No matter their size or the cause that drives them, long-term grants are the Holy Grail for organisations in the voluntary sector in ensuring financial sustainability. Against a backdrop of slow economic growth, however, significant reforms to the shape of government spending has made securing such contracts an unfair fight for organisations on the smaller end of the scale.
In Scandinavia, efforts to enhance operational efficiency and improve transparency has already seen thousands of organisations in the Nordics adopting custom digital software to record and submit their taxes. As well as making it more difficult to defraud the system, these forward-thinking organisations have capitalised on the digitisation of tax as an opportunity to make a change in the day to day running of their business.
From shrinking public sector budgets, local authority cuts and lack of long-term funding, charities across the UK are feeling the financial strain of a volatile economy. Unfortunately, the situation is made significantly worse by the number of instances of fraud that occur within the third sector each year.
In one year alone, the UK’s top 100 charity fundraisers earned £3 billion in restricted funds – that’s according to new research from Xledger highlighting just how much of a challenge this type of income poses for finance teams.
Annual reports show that, for some charities, over 90 per cent of their earned income last year came in the form of restricted funding. Out of the 100 fundraisers on the list, more than a quarter recorded restricted income of 50 per cent or more.
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