More than 5,000 charity jobs have been lost due to the pandemic, research shows
Posted on: August 12, 2020
Content from Third Sector
More than 5,000 charity workers have already been made redundant due to Covid-19, with arts and health charities taking the biggest hit, new research shows.
The New Philanthropy Capital redundancy monitor collates publicly announced national charity redundancies as a result of the crisis.
The charity think tank hopes to identify which areas are finding it toughest to maintain a fully staffed team as pandemic-related pressures mount up.
The launch of the online tool follows a recent NPC analysis that Britain’s largest charities still face a daunting financial black hole, even with the government help they’ve received, and despite the difficult cost-cutting decisions already made.
The tool shows that more than 3,800 redundancies were made in July alone, with health charities and the arts facing the biggest challenges to keep serving their beneficiaries.
NPC hopes that philanthropists will be able to use the redundancy monitor to target their giving, and allow policy makers to better understand where the sector is really struggling.
Tom Collinge, policy manager at NPC, said the findings were particularly worrying for cancer research and theatres:
“We designed this redundancy monitor to track where the sector is hurting the most. So far, it looks like health charities and the arts are taking the biggest hit, especially cancer research and theatres,”
“We will continue to monitor as new information becomes available, but if this trend continues it will mean less pioneering research which could undermine the fight against cancer, and a major hit to the cultural life of the nation.”
In July, Third Sector reported that Cancer Research UK plans to reduce the size of its workforce by almost a quarter as a result of a predicted £300m drop in income over the next three years.
The charity’s three-year strategy also revealed it would have to reduce its spending on research by £150m over the next four to five years.
A number of other major charities have announced in recent weeks that they are anticipating having to make significant redundancies because of the pandemic, including the National Trust, which is cutting up to 1,200 jobs, Oxfam, the British Heart Foundation and the RSPCA.
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