Specialist support to navigate a perfect storm

Written by: Sarah Walkley: Sustainability Adviser, Writer, Researcher, and Link UP London Skilled Volunteer

Jun 2025

The charity sector is caught in a ‘perfect storm’, according to the NCVO’s latest state of the nation report The Road Ahead 2025. Strategic planning, strong financial management and good governance are essential to navigate a successful course through the storm. But it’s hard to build and maintain strong organisational foundations when charities are being buffeted by so many different pressures at once. At Link UP London, we believe that Skilled Volunteers can help build resilience within the sector.

The perfect storm

Rising costs and falling funding have left the charitable sector in a fragile place — making it hard to recover from the impact of the Covid-19 pandemic and the cost of living crisis. Tariffs and a looming trade war could mean further cost increases ahead. This would deny charities the breathing space they need to rebuild and could force many to continue to dip into already depleted reserves to maintain services.

The Road Ahead 2025 report also lists a raft of regulatory changes charities need to get to grips with, including changes to rules on data protection, fraud, financial reporting and online trading — on top of employment law changes introduced in 2024. In addition, charitable organisations — particularly small ones generating less than £1 million per year — risk being left behind in the rush to adopt artificial intelligence (AI), the NCVO warns. But handling regulatory and technological developments effectively requires specialist skills and knowledge that many charities don’t have.

Combined all these pressures bring new leadership challenges for those running a charity. The report calls for leaders to be good communicators, who are brave, agile, and creative. They must show compassion and ensure the wellbeing and development of their teams. These are skills many of us need time and support to develop.

Getting the strategy right

NCVO stresses the importance of a clearly defined and measurable strategy to help organisations weather the storm. Not only does it enable an organisation to focus on what it does best, it supports better decision making and ensures the charity stays on track no matter how the situation changes. A clear strategy outlines what the organisation wants to achieve, providing a solid foundation to demonstrate progress and impact. It’s also motivating for employees to have a clearly expressed common vision.

The report highlights a range of information and resources available from the NCVO to aid strategy development and scenario planning. However, at Link UP London, we appreciate that it can be hard to step back from the day-to-day to focus on the core vision and mission when there are so many fires to fight.

A Skilled Volunteer can provide the support that is needed. They can facilitate a strategic review or workshops to help a charity narrow down its core mission and objectives. Over 80% of the projects Link UP London works on involve finding a Skilled Volunteer to support the organisation with defining a clearer strategy and objectives.

Specialist skills

The majority of UK charities are run by a small group of individuals who understand the needs of their local community, but can’t be specialists in employment law, data protection regulation or AI. The Road Ahead 2025 highlighted the importance of good governance for the future viability of most charitable organisations. In particular, charity boards must ensure that they have access to the broad skills and experience they need to effectively manage regulatory and technological change. It also acknowledged that most boards struggle to recruit the skills they need.

Again, Skilled Volunteers could provide the answer. Imagine having the head of HR or the chief information security officer of a large company to help update your HR or IT policies and procedures. That’s exactly the sort of task a Skilled Volunteer would undertake as part of a Link UP London project — they bring their professional expertise and apply it for social good.

If you are looking for support to update your strategy or for an injection of specialist skills, please reach out. We’re always happy to chat with any charity, community group or social enterprise that is looking for greater support. The Road Ahead 2025 highlighted the high levels of public trust in the charitable sector making it an essential partner in delivering the UK Government’s Plan for Change. Link UP London is committed to ensuring the charitable sector has the operational support it needs to play its vital role.