The Challenges

In 2024 the Charity Commission for England and Wales found that the top 5% of charities in terms of turnover in the UK receive 88% of individual donations – a stubborn statistic that hasn’t changed significantly in the past decade. Even when demand for services grows, getting consistent, long-term term and non-ring-fenced funding can be challenging.

The Wave Project, a charity that helps young people overcome mental health challenges through surf therapy, explains that the cost of living crisis has only made this worse: “In general people’s ability to give has reduced and regular donors who have supported us for years are cancelling their donations. So many charities are now applying for each grant that we are all scrabbling around for the crumbs of the funding.”

It doesn’t help that with so many charities in the same boat, the competition for grant funding becomes fierce. To make matters worse, funders often want to put their money towards specific or new projects, leaving long-established and ever-more-necessary core services strapped for cash. Even being able to prove the impact of services doesn’t always help when you compete with big charities: “We’re regularly shortlisted for corporate partnerships and grants because of our impactful services and campaigning but we’re often unsuccessful because a big charity can provide celebrity involvement, greater audience reach, or more volunteering opportunities.” Explains Become, a charity that supports children and young people in care.

The challenges around money don’t end with funding. With costs rising across the board, it becomes increasingly difficult to meet spending needs. This has a ripple effect on staff satisfaction and retention.

Small charities are committed to paying staff and freelancers fairly but when sector-wide wage rises occur – like the recent jump in London Living Wage – it becomes very challenging to keep up and ensure staff are paid a competitive wage.

“We lack departments for things like HR and IT so we have to navigate that alongside delivering our direct work supporting service users. Some roles get stretched to encompass what these departments would do, or we try to outsource expertise.” Say Chiva, a charity that supports children and young people with HIV.

With senior staff putting out fires left right and centre – often while fulfilling the roles of two or three departments – there’s barely time to think about personal development goals or dedicate time to learning new skills.

In this climate, long-term staff retention becomes difficult, and staff turnover means long-term projects can suffer.

How Raise Your Hands is Helping

Raise Your Hands exists to solve these critical problems small charities face: inconsistent, lumpy funding. Our funding is delivered consistently, year-on-year and allows small charities to plan for the future. In fact, Raise Your Hands gives funding in perpetuity, tackling the fear many charities have of not knowing where the next cheque will come from.

Our model of working closely with 16 carefully selected UK charities – all doing outstanding work with children and young people – means that we can empower these small charities to funnel funding into where it will make the biggest impact.

Nicky Goulder CEO of Create Charity which reduces isolation through the creative arts says that “this kind of funding is an investment in our expertise, enabling us to support children and young people as effectively and sustainably as possible. It enables us to plan and innovate.”

The Raise Your Hands model also helps small charities break out of the paradox of competing with their peers. The dog-eat-dog world of grant applications can often make charities feel they compete with others doing equally important work.

By supporting multiple charities with similar goals and values, Raise Your Hands can make the biggest impact on the lives of young people across the country, all while doing the leg work behind the scenes to find and vet the very best small charities to work with. By working through a scouting model, we free scores of charities from sending out pages of funding bids into the ether, never to be seen again.

Because when the excitement of the day is over, it’s usually up to that small but trusty teddy bear to look over our sleeping little ones.