UK’s only Charity ESG Survey: At a time when UK charities face mounting pressures and regulatory complexity, clarity and prioritisation have never been more critical.
The survey (which participants completed in May, June and July 2025) reveals that only 5% of participating organisations have a holistic ESG strategy with charities having to choose where to focus their time and budgets with 43% describing their ESG reporting in their most recent annual report as ‘minimal’.
The profound financial pressures facing organisations in the sector are forcing many to deprioritise everything beyond their core activities and regulatory requirements. In this context, many organisations said that while they want to do more to mitigate their negative environmental impact, they have relegated this to a ‘nice to have’.
As a result, they are placing greater emphasis on social factors – particularly staff wellbeing – and governance practices, while environmental concerns take a secondary role.
86% said they either have a basic ESG strategy that is a ‘work in progress’ (36%), or don’t yet have an ESG strategy, but are ‘considering developing one’ (50%). This indicates a broad-based buy-in for ESG as a concept across the sector but highlights the difficulty of developing and implementing a holistic strategy with only one organisation describing it as ‘fully integrated’ into their organisation.
The confusing landscape of overlapping approaches was identified as a top challenge for participating organisations with over 100 external, ESG-related accreditations, standards, frameworks and marks reported as being in use. Despite this, they said they want and need more charity-facing support, resources and guidance, to help them take an integrated, strategic approach to ESG.
On the positive side, the not-for-profit sector leads by example on staff wellbeing, prioritising staff experience and innovating to engage staff in all aspects of their organisations. Across the first two years of our survey, staff considerations have emerged as a clear ESG priority for participating organisations with 92% rating it ‘very important’ and an area where they report making greatest progress.
Nearly three-quarters (74%) of organisations are currently paying at least the Real Living Wage to all staff (unchanged from the 2024 survey), but there remains a significant minority (26%) unable to do this. Smaller charities in particular acknowledge that the need to preserve funds to prioritise impact on beneficiaries means pay levels cannot compete with other sectors.
This was the 2nd year of our ESG survey. 75 not-for-profit organisations completed this round of the ESG survey of which 63 were doing it for the 1st time. These organisations range in size from micro-organisations, to small, medium and large charities. The largest organisation has an income of £151m million, while the smallest grassroots organisation had income of under £14K, 54 were large organisations with income >£5m and 37 had income <£1m and 2 had an income of less than £50K.
In total there have been 141 submissions from organisations with a combined income of £1,263m servicing 19 different beneficiary groups including adults, socially disadvantaged individuals and groups, children and young people.
Watch the recording of the ESG Insights Survey webinar held on 10th December 2025
Watch the recording of our ‘How to Complete your ESG Survey’ Webinar.
Information for Senior Leadership Teams and Boards about the ESG Assessment Tool:
The ESG tool was last opened for completions between 27th May and 25th July 2025. It will re-open for completions in 2026. Register here to be notified when the tool is re-opening.
The tool is completely free of charge to use
It has been designed for all sizes of charities and not-for-profits from small grassroots to medium sized and national footprint organisations
We expect it will require 1-2 hours to complete depending on the level of disclosure and evidence you choose to provide
Survey users can to download the set of ESG questions here and share these with colleagues to make it easier to collate information
Collecting data for input and completing the survey alongside colleagues will give you a fantastic opportunity to explore issues of ESG as they impact your organisation
Once the survey has closed (on Friday 25th July 2025), we will create customised reports for every organisation that completed the survey in full, showing how your responses compare to the sector as a whole
This report will be confidential to your organisation. It is first and foremost a development tool for you and your Board. It’s at your discretion whether you report your findings and share these with donors
We will also provide some tools and resources including highlighting organisations which are excelling in ESG, so that you can gain insight about how to improve and make progress
Trends emerging from the research will be collated once a year into a full, publicly available report
This is an annual recurring survey so that you’ll have the opportunity to complete it annually to assess what progress you have made. If you completed the survey in 2024 and complete the survey again in 2025 you will have:
A Benchmark: With a 2nd year of data, we will be able to benchmark your updated responses against a larger dataset to provide more insight
A Streamlined Process: Your responses from the 2024 survey will be visible in the tool, allowing you to update, amend, or leave them unchanged as needed, thus reducing the time required for input
The Ability to Track Progression: You will receive a new individual report which can be shared with your board and other stakeholders to track how you have progressed
Access to Essential Data for New Charity SORP Requirements: Using our tool to evaluate your organization’s ESG maturity can help you gather essential data needed to meet the reporting obligations under the new Charity SORP.
Contact us to find out how our team of charity, social enterprise & not-for-profit consultants and recruiters can help your organisation. Call, send an email or complete our simple contact form.
Phone: +44 (0) 203 821 6174
Email: [email protected]
