Small Charity Week 2024

Last year was astonishing.

Small Charity Week 2023 was hugely successful. We had scale, we had truth, and we had teeth.

Together the sector broke all records in terms of reach, involvement and support offered.

Collective humanity is amazing. But this year we need more.

This year, as well as amazing practical support, we need to push for change. We need to engage with the public at scale, and we need to start addressing the crushing issues small charities are facing.

The last year has seen things get even worse for small charities, rather than better. We need to come together to address this. Small charities make up 97% of the sector. We ARE the sector. But we are facing unique problems, and many are on a knife edge in terms of staying open.

Small Charity Week is evolving

Last year gave us hope. The small charity sector showed that it could come together. We learnt, we celebrated, we challenged the government. Now Small Charity Week is evolving further.

Small Charity Week will always contain the essential support that small charities need. The brilliant workshops, the seminars, the space to celebrate, and to challenge. But now we also need to come together differently, beyond our bubble, and think beyond our sector.

We will light a spark that will start a national conversation about small charities. Wewill build broader allies and drive bigger change.

How on earth can we do that?

This piece of work is a key aspect of the future of Small Charity Week. It’s scary, but it’s needed. We need to light a spark that will start a national conversation around the issues facing charities. We need to engage the public at scale in not only the injustices charities face, but also that we have the ability to both highlight it, and to collectively change it.

Success will not come overnight, or even this year, but part of the focus for Small Charity Week going forward must be to constantly push the issues into the mainstream. Every year we will push harder and further. Every year we will make progress. Every year we will shift power.

It will be a long road. It will be hard and there will be setbacks. We have shown that we can mobilise as a community, but it is not enough. We must now mobilise to push beyond our own ecosystem, into media, press and mainstream conversations.

How you can be part of it

Vic and Wayne (together with the awesome Nicola) project managed the totality of Small Charity Week last year, but this issue of mainstream voice is so important, that we are giving it a much clearer focus this year.

NCVO has done a huge amount of work on resources for Small Charity Week 2024 and will also be running a programme of online and in-person events, which we are very excited about. It’s an incredible partnership, we share the same vision.

We don’t want to just highlight the situation. We want to start changing it, collectively.

We will create space to co-design with the small charity sector. Together we will build the narratives and the discussions that we want to go mainstream. And we will make it happen.

Every single person, charity and organisation involved will need to have a single-minded focus. To do everything they can to push our shared narrative and calls to action out as far as humanly possible. This involves charities leveraging their marketing and press teams, their celebrity support, and their donors and campaigners to gain traction.

Larger charities, infrastructure orgs and sector bodies will have a much clearer mandate this year. To use their power, their expertise, and their influence to drive the narrative and calls to action mainstream.

What’s next?

Let’s build those narratives and calls to action together. Let’s commit to using every resource we have to make noise, to change hearts and minds, and to drive change. Let’s articulate the change we want to see. Let’s decide on the national conversation we want to start.

Over the next few weeks, we will be outlining ways that you can get involved, how we can build our campaign together.

But for now, share this blog and make a big noise about it. Celebrate it, shout about it fromthe rooftops. Get behind it and commit to being a part of the future of Small Charity Week.

Small Charity Week 2024 will run from 24–28 June. Let’s make the most of it.

Big love.

Wayne and Vic