Funding Plus survey 2025

Funding Plus survey results

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An overview of what areas organisations would prioritise for Funding Plus support right now is here.

On this page, we explore the findings further – looking at how support needs, priorities and access can vary by organisation size, sector, alongside trends compared with earlier surveys. We also asked organisations a question on what would make the biggest difference if they had an extra £9,000 to spend on improving the way their organisation runs.

Accessing Funding Plus support

  • 53% of respondents have accessed Funding Plus from Esmée compared to 27% in 2017. We cannot assume that 53% of our grantees have been supported – organisations which have received support may be more likely to fill in surveys on Funding Plus support.
  • Other funders offering Funding Plus type support cited by survey respondents include: Arts Council England, City Bridge Foundation, The Henry Smith Foundation, Justice Together Initiative, Lloyds Bank Foundation for England & Wales, The Mercers’ Company, Paul Hamlyn Foundation.
  • Funders capacity building support offer is similar to ‘Funding Plus’, but also includes pro bono and in kind support, mentoring, and learning sessions.

Finding a provider

  • Provider recommendations from funders are valued: Feedback from Funding Plus recipients highlights the time and resource required to find trusted providers to work with. The survey response reflects this view.

Funding Plus needs

Need in different sizes of organisations

  • Organisations of all sizes prioritise engaging external support for income generation and fundraising activities, closely followed by business development support.
    • “We would be very interested in receiving funding to turn our soon to be new strategy into an operational and workable plan for the next 3 to 5 years, and also to produce a solid fundraising strategy to work alongside it.”
    • “Business development and capacity growth, as well as identifying the most effective forms of income generation models.”
    • “Diversification of revenue streams, especially how an ethics and values-led approach can be taken to entrepreneurial strands of work that benefit grassroots community projects, without compromising.”
    • “At the current time, we are looking to develop a training/traded arm, so this is an area where we and I'm sure other charities would value consultancy support.”
  • Small organisations (fewer than 5 staff) have higher support needs in all areas except evaluation, DEI, and climate action support.
    • “As a new organisation, we are keen for any possible support available.”
  • Medium-sized organisations (between 6 and 20 staff) have a greater need for evaluation support compared to small and large organisations.
    • “On evaluation - it's more about discrete funding to commission an independent evaluation.”
    • “Embedding in ALL staff a consistent approach to gathering, analysing and learning from learning data arising from our work.”
    • “Developing an overarching evaluation plan that: lives our values; allows a longitudinal approach; and brings together different projects, programmes and campaigns.”
  • Larger organisations (more than 20 staff) have a greater need for IT infrastructure support compared to small and medium organisations.
    • “Selecting and implementing a new fundraising CRM.”

Need in different sectors

  • Social justice organisations prioritise income generation & fundraising (25%), followed by business development & strategy (16%).
  • Environment organisations rank business development & strategy and income generation & fundraising as equal greatest areas of need (19%)
  • Community development organisations have the greatest need for IT infrastructure (31%) and support or mentoring from peer organisations (12%) compared to other sectors.
  • Arts organisations have the greatest need for income generation & fundraising of all sectors (31%), followed by business development & strategy (19%), and evaluation or impact reporting (15%).
  • Children and young people organisations have the greatest need for business development & strategy of all sectors (29%), with income generation & fundraising ranking second (21%). The need for financial management support is almost twice that of other sectors (9%).

How organisations would spend an extra £9,000

We asked organisations what they would do if they had an extra £9,000 and compared this to a similar question asked in previous surveys.

  • Investing in internal systems was the top area of need (46%, 47 responses) – this is unchanged since 2018. 17 of these responses were focused on staff training and 9 on leadership development.
    • “Coaching for the leaders to ensure that we are making the most of opportunities, but ensuring we are in the right headspace.”
    • “I think I would use the £9000 to ensure that our team can spend 5 days together as dedicated time to take advantage of our full set of systems and processes. As a remote team who are busy delivering on programmes we don't often get the time to spend together to focus on development and growth.”
  • Communications and marketing (24%) and income generation and fundraising (23%) are the next highest areas of need, with fundraising demand now more than double the 2018 level of 9%.
    • “Fundraising strategy development support - particularly focussed on developing partnerships with businesses to create resilience by broadening our income streams. And creative entrepreneurship advice - which of our programmes/services could we monetise and how?”
    • “To further advance our approach to marketing and comms to help meet our social objectives through income-generating activities.”
  • Business development & strategy has fallen from second place in 2018, to fourth in 2025 (19%)
  • Need for capacity or core costs (16%) and mental health and wellbeing support (7%) are at their highest since surveys began.
    • “What we need is an external fundraiser as we're struggling with capacity”
    • “Counselling support /wellbeing support for staff members”
  • Safety and security support (2 responses) and Artificial Intelligence advice (4 responses) were mentioned in the survey for the first time.
    • “Digital entry registration system for service users and visitors”
    • “Possibly on how we could best make use of AI and systems streamlining to support our staff to focus on delivery”

Appendix

Method:

We surveyed organisations in our portfolio with an active grant or social investment as of October 2025 (475).

We received 102 responses with a representative spread of sectors, and parts of the UK. We used numbers of staff as a proxy for size of organisation.