Funders and donors don’t fund activity. They fund change. The charities that consistently secure and keep support are the ones that can show, clearly and credibly, what changed because they existed. That has never mattered more than it does now.
The UK giving picture makes the case starkly. According to the Charities Aid Foundation, only around 50% of people donated to charity in 2024, down from 58% in 2019 [1], and over the past decade the sector has lost roughly six million donors [2]. Total giving fell to an estimated £14 billion in 2025, the first annual decline since 2021 [2]. A shrinking, more selective donor base means every funder and supporter you have is choosing more carefully, and increasingly choosing on evidence rather than sentiment.
Know the difference between outputs and outcomes
This is where most impact communication goes wrong. “We ran 40 workshops and reached 600 people” is an output; it tells a funder what you did, not what difference it made. “600 people, of whom a third moved into stable employment within six months” is an outcome. Funders have learned to read straight past outputs, because outputs are easy to produce and prove very little. Lead with the change, evidence it, and let the activity sit underneath as support rather than substance.
Be honest about what you can and can’t prove
Overclaiming is the fastest way to lose a serious funder’s trust, and trust is already under strain: CAF identifies a lack of trust as one of the main reasons people give for not donating at all [1]. In that climate, credibility is currency. If you can robustly evidence a result, say so plainly. If something is a reasonable indication rather than proof, frame it exactly that way. Funders respect measured honesty far more than confident exaggeration, and the ones worth having can tell the difference almost immediately.
Tell it as a story and a number
Funders are people. The number gives them the confidence to justify the decision; the human story gives them a reason to care about it in the first place. The strongest impact communication holds both, the data that stands up to scrutiny and the individual example that makes it land. One without the other is either dry or unconvincing, and in a competitive funding round, either is enough to lose.
Match the message to the relationship
A major grant funder, a long-standing individual donor and a corporate partner care about different things and read impact differently. The underlying evidence is the same; the emphasis shouldn’t be. A trust wants rigour and clear reporting; a community donor wants to feel the difference they helped make; a corporate partner increasingly wants outcomes it can point to in its own reporting. That last group is worth courting deliberately, because CAF’s corporate giving research shows around three-quarters of UK businesses currently give nothing at all, which makes the ones that do both valuable and increasingly discerning about the impact they fund [3]. Tailoring the same honest evidence to each relationship is what separates charities that merely report from those that build funding that lasts.
The funding climate rewards discipline
The wider giving data isn’t only a warning; it’s a reason to get this right now. When the donor pool is contracting and businesses are giving less too, the organisations that hold their funding are disproportionately the ones that can demonstrate return on a funder’s money in terms the funder recognises. Impact evidence, communicated well, is increasingly what separates the charities that weather a tighter climate from those that simply hope generosity returns.
Build it in from the start, not the end
Impact you can communicate depends on data you actually captured, which means deciding before a programme starts what you’ll measure and how. Retrofitting impact evidence after the fact is painful and usually weak, and funders can spot a story assembled backwards. This discipline sits alongside the resourcing question covered in Marketing for Charities on a Limited Budget, and it’s central to how we approach Third Sector. Get it right and every funding conversation starts from a position of trust rather than hope, which, when the donor pool is shrinking, is exactly where you need to start.
