Donor Q&A

Q. If I support a large charity, will I achieve less impact?

A. Donors sometimes think that a donation to a large charity makes less impact than giving money to a smaller charity. Yet size is not necessarily an indicator of a charity’s effectiveness.

It’s true that some larger charities require more complex systems and processes, which cost more. But if you want to make an impact on a large number of people, bigger charities offer some advantages. For example, it takes a large-scale organisation like NSPCC to run a network of family support centres across the UK. 

Like any business, large charities can make good use of economies of scale, allowing them to serve users at a lower cost or provide a more comprehensive service for the same amount of money. For example, charities like Cancer Research UK can marshal large groups of scientific researchers and run many research projects concurrently. 

Large charities can also use a greater breadth of activities to their advantage. Barnardo’s front-line work with vulnerable children, for example, informs its research and lends credibility to its policy work.

Larger charities usually have more stable income streams, allowing them to think more strategically about their work over the long term and to experiment more easily with new approaches.

Finally, the credibility and the public profile of large charities can make it easier to draw the attention of policy-makers or the public to an issue. For example, Mind has successfully campaigned against the reduction of benefits for long-term psychiatric patients. 

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