Charities have described the process of applying for funding as “soul destroying” in a report published today.
The 2026 Funding Experience Survey, published by the Institute for Voluntary Action Research (IVAR), surveyed 1,200 charities on their experiences of applying for funding.
It finds that just over half (51%) of respondents felt funding practices had improved over the last three years.
Yet, only 9% believed they had improved a lot, with more than a quarter (28%) saying that they felt things had got worse.
Most respondents affected by ‘at least’ one major pressure
The six most common words used to describe applying for funding were: “challenging”, “difficult”, “frustrating”, “exhausting”, “time-consuming” and “stressful”.
Some respondents went further, describing the experience as “soul-destroying”, “demoralising”, and “like scanning an ocean for a single life raft”.
Almost nine in 10 (89%) said that they had been significantly affected by at least one major pressure in the last year.
The most significant of these was increased competition for funding (84%), followed by rising organisational costs and narrowing eligibility criteria (both 69%), economic uncertainty (65%), funders pausing or closing (61%), and growing demand for services (60%).
Half said they had been hit by five or more simultaneously.
Gap between charities’ needs and funders’ offerings
From a list of 15 grantmaking practices, unrestricted funding was selected as a top priority by 59% of respondents, and multi-year funding by 51% – significantly ahead of all other practices.
However, only 13% of respondents agreed that funders currently offer unrestricted funding, and 20% that funders offer multi-year grants.
Ben Cairns, director of IVAR, said: “Filling in forms and asking for money shouldn't be soul-destroying. Many of the responses to the survey are deeply sobering.”
But Cairns added that the report “also carries a message of hope and opportunity, because process is something funders have the power to change”.
“Funders and charities exist in service of the same communities,” he said. “The question we are putting to the sector is a simple one: what could I do better?”
