communities during COVID-19.

We were fortunate to secure additional COVID-related funding in the year to 31st March 2021, which made it possible for us to enhance our support to members at a crucial time. But securing the financial sustainability of SCC has been a perennial issue. Like many charities, large and small, we faced our own challenges around finance and fundraising. Sourcing funding absorbs significant time which, with a small staff, made it difficult to meet our commitment to serve small charities.

COVID has shown that there was a very real need for our services, including our HelpDesk, training and events, newsletter and mentoring programme. Our dedicated staff team has worked extremely hard during the pandemic to get support out to small charities dealing with all the challenges this crisis has created for them and the causes they support, so we want to say a huge thank you to them. We know that the decision to close SCC affects our current staff of three more than anyone else and we will be doing absolutely everything we can to support them in the coming months.

We are immensely proud of what everyone who has been involved with SCC has achieved since our inception in 2008, from our funders through to past staff, trustees, members, trainers, mentors, partners and supporters. We thank our funders, who made it possible for the team to carry out this work, and who prioritised providing support services for small charities.

We acknowledge how difficult this news may be to receive. SCC would not have existed without our members and we have been so proud to fly the flag for small charities for the past 13 years. The pandemic has shown us all how critical small charities are to the communities they serve. We hope our legacy is that the needs of small charities are permanently at the top of the sector’s agenda.

We will give updates as we go through the process of closing the organisation.

For further information:

Small Charities Coalition

board@smallcharities.org.uk