This book was all but finished when the COVID-19 pandemic landed in the UK. After March 2020 we watched with dismay as successive lockdowns and ensuing restrictions wreaked havoc on charities, cutting off fundraising revenues while also driving up demand for help and support. Charities suffered one body blow after another. The big organisations announced redundancies at an alarming rate: the BHF shed 300 jobs, the National Trust 1,200, Oxfam 200, the RSPCA 300, CRUK 500 – a quarter of its workforce. Less publicised cuts at charities with smaller workforces were inevitably a greater threat to their survival. Small charities with no workforce were either asking more of their volunteers or going into hibernation.

By the end of 2020 the total loss of jobs was expected to top 60,000 – more than 6% of the total charity workforce, or 1 in every 15 jobs. In June 2020, Pro Bono Economics predicted that the sector would suffer a funding shortfall of £10.1 billion in the second half of the year – a hole in income of £6.7 billion plus a rise in demand for services totalling £3.4 billion. This crisis is unprecedented in nearly two decades we have spent observing the voluntary sector: nothing has come close to such a huge change in such a short time. The austerity imposed by the Coalition government after the 2008 global financial crash destabilised many charities, but the effects were more gradual and less extensive.

Revising our text to incorporate the impact of the pandemic on charities has been to follow a moving target, with new stories emerging almost daily of fresh challenges and difficult decisions facing charity leaders. We have included accounts of heroic responses, particularly in volunteering, alongside stories of cuts and warnings about sustainability. There were rays of light such as the distribution of £200 million of public funds to more than 8,000 small and medium-sized charities, and media excitement about the late Captain Sir Tom Moore completing 100 circuits of his garden before his 100th birthday, gaining a knighthood and raising £39 million for the NHS.